Russia has 'Every Right' to Expand Its Position on Svalbard if US Does the Same in Greenland, Moscow Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 20 –Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that Crimea is “no less important for the security of Russia than Greenland is for the US” (meduza.io/news/2026/01/20/lavrov-krym-ne-menee-vazhen-dlya-bezopasnosti-rossii-chem-grenlandiya-dlya-ssha), a comment that suggests Moscow believes Donald Trump will now be more supportive of Russia’s claims there.

            Lavrov’s words have attracted attention around the world as talk about the possibility of a change in the status of Denmark’s Greenland, but relatively little attention is being devoted to a Moscow commentator who argues that “if the world allows the US to change Greenland’s status, Russia has the complete moral and historical right to revise the status” of Norway’s Svalbard.

            Indeed, Nikolay Ilyasov says, Russia would simply be restoring the rights it has under a 1920 treaty that gave it the right to operate in Svalbard (Spitzbergen) at a time when Norway is turning the archipelago into an anti-Russian outpost (asia24.media/news/shpitsbergen-ne-grenlandiya-esli-ssha-mogut-peresmatrivat-pravila-radi-grenlandii-pochemu-rossii-nel/). 

            Because this commentator’s words appear to express the thinking of many in Moscow, they are worth quoting at some length.” Ilyasov says that “When we talk about ‘the Russian footprint’ in the Arctic, most people only imagine polar stations, icebreakers, and bears. But there is a place where this footprint is not just historical – it is legal, economic, and geopolitical.”

“What we are talking about in this case is “Svalbard – an archipelago that Russia knows as Grumant, and which Norway stubbornly calls Svalbard, as if renaming it could erase centuries of Russian presence from memory,” which reflects the fact that Russian Pomors visited the archipelago long before Norway became a country.

“If tomorrow Moscow declares: "Svalbard is our ancestral land, and we demand a revision of the 1920 agreement," the entire West will roar about "Russian expansion." But where is the logic? If international law is not just a convenient screen for the powerful, then Russia has far more grounds …

“Today, about 500 Russians live on the archipelago – mainly employees of the Arctikugol trust in the settlement of Barentsburg. There were once twice as many of them as Norwegians. Now Oslo is doing everything to oust the Russian presence. How? Under the guise of ‘environmental regulations,’ ‘fisheries protection,’ and ‘national security.’

“Svalbard is a strategic key to the Arctic. Its waters are transit corridors for the future Northern Sea Route. Its islands are ideal observation points for air and sea traffic. And what is Norway doing? Turning the archipelago into a forward NATO base. That is, the demilitarized zone, guaranteed by the 1920 Treaty, is now becoming a military outpost against Russia.

“At the same time, the Norwegians are installing surveillance antennas on the islands, receiving coast guard ships, and conducting exercises with the alliance. Where are the protests from the ‘international community’? Where are the defenders of ‘rules’? The irony is that Russia is the only country, besides Norway, that maintains a permanent presence in Svalbard.

“That is because for Russians, it is part of their history and identity. So, if the world allows the US to revise the status of Greenland, then Russia has every moral and historical right to revise the status of Svalbard. After all, Grumant is not Svalbard but a land where Russians lived, worked, and built long before Norwegian officials began to dream of "national Arctic greatness."

              For background on Russia’s focus on and actions in and around Svalbard, see forskning.no/arktis-gronland-kina/kommer-usa-eller-russland-til-a-prove-a-ta-svalbard-med-trump-vet-man-selvfolgelig-aldri/2603879; Kari Aga Myklebost et al., “Hybrid threats in high latitudes: Facing Russia on Svalbard,” Hybrid CoE Paper, December 26, 2025 at hybridcoe.fi/publications/hybrid-threats-in-high-latitudes-facing-russia-on-svalbard/; jamestown.org/moscow-using-svalbard-to-test-natos-readiness-and-resolve/;  jamestown.org/moscow-focusing-on-gotland-and-other-baltic-sea-islands-as-potential-targets/; and jamestown.org/moscows-first-move-against-nato-could-take-place-in-norways-svalbard-archipelago/.   

Harbingers of Russia’s Loss of Freedom Now Appeared a Decade Ago, Editors of ‘Horizontal Russia’ Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 20 – Russian social networks have been publishing articles about the differences in that country between 2016 and 2026. The editors of Horizontal Russia, a portal that keeps track of developments outside of the Moscow agglomeration, has now added a contribution to these discussions.

            They focus on three developments in 2016 they say are defining the Russian situation now – the Yanovaya Law on tightening control over the Internet, the use of attacks on people identified as foreign agents to suppress opposition, and the dispatch of far more outsiders to rule the regions (semnasem.org/articles/2026/01/20/sobytiya-2016-opredelili-2026).

            First, in 2016, the Duma passed legislation significantly increasing punishments for extremist and terrorist crimes and opening the way for the powers that be to punish people for what they posted on the internet and not just for specific real-world actions. Now, that approach has become the basis of Putin’s increasing authoritarianism.

            Second, also in 2016, the Russian government carried out the first persecution of those identified as foreign agents, initially directed at organizations receiving foreign funds but now expanded to include the targeting of individuals suspected of being influenced by hostile foreign governments and organizations.

            And third, in that year, Putin dramatically increased his insertion of outsiders as governors of the federal subjects and since then has increased their number and reduced the voice of regional elites in this selection process and thus has reduced these people from being political figures to being only managers who must carry out the Kremlin’s wishes.

            These three trends and the fact that they grew from small moves to large ones over the course of a decade characterize the nature of the Putin regime as they have made the political system in the Russian Federation ever more authoritarian, the editors of Horizontal Russia suggest.

            And by their arguments regarding these three steps and their introduction, they suggest the way in which Russians and outside observers should evaluate each new Kremlin step, not as an end point designed to deal with what the measure is nominally about but as the springboard for even more dramatic actions later. 

 

A Quarter Fewer Men from City of Moscow Went to Fight in Ukraine in 2025 than Did in 2024, ‘Vyorstka’ Investigation Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 20 – Despite the Kremlin’s push to recruit more men to go to Ukraine and fill the depleted ranks of its army there, the city of Moscow, which has never sent a share equal to its percentage of the population sent a quarter fewer men to Ukraine in 2025 than it did a year earlier; and they were of significantly lower quality, a Vyortska investigation finds.

            Since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin has disproportionately drawn men from impoverished ethnic Russian oblasts and krays and the poor non-Russian republics rather than from the cities where losses among such men might be expected to spark protests.

            Given how hard Moscow has been working over the last two years to fill the ranks, it might have been expected that the Russian defense ministry would begin to focus on where the men it might transform into soldiers actually live – large and predominantly ethnic Russian cities like Moscow in the first instance.

            But according to Vyorstka, that has not happened. Instead, the trend seems to be going in the other direction with even fewer Muscovites being recruited and dispatched to fight and thus even more from poorer federal subjects beyond the ring road (verstka.media/kogo-rossiya-nabrala-na-vojnu-v-2025-godu).

            According to the independent news agency, 24,469 men from Moscow were sent to fight in the war, 25 percent less than in 2024. Worse, many of those who did agree to go were older than those the military wanted or had physical and mental problems that would normally be disqualifying but that in the current environment are not.

            Given that the Kremlin regularly claims that it is recruiting ever more men now than in the past, that means that the federal subjects outside the capital must be sending even more, possibly in response to the bonuses their governments are again offering and boosting, a confirmation that the divide between Moscow and the rest of Russia is deepening and widening.

Russian Nationalist Consensus Today Holds that the Civic Russian Nation is ‘a Poly-Ethnic System Headed by Russians,’ Verkhovsky Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 21 – A consensus has emerged among those who consider themselves to be Russian nationalists both among the political elite and the population of the Russian Federation that “the civic Russian [rossiysky] nation is ‘a poly-ethnic system headed by ethnic Russians [russkiye]. According to Aleksandr Verkhovsky, head of the SOVA Research Center.

            That understanding, he says, has emerged after intensive debate in the first two decades of post-Soviet Russia, debates that led to a downgrading of the primordialist understanding of nationality that the Soviet government supported and toward the rise of the more inclusive psychological one Putin has promoted (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/01/21/russkii-natsionalisticheskii-konsensus).

            In a lengthy article, Verkhovsky traces the evolution of Russian nationalist activists and the Russian government from the 1990s to the mid-2010s before offering his conclusions as to where Russian nationalists and the Kremlin now stand on what has long been the sensitive issue of the relationship between civic and ethnic nationhood.

            As he shows, these debates were intense largely because the Russian government did not get involved. “But in 2011-2013,” he writes, in opposition to various ethno-nationalisms, including the ethnic Russian, the conception of Russia as ‘a nation-civilization’ consisting of many peoples among whom the ethnic Russians were the system-forming was formulated.”

            The need for clarity on this point was also intensified by developments in Ukraine from the Maidan to 2014 and then even more by Putin’s launch of his expanded war there in 2022. And thus unlike in the Russian population where primordial understandings continued, the Russian authorities and Russian nationalists with few exceptions now define it culturally.”

            There remain, of course, differences “on the degree of inclusiveness of the Russian community,” but these appear to be less the product of theoretical discussions than about the practical issues of how easy it should be for those not born of two ethnic Russian parents to become Russians.

In RF Population Centers of Under 200 People, Ethnic Russians Form Either Huge Majorities or are Completely Absent, Census Data Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 22 – One of the reasons villages continue to be a major force in the development of nationalities in the Russian Federation is that population centers there with 200 or fewer people are dominated by a single nationality, ethnic Russian in most cases but non-Russian in the remainder, according to census data analyzed by the To Be Precise portal.

            There are 95,000 villages in the Russian Federation, the portal says. In these, the share of ethnic Russians exceeds 90 percent in two thirds and in more than half of those forms 99 percent. In 7800 of the country’s villages, the share of ethnic Russians does not exceed ten percent and, in 2700 of these, is under one percent (tochno.st/materials/sostavliaet-dolia-etniceskix-rnusskix-v-kazdom-sestom-naselennom-punkte).

            What this means is that despite all the shifts in population there over the last century and rapid urbanization, villages in the Russian Federation remain largely mono-ethnic and thus serve as a support for traditional values among Russians and the basis for the survival of national ones among the non-Russians.

            That is what makes developments in the villages so important, symbolically in the case of ethnic Russians and overwhelmingly practically in the case of non-Russians, and means that all of Moscow’s steps to urbanize the population and combine villages to save money have enormous consequences for the ethnic future of the Russian Federation. 

            To Be Precise acknowledges that census data on this issue as well as many others remains problematic, but it suggests that these numbers clearly indicate that the coming together of nationalities that the Kremlin talks so much about isn’t happening in the villages but rather they overwhelmingly remain in separate ethno-national worlds. 

Russian-Iranian ‘Weapons Corridor’ Means the Caspian is No Longer Safe for Shipping or for Littoral States, Baku Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 17 – The sinking of an Iranian ship in the Turkmenistan sector of the Caspian Sea may or may not have been the result of hostile action, Baku commentator Nurani says; but it has called attention to the fact that “the weapons corridor” Russia and Iran have established there means that the Caspian and its littoral are no longer safe.

            Both on the surface of the sea and in the air above it, Nurani says, Russia and Iran have established a weapons corridor first to deliver weapons to Armenia during the 44 Day War with Azerbaijan and now from Iran to Russia to attack Ukraine or from Russia via Iran to allies like Venezuela (minval.az/news/124511371).

            “Strictly speaking,” Nurani continues, “the use of the Caspian Sea in the Ukrainian war is not limited to this. From here, Russia launches Kalibr missiles at targets in Ukraine, and these are most often civilian targets. Even earlier, before the start of the Ukrainian war, targets in Syria were attacked from the Caspian Sea.”

            Moreover, “Ukraine is already openly striking Russian targets in the Caspian Sea. The base of the Red Banner Caspian Flotilla in Kaspiysk, Dagestan, was attacked by Ukrainian drones. Oil platforms in the Russian sector of the Caspian have repeatedly come under attack. Finally, there were also attacks on a Russian control ship in the Caspian.”

            And, he suggests, “it is even possible that tomorrow the US and its allies will enter the game. The issue of strikes on Iranian targets is on Washington's agenda” and “this means that the calls made in Aktau at the time of the signing of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea to ‘make the Caspian a sea of ​​peace and friendship’ have remained just calls.”

            Nurani concludes: “Russia, which is accustomed to considering the Caspian Sea almost its own internal body of water, like Ladoga or Baikal, openly uses the Caspian for military purposes. And this already seriously threatens the security of other Caspian states, with all the consequences that entails.”

            For background on the increasing military competition in the Caspian, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/07/three-distinct-blocs-among-caspian.html and the sources cited therein.

Putin's Russian World and Trump's MAGA Ideologies ‘Significantly Similar, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 18 – “Unfortunately,” Vladimir Pastukhov says, “we have reached the point where it is no longer possible to ignore the significant similarities between the political and philosophical foundations of the MAGA [Make America Great Again] ideology and the ideology of ‘the Russian World.”

            “Their general ideological principles coincide,” the Russian analyst based in London says. First, they “prioritize ‘national interests over ‘universal human values, in which they do not believe.” Second, both consider “ultra-conservative clerical principles as universal and the only acceptable ones” (t.me/v_pastukhov/1791 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/ideologii-maga-i-russkogo-mira-shodstvo-politiko-filosofskih-osnovanij).

            Moreover, third, “both view all other values as hostile and subject to eradication along with all media outlets which disseminate them.” Fourth, “both are inherently anti-democratic or rather democratic in the purely Leninist understanding of the world.” And fifth, “both are apologists for the right of force in both domestic and foreign policy.”

            According to Pastukhov, the Russian World and MAGA ideologies are aligned even more closely when it comes “to solving specific political problems” as the cases of Crimea and Greenland show. Both argue that they are faced with a problem created by others that they must solve. Both treat the territory in question as something artificial and hostile. And both see a military solution as justified historically and in terms of national interests.

            The Russian analyst says he wrote this to call attention to “the sad fact that the simultaneous dominance in both former superpowers of two ideologies with obviously similar nature can hardly be considered an historical accident,” that this situation isn’t going to “simply disappear” and that this is very much the case “when the sleep of reason produces monsters.”

Fake Charges of Extremism Powering Rise of Extremist Attitudes, Memorial Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 15 – The number of extremist actions in the North Caucasus has declined significantly over the last two decades, but fake charges of extremism by Russian law enforcement bodies to justify themselves and their budgets have helped to power the rise of extremist attitudes, especially among the young, Aleksandr Cherkasov says.

            That is because young people can see how unjust the authorities are being and are thus prepared to listen to radicals who criticism them, according to the Memorial society expert (kavkazr.com/a/igilovtsy-kadyrovtsy-i-molodezhj-aleksandr-cherkasov-o-borjbe-s-terrorizmom-na-severnom-kavkaze/33637182.html).

            Indeed, he suggests, the sense of injustice is a more powerful driver in this regard than poverty or anything else. As a result, many of those in the North Caucasus who adopt what might be called extremist attitudes come not from the poor and dispossessed but from wealthier and more powerful people, a pattern that adds to the seriousness of all this.  

            In response, as some of these people do turn to extremist actions, the Russian law enforcement bodies ramp up their efforts to bring extremist charges as well as increase the use of repressive force, thus putting the region on a dangerous spiral that won’t end until the authorities change their approach and could lead to an explosion.

            That pattern is compounded by three other developments, Cherkasov says. First, like the worst of their Soviet predecessors, many of the law enforcement agencies have decided that it is enough to find someone to be a member of a group to accuse him or her of extremism even if the individual charged has nothing to do with any extremist action.

            Second, the authorities are so ignorant of these individuals and groups that they often act as did prosecutors in Stalin’s time and combine groups that are completely at odds with other another, further compromising their charges. Thus, Stalin attacked a supposed union of mensheviks and monarchists; and Putin’s police do something analogous.

            And third – and this may be the most important and dangerous development Cherkasov points to – Russian siloviki today send their reports to Moscow rather than keep them locally, making it likely that the center will order attacks against groups it doesn’t understand and thus make the situation worse.

            In Stalin’s time, the Memorial expert says, all reports about extremism went to the center and that led to campaigns that rapidly got out of hand. Then, after his death, siloviki in the regions retained the reports and thus reduced that risk. But now under Putin, the siloviki have lost that power – and broader and more absurd attacks have again become likely.

Western Sanctions from 2014 Killed Off Russia’s Lunar Flight Program, Moscow Space Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 16 – Until 2014, Rusia had plans to fly men to the moon that were “even more advanced than those of China and the US,” Ivan Moiseyev says; but then, when Western sanctions were introduced as a result of Putin’s moves in Ukraine, the Russian space agency removed “almost all lunar elements” from Moscow’s space program.

            The reason was simple, the head of the Moscow Institute of State Policy says. The sanctions introduced after Putin seized Ukraine’s Crimea prevented the Russian space agency from getting most of the avionics needed for a flight to the moon; and once that became obvious, “almost all lunar elements were removed from the federal space program for 2016 to 2025” (svpressa.ru/science/article/499014/).

            For the time being, Russia can only watch as other countries make the kind of progress it can’t; and restarting a Russian lunar effort will be difficult and take time because the whole project has been suspended for so long.  Moiseyev doesn’t say why China, which produces its own avionics, isn’t providing them to its Russian ally.

Regional Elites Now Profiting from Immigrants Getting in the Way of Regulating of Even Closing Down ‘Multitude’ of Ethnic Enclaves across Russia, Kabanov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 17 – The Russian government has ordered the interior ministry, the FSB, and the economic development ministry to prepare a draft law to eliminate existing foreign ethnic enclaves and prevent the addition of more to what is already “a multitude” of such places operating outside the Russian legal space (garant.ru/products/ipo/prime/doc/413296322/).

            But this effort is currently being subverted by regional business and political elites who profit from the migrant workers and thus are willing to have such enclaves exist continue to exist or even grow in number and size, according to Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee (svpressa.ru/society/article/498962/).

            There have been some successes in shutting down or changing the nature of such enclaves, he says; but these are far too few. And if serious progress is going to be made, Moscow rather than regional officials are going to have to take control of the situation and override the latter who are happy to make money and denounce opposition to the enclaves as “xenophobic.”

            Up to now, the Russian authorities have failed to define just what an ethnic enclave is and have issued decrees, policy statements and even laws that act as if the task is primarily to prevent such enclaves from emerging, Kabanov says, when in fact everyone knows that there are a lot of them across the country and taking control of them must be a priority task.

            That will require the regions to change their approach and limit the attractiveness of their territories to foreign workers and to work hard to control those who are already present. If the regions don’t do that quickly, the anti-corruption chief says, then Moscow including the FSB must intervene against them.

            This is perhaps the clearest indication yet that the Kremlin plans to expand its anti-immigration effort and use it as a way to clean house in those regions and republics where elites have welcomed and continue to welcome migrant labor. 

Moscow's Plan to Boost Number of Doctors across Russia Won't Work Quantitatively or Qualitatively, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 15 – Since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine, the Kremlin does not see improving the health care of the Russian population as a priority; and the steps it has taken in this sector only give the impression that it is does, an impression that will quickly dissipate, Russian healthcare experts say.

            The new law that will require graduates of medical schools to go where they are assigned for three years will do little good and may even do harm, these experts say. On the one hand, the new doctors will be assigned to regions rather than smaller areas and so will concentrate in the capital cities there. And on the other, they won’t be supervised and trained as the law claims (regaspect.info/2026/01/15/goryachka-vmesto-strategii/).

            The additional doctors may allow officials to claim that they are addressing the shortage of medical workers, but in fact, in many places throughout the country and in numerous fields, that won’t happen both because people outside of the regions won’t get any more doctors and nurses who will then leave the profession and because those in the regions won’t get well-trained medical staff.

            Because of the commercialization of medical education in Russia since 1991, many graduates don’t have the skills they need and require close supervision to become good doctors and nurses. But the government is doing nothing to improve instruction at medical schools or to ensure that graduates will have much chance of getting the ongoing training they’ll need.

            This will soon be apparent even to even those who are currently enthusiastic about the new law because either they won’t have the doctors they need or the doctors available won’t have the skills needed to treat them adequately, those with whom the Regional Aspects portal spoke say. 

Suleymenov Came to Baku during Black January and then Told Moscow that Soviet Forces in Azerbaijan had Acted Like Fascists

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 15 – As the anniversary of Black January approaches, Olzhas Suleymenov, a prominent Kazakh poet and activist, has published a brief memoir of his visit to Baku at that time in which he recalls his subsequent statement to a closed meeting of the USSR Supreme Soviet that the forces Moscow had sent to crush the Azerbaijanis had acted like fascists.

            In Novaya Gazeta v Kazakhstane, Suleymenov says he was in Moscow for a meeting of the Supreme Soviet and had become very ill. Nonetheless when he received a call from an Azerbaijani friend describing what was happening in Baku and asking him to come, he could not . He camerefuse (novgaz.com/index.php/2-news/4106-январь-в-баку).

            Initially, he hoped to use the good offices of the Azerbaijani SSR Permanent Representation in Moscow to somehow get a flight – all regular ones had been cancelled – but crowds there blocked him. Then he turned to the military and using his Supreme Soviet membership got on a Soviet air force plane, arriving late on the second night of the attacks.

            After some difficulties in getting to his hotel, he was visited by among others, Abulfaz Aliyev, a philologist and Arabist who became better known under the pseudonym Elchibey when he became leader of the Azerbaijani Popular Front. He visited Suleymenov to tell him what was happening and to get protection against arrest given that the Soviets blamed him for the events.

            Because of his status as a Supreme Soviet deputy, he was able to meet both with the representatives of Soviet power there, including Yevgeny Primakov, then head of the upper house of the Soviet parliament, and defense minister Dmitry Yazov, on the one hand, and Azerbaijani activists and especially print workers, on the other.

            He expressed his horror about what was happening to the former and called on the latter to resume publishing their newspapers and journals so that Azerbaijanis and then the world would know what was happening. They did so and that helped calm the situation, Suleymenov suggests.

            Later in Moscow, he recalls, “speaking at a closed session of the Supreme Soviet, I openly spoke about what I had seen and called the actions of the tank group fascist,” thus becoming one of the first in the USSR to equate what the Soviet leadership was doing in the last decade of power with what the Nazis had done in the 1930s and 1940s.

Polygamy Widespread in North Caucasus Now Mostly Involving Men with Money and Power

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 14 – In traditional pre-Islamic in the North Caucasus, polygamy was practiced primarily in order to ensure that there would be a male offspring to take over the leadership of the family. Such practices were sanctioned by the Koran’s support for polygamy as long as certain conditions were observed that Islamic law suggested were almost impossible.

            Now, however, polygamy is being practiced in the North Caucasus by men who have the money or the power to engage in it, a practice that has led to the saying there that “the first wife is for household chores,” that is taking care of children, while “the second is for the man himself.”

            And it continues in this modernized form which in many ways leaves many of the women involved with fewer rights and protections than their predecessors had given that the Russian state bans polygamy and that second, third and even fourth marriages are conducted by the religious authorities and have no legal standing as far as the government is concerned.

            Wealthy and powerful men routinely seek to have a second wife – third and fourth wives are rare – including Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov who is known to have four wives and perhaps as many as ten concubines (proekt.media/guide/vertical-ramzan-kadyrov/) and Ingushetia’s Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov who is widely reported to have a second wife.

            The issue periodically attracts attention due to the efforts of human rights groups and calls by secular and religious authorities in the North Caucasus to legalize the practice. But in the last few months, there has been an explosion of discussions about it because of a clip posted online of the behavior of a first wife  at the marriage of her husband to a second.

            That discussion has become so heated that it has prompted two media outlets in the region to prepare a report on the tradition of polygamy in the North Caucasus and the forms it has  taken now (regaspect.info/2026/01/14/pervaya-zhena-dlya-byta-vtoraya-dlya-sebya/nd fortanga.org/2026/01/pervaya-zhena-dlya-byta-vtoraya-dlya-sebya-kak-ne-menyaetsya-institut-mnogozhenstva-na-severnom-kavkaze/).

            The report says that supporters of polygamy argue that “you cannot forbid what Allah has permitted” but typically ignore that “within Islamic law, permission for polygamy comes with strict restrictions: a man is obligated to provide each of his wives with equal financial support and ensure that none of them experiences injustice or deprivation.”

            “If a new wife does not wish to live under the same root with the first,” Islamic law says, “the husband is required to provide her with separate housing; and the care, attention and time devoted to each wife must be distributed as equally as possible,” something few can do and that Islam specifies “monography is preferable if a man doubts his ability to treat his spouses equally.

            But after the Soviets and then the Russians banned polygamy, that rarely is the case because the first wife is usually married in government offices and thus has rights under state law while the second, third, or fourth, is married only by religious officials and thus cannot defend herself if things go wrong.

            Men in the North Caucasus exploit this, “especially the Vainakhs” who include the Chechens and Ingush,” and “the number of wives is directly linked to perceptions of power and status with multiple wives being a symbol of control, authority and social respect” and a sign of “an unwillingness to limit oneself and instead to have it all,” the report says.

            Few women want to be a second or third wife, the report continues; but because “marriage is a key social marker of a woman’s ‘value’ and an unmarried woman is perceived to be more vulnerable than a married one … the fear of being left unmarried is stronger than ideological or personal objections” and “becoming a second wife is a survival strategy.”

SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Calls Ecumenical Patriarchate ‘the Anti-Christ’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 16 – The SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, has called Bartholemew, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople “the anti-Christ,” a British agent, and someone who is working to undermine the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine, the Baltic Countries, and the Balkans.

            In a press release (svr.gov.ru/smi/2026/01/konstantinopolskiy-patriarkh-varfolomey-antikhrist-v-ryase.htm), which does not appear to have been coordinated with the ROC MP (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/01/16/svr-nashla-antikhrista-eto-patriarkh), the SVR cites not Russian law or evidence for its conclusions but rather a verse from the Bible.

            Both the Ecumenical Patriarchate and its allies have rejected the charges which embarrass the ROC MP more than anyone else (ec-patr.org/anakoinosi-schetika-me-tin-dilosi-ross/ and rfi.fr/ru/европа/20260115-антихрист-в-странах-балтии-реакции-на-заявление-российской-свр-о-константинопольском-патриархе).

            On the one hand, the SVR’s suggestion that the Ecumenical Patriarchate is an agent of British intelligence calls attention to the ways in which Moscow has routinely used Orthodox priests abroad to support its intelligence operations, with Britain rather than the US being chosen so as not to attack Donald Trump.

            And on the other hand, by putting out such a statement, the SVR has shown that in Moscow’s opinion, the ROC MP is to operate as a surrogate for the Russian state but that Orthodox churches elsewhere are supposed to remain loyal to the Russian church rather than to the laws and traditions of their own countries.

            That may be how the ROC MP has to operate given Kremlin demands, but it is not something the Russian church benefits from by proclaiming it as openly as the Russian intelligence service now has. 

 

Western Sanctions Force Russia’s Northern Shipping Company to Seek Bankruptcy Protection via Russian Courts

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 14 -- Russia’s venerable Northern Shipping Company has announced its intention to seek bankruptcy protections because of the difficult financial situation it finds itself in as a result of Western sanctions imposed in 2022 and the inability of the company’s ships to enter the harbors of Western nations.

            The company has chosen bankruptcy so as to protect its remaining assets while it reorganizes rather than being compelled to sell off portions of the company to meet its obligations (ru.thebarentsobserver.com/severnoe-morskoe-parohodstvo-obavilo-o-nacale-procedury-bankrotstva/443455).

            What Russia’s Northern Shipping Company is doing not only reflects one of the ways in which sanctions imposed because of Putin’s launching of his expanded war in Ukraine but also represents an approach that other victims of Western sanctions will probably employ, using Russian courts as a last line of defense of their assets.

In Response to Putin’s Failure to Aid Regimes in Venezuela and Iran, Officials Close to the Kremlin Complain that ‘Strong Countries Don’t Treat Allies like This’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 14 – Three officials close to the Russian leadership have complained to the Meduza news agency about Putin’s failure to respond vigorously to US actions against Russia’s allies Venezuela and Iran, declaring that “strong countries don’t treat allies like this,” a view likely shared by other members of the Moscow elite.

            They and others concede that Putin does not want to pick a fight with US President Donal Trump just now because of the direction talks about Ukraine are going (meduza.io/feature/2026/01/14/rossiya-nikak-ne-podderzhala-svoih-partnerov-venesuelu-i-iran-vo-vremya-obostreniya-konflikta-s-ssha-chto-ob-etom-dumayut-rossiyskie-chinovniki).

            But the three suggest that they fear not only that Putin’s silence on Venezuela and Iran and also on the US moves against Russian ships sends a message that Russia is weak and will make it even more difficult for Moscow to retain the declining number of countries that it now counts as allies or to acquire more. 

            One of the three, a staffer in the presidential envoy’s office in Russia’s Central Federal District said that he didn’t expect Trump to act in the case of Venezuela but originally expected that Moscow would respond if the American’s moved given that Caracas has been a close ally of Moscow, especially given statements saying that the Russian government would do so.

            That there was no Russian response, he suggested in comments to Meduza shows that “there are simply no resources for a response” by the Russian government. All of its resources at present “are tied up in the special military operation” in Ukraine. 

Russians Facing the Collapse of Communal Services for Prolonged Periods are Now Working on Their Own to Address this Problem

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 13 – Many observers in Moscow and the West have focused on whether the mounting utility problems Russians now face will prompt them to protest and otherwise challenge the government (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/01/utilities-problems-in-russia-wont-spark.html).

            But in doing so, they have neglected another development that could prove almost as difficult for the Kremlin to cope with: the propensity of Russians in places where the outages have been long and extensive to try to work together independently of a government bureaucracy that is unwilling or unable to help.

            Russians who have taken part in such cooperative activities are likely to look at the Russian bureaucracy at all levels differently than they did before and either ignore it or make more demands upon it in response, either of which will represent a different but potentially serious challenge to the bureaucracy in Putin’s Russia.

            That makes a report in the Horizontal Russia news agency about how residents in Belgorod after losing light, heat, and water as a result of Ukrainian drone attacks just before the new year came together to try to solve the problem after officials failed to respond quickly enough (semnasem.org/articles/2026/01/13/belgorod-blekaut).

            Russian bureaucrats are probably likely to view such help as useful in the short run because it prevents the problems with infrastructure prompting Russians from protesting. But over the longer haul, this experience of cooperation may be a bigger threat to a regime which rests in large measure on the radical atomization of the population.

            That is because cooperation among citizens in one area can often be a school in which those who take part learn to engage in cooperation in other areas, a slow process perhaps but one that will help transform the population and could lead it to demand an entirely different relationship with the powers that be.

 

Many Demobilized Veterans of Putin’s War are Returning to Fight Again in Russian Army in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 15 – Despite Putin’s promises to make veterans of his war in Ukraine Russia’s new elite and to ensure that all of them find a place after demobilization, many veterans after only a few weeks or months are signing military contracts and returning to Russian units in Ukraine.

            The exact numbers of men who have done so have not been published, but a human rights ombudsman in Sverdlovsk Oblast says that approximately half of Russian soldiers after demobilization are making a decision to return to military service as professional soldiers (svpressa.ru/war21/article/498733/).

            Official Russian media are playing up their decisions to do so as a display of patriotism that no other country can touch. There may be some cases in which such feelings do play a role. But in fact, both difficulties in finding work and fitting back  into civilian life and the appeal of large bonuses if such veterans sign up likely are more important factors.

            Joblessness among veterans is high (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/06/more-than-40-percent-of-russian.html).  Hostility to them among the civilian population because so many veterans are committing crimes (https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/08/putin-recruited-criminals-to-fight-in.html).   

And there certainly is no question that the Russian army is likely pleased to get those with training and experience back into service and views bonuses paid to them as opposed to bonuses paid to men without such backgrounds as particularly cost effective at a time of budgetary stringency and a shortage of manpower (svpressa.ru/war21/article/498733/).

Utilities Problems in Russia won’t Spark a Revolt but Response of Officials to Them Certainly Could, Rybakova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 13 – Growing problems with utilities like heat, electric and water this winter as tragic as they are at a time of heavy snowfalls and extremely low temperatures won’t spark a revolt in Russia, but the failure of officials to respond adequately, Tatyana Rybakova says, could do that and even create a revolutionary situation.

            The Moscow Times journalist says that month, there have been major outages in more than a dozen of Russia’s federal subjects. Those are angry, but they have long experience with such problems and thus aren’t likely to react (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/01/13/zhkh-kak-zastrelschik-revolyutsii-vozmuschayut-ne-avarii-a-reaktsiya-vlasti-a184316).

            But what can transform such widespread anger into a threat to the regime is the appearance that the powers that be aren’t prepared to do anything serious about these problems and are even prepared to blame residents rather than assume any responsibility, according to the Russian journalist.

            An increasing number of Russians now believe, she says, that “the authorities at all levels spit on the people, they are concerned only with their own needs which are very far from those which agitate ordinary citizens.” They’ll put up with this for a time, but if the regime doesn’t show a readiness to respond to these real problems, they won’t do so forever.

Putin’s War in Ukraine Radically Different from All of Russia’s Previous Wars, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 14 – With Putin’s war in Ukraine now having surpassed the length of the Soviet Union’s Great Fatherland War, it is long past time to recognize that the current conflict is radically different not only from that war but from all other wars Russia has been involved in throughout its history, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.

            The Russian commentator says that not doing so keeps Russians from recognizing just how serious an injury this conflict has inflicted on the country and also on how difficult the tasks Russians now face (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/01/14/zhiznyu-zhizn-poprav-ili-otritsanie-rossiiskoi-istorii-a184425).

            The first way in which Putin’s war in Ukraine is unlike any previous Russian war is that “for the first time in the history of Russia a prolonged war has begun for the destruction of a people who for a long time formed part of the state, the heir of which the present-day Kremlin has declared itself to be,” Inozemtsev says.

            The second key difference is that the current war is “in fact the first attempt to define Russia not as a national but as a nazi state … fighting not only and not so much for territory as for the destruction of the Ukrainian people and Ukrainian culture, which is exactly what the nazis of the 20^th century proclaimed as their goal and attempted to achieve.”

            The third difference is that “Putin in the course of the war he began has been able to achieve something which was never observed in the history of Russia before” – raising an army on a commercial basis rather than on the basis of the authority of the state or more generally Russian patriotism.

            The fourth is that “in striving to construct and expand his insane state, Putin has carried out fantastic changes in the organization and fate of such a ‘specifically Russian’ institute as the Orthodox Church,” transforming it into an organization more prepared to follow the implications of what the Kremlin is doing than the Kremlin itself yet is.

            And the fifth, Inozemtsev says, is that in the course of the war, “Putin has been able to radically delegitimize his opponents, the overwhelming majority of whom are ‘tainted’ by collaboration with the regime” and unwilling or unable to take a tough stand against the Kremlin leader’s central policy, the war in Ukraine.

            Most commentaries since Putin’s war passed the length of the Great Fatherland War, the Russian writer says, have been about the supposed “weakness and inadequacy of the Putin regime” because the Kremlin leader hasn’t been able to achieve anything like the victory that the Soviet Union did between 1941 and 1945.

“I would like to agree with this point of view,” Inozemtsev says; “but, alas, I consider it completely irrelevant.”

The reality is this: “Putin’s war has reshaped Russian society far more radically than did the Great Patriotic War.” His aggression in Ukraine “has definitively reversed the concepts of good and evil,” left a state from which “the concept of law has completely disappeared,” and elevated above everything the ideas of relativism.”

In so doing for such a long time, Inozemtsev continues, “Putin’s system has proven its unprecedented viability,” given that “it is unlikely any country previously European in its history or mentality could continue such a senseless slaughter for so long and with such unimpressive results.”

Today, “we do not know how long the Ukrainian people will have to suffer from Russian aggression or how much the scope of the current conflict will expand in the future. But it is certainly time” to recognize how different this war is from others in Russia’s history and how difficult it will be to recover from these changes,” Inozemtsev concludes.

Solovyev’s Call for Using Force Against Central Asia and Armenia if They Don’t Bow to Moscow’s Will Sparks Outrage

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 15 – On January 11, Vladimir Solovyov, perhaps Moscow’s most prominent pro-Putin and pro-war television commentator, said that Moscow should launch “special military operations” like the one it is already carrying out in Ukraine against Central Asian countries and Armenia if they do not agree to Moscow’s demands.

            He declared that what happens in “our Asia” and Armenia is far more important to Moscow than what happens in Venezuela, that international law is dead, that Russia should not give a damn about the reaction of European countries, and that it should even expand its efforts to defeat Ukraine and bring Ukraine to heal (nashaniva.com/en/385446).

            Not surprisingly, his words have outrage in these countries and prompted their governments to raise the issue with Moscow which sought to calm the situation by suggesting Solovyev’s words were only his “personal opinion” (eadaily.com/ru/news/2026/01/13/solovyov-ne-zrya-zhyog-napalmom-govorya-o-provedenii-svo-v-ca-i-zakavkaze-baraeva, novgaz.com/index.php/2-news/4103-своловьёв-live, timesca.com/russian-tv-hosts-talk-of-military-operations-in-central-asia-triggers-backlash-in-uzbekistan/ and minval.az/news/124510743).

            While many analysts have suggested that Solovyev, known for his extremist language, was simply responding with these words to the American moves in Venezuela and against Russian shipping, others noted that he is so close to the Kremlin that his threats are likely designed to intimidate the non-Russians and prepare Russians for new “special operations.”

            However that may be, what Solovyev has said is already generating a backlash, further deepening the divide between Russia and its neighbors and making it less likely that Moscow will be able to get its way with them however the war in Ukraine turns out (caliber.az/post/konsolidaciya-centralnoaziatskih-stran-sposobna-otrezvit-soloveva).

Moscow Radically Expands Categories of Russians who Can Be Subjected to Forcible Psychiatric Treatment

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 13 – In Soviet times, Moscow became notorious for its use of punitive psychiatry against dissidents, a practice that the Putin regime has revived. But now the Kremlin is going even further and declaring in legislation that Russians in many employment categories can be sent for forced psychiatric evaluation and treatment at their bosses’ whim.

            According to a recently adopted law, as of March 1, teachers, drivers, police, and restaurant workers can be sent against their will to psychiatric prison hospitals for evaluation and treatment. Experts say that this could open the way for any Russian to be so incarcerated and forcibly treated (svpressa.ru/society/article/498415/).

            The Russian authorities have been moving in this Orwellian direction for months, observers say; but now employers are likely to feel that they can send anyone to such facilities for forcible treatment, all the more so because the new law does not place any restrictions on the kind of actions or illnesses that supposedly justify that.

            Because of the shortage of beds in such facilities, the actual number of Russians who will become direct victims of this new policy is likely to be small; but its role as a means of intimidation of employees is likely to be enormous given that soon almost any worker can be sent there if his bosses so choose, actions that the courts are unlikely to block. 

Ingush Plan to Give Returning Veterans Land Likely to Spark Unrest in that North Caucasus Republic

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 12 – Many are worried about how returning veterans will act and the likelihood that they will spark a crime wave. But a plan by the Ingush government to give land to veterans and their families has the potential to do more than that and to trigger serious social and even political conflicts.

            Land in the Russian Federation’s smallest republic (except for the two capitals) has always been in short supply given the burgeoning population and contributed not just to conflicts among those with land and those without but also contributed to the rise of unrest as the losers blame the winners and seek to redress what they see as an unjust imbalance.

            Consequently, Ingush Republic head Mahmud-Ali Kalimatov’s announcement that he has already handed out more than 800 land parcels to veterans and their families and plans to distribute even more carries with it the risk that conflicts over land ownership, always a feature there, will intensify (fortanga.org/2026/01/v-ingushetii-semi-uchastnikov-vojny-v-ukraine-besplatno-poluchili-bolee-800-zemelnyh-uchastkov/).

            If as seems likely other republic governments in the land-short republics of the North Caucasus follow his lead, it is a virtual certainty that such actions will in one or more places lead to the kind of clashes that will fuel a new round of violence and unrest by people who may feel as many veterans now do untouchable by Russian law enforcement personnel. 

Because Putin’s War in Ukraine is Longer than Stalin’s Great Fatherland War, Kremlin Propagandists have Been Forced to Change Their Line, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 13 – Until recently, Kremlin propagandists routinely drew parallels between Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine and the Great Fatherland War as Soviet participation in World War II is called, Abbas Gallyamov says. But now that Putin’s war is longer than Stalin’s, his propagandists have had to “radically change their approach.”

            If until this week, the propagandists liked to draw this parallel to argue that “the current war is being waged against the same enemy ‘our grandfathers fought against,” the former Putin speechwriter and now prominent Putin critic says. Therefore, the term “denazification” they used was no accident (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/9515).

            But now these same propagandists are “loudly proclaiming that ‘it’s foolish to compare’” the current war with that of the 1940s because “this is a completely different war.” And they even suggest comparisons with the Great Northern War or the Hundred Years War of centuries earlier.

            “As they say,” Gallyamov continues, “thank you for that.” After all, “the current events have nothing in common with the great Patriotic War;” and even more to the point, the earlier conflicts the propagandists are pointing to “were fought for crowns and territories, that is, they were imperialist and colonial wars.”

            By acknowledging this, the Kremlin has “at least temporarily been forced to stop abusing the memory of our grandfathers” and admitting perhaps more than it even recognizing about what Putin and his team are about.

Samara Oblast, a Predominantly Ethnic Russian Region, had Nearly Twice as Many Deaths as Births in 2025, Officials Acknowledge

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 13 – Rosstat is publishing ever less data on demographic trends, few of which are now positive in the Russian Federation, especially in overwhelmingly ethnic Russian areas. But occasionally regional officials do respond to queries from local deputies, and the numbers they do release call attention to just how bad the situation is.

            In Samara Oblast, Mikhail Abdalkin, a regional KPRF deputy, asked the local health ministry about the demographic situation in that overwhelmingly ethnic Russian region in 2025 (kasparovru.com/material.php?id=696604E9AB269&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook).

            The answers he got are deeply troubling. Last year, 16,958 people were born in Samara oblast, but 33,258 died, nearly twice as many; and life expectancy had fallen to 61. Despite that, the regional ministry, in response to Putin’s healthcare optimization program, plans to close 26 more medical facilities in the year ahead, cutbacks that will likely make these figures still worse.

            Samara residents say, Abdalkin says, that the closure of medical points has led to a decline in healthcare and more premature deaths, pointing on that ambulances come only with great delays and then often must travel for hours to get treatment, a situation that means many patients do not survive.

 

Word Russians Use Most Often Isn’t Russian but Borrowed from English, Moscow Institute Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 12 – The Moscow Institute of Russian Studies says that the word Russians use most often is “OK,” saying that Russians appear to like it because it is clear and unambiguous. But some Russian nationalists, including those in the Kremlin, may be unhappy because the word is not originally Russian but borrowed from English.

            Another reason that “OK” is so popular, experts at the institute say, is that it is short; and for many years, Russians have been drawn to the use of words and phrases that are extremely brief (ria.ru/20260110/slovo-2067067914.html and nazaccent.ru/content/45020-nazvano-samoe-upotrebimoe-slovo-v-russkom-yazyke/).

            Perhaps because “OK” doesn’t have the ideologically correct Russian origin, none of the institutions that named words of the year at the end of 2025 identified it as such. Instead, they reported that words deserving that honor included anxiety, victory and birthrate (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/12/russian-governments-word-of-year-is.html).

Pskov Governor Suggests Lack of Heat in Region’s Homes May be Result of ‘Sabotage’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 11 – After residents of a village suffering from a lack of heat complained, Pskov Governor Mikhail Vedernikov promised “a thorough investigation” and suggested that among the possible causes of this disaster are “criminal negligence,” “incompetence,” and “sabotage” (using the Russian word often translated as “wrecking.”

            He is the first but likely won’t be the last Russian regional head to revive what was typically the explanation for any problems in Stalin’s time (echofm.online/news/pskovskij-gubernator-posle-zhaloby-zhitelej-zamerzayushhego-posyolka-nazval-vreditelstvo-sredi-vozmozhnyh-prichin-otsutstviya-tepla).

            In fact, the lack of heat thousands of Russians across the country are now suffering from almost certainly are the result of the failure of the Russian government to repair and replace aging infrastructure. But suggesting that there are “wreckers” about, exactly what the Soviet state would have said in Stalin’s time, may be as good a way as any to distract them.  

            But doing so comes with a risk: the use of this loaded term will remind everyone in that region and elsewhere of just how far the Putin regime has gone in reviving the totalitarianism of Stalin’s time when as in Mussolini’s Italy the ruler is always right and problems are the work of criminal “wreckers.” 

Russia’s Federal Subjects have Cut Back or Stopped Publishing Statistics at Different Times than Moscow or than Each Other, 'Sibirsky Ekspress' Says

Paul Goble

Staunton, Jan. 11 – Many likely assume that the governments of Russia’s federal subjects have followed in lockstep Moscow’s decisions to reduce or end the publication of key statistics as was typically the case in Soviet times. But that is not the case now. Many republic, kray and oblast officials have varied their timing not only with Moscow’s moves but with each other.

These decisions haven’t been announced, but they have become clear in an article in the Sibirsky Ekspress telegram channel on crime in various parts of Russia east of the Urals (t.me/Sib_EXpress/69812 reposted at echofm.online/news/v-tyve-buryatii-i-hakasii-rezko-vyroslo-chislo-ubijstv).

In addition to publishing details on differences in crime among them, the telegram channel reports that “far from all Siberian procuracies publish relatively detailed statistics on crime or do so at the same time as one another or at the same time that central officials have stopped publishing such statistics.

Novosibirsk Oblast issued the last crime statistics in May 2025. Omsk did so in July of htat year. But Tomsk Oblast continued to put out statistics on crime through September, although it did not provide comparisons with last year or any data at all on crime rates in previous years.

In the Kuzbass, however, the last crime reports are dated 2023 and the Transbaikal Kray stopped issuing data in 2020.  The telegram channel provides official sources for each of these events. It also points out that Moscow stopped reporting new crime data in January 2023, something that means some federal subjects did so before Moscow and some afterward.

This pattern is critically important for at least two reasons. On the one hand, it is an indication that in something as important as crime data, Moscow is exercising less tight control over how the regional governments handle things. That raises some important questions about the Kremlin’s control of these governments.

And on the other, it suggests that those who want to get data on issues the central Russian authorities have stopped publishing must not fail to look at the regions even if their primary concern is not the regions but Russia as a whole. Regional data will be only partial, but it will help fill a gap that all too many observers have accepted as definitive. 

Domestic Tourism in Russia Likely Fall Smaller and Growing Less Quickly than Moscow Routinely Claims

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 10 – Russians often say that their country is remarkable in that all of its domestic policies have led to the growth of tourism abroad while all of its foreign policies lead to more tourism within its borders (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/11/moscows-foreign-policy-always-promotes.html).

            And so it is no surprise that, as foreign travel has become more difficult following the launch of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, Moscow has promoted travel within the country and routinely declares that it has had enormous success and will continue to do so (e.g., readovka.news/news/236401/).

            But reports from Russia’s federal subjects suggest that such claims are problematic, sometimes for understandable reasons as in Krasnodar where tourism is down 15 percent because of oil spills last year (kavkaz-uzel.info/articles/419811) and perhaps more generally because of statistical sleight of hand.

            Writing in The Siberian Economist, journalist Artyom Aleksandrov says that residents of Kamchatka have long assumed they are experiencing a tourist boom because of Moscow’s claims but the facts on the ground are likely otherwise given that no reliable numbers about tourism are being released (sibmix.com/?doc=19417).

            According to the Kamchatka authorities, the number of tourists coming to Kamchatka has grown from approximately 240,000 in 2019 to over 300,000 in 2021 and to some 800,000 last year. “Formally,” Aleksandrov says, “all these data are correct – if one considers anyone who flies to Kamchatka to be a tourist.”

            These figures in fact reflect all the passengers handled by Kamchatka’s main airport who have not immediately flown on to other destinations, he continues; but they include many people who are coming or going to the region for other than touristic reasons, including businessmen and officials and local people travelling to other federal subjects.

            The Russian emergency situations ministry which tracks people who are visiting the kind of sites tourists do come to Kamchatka to see gives figures vastly lower because it doesn’t count the other categories that Kamchatka officials and likely Moscow officials speaking about the growth of domestic tourism include as well.

            Aleksandrov does not speculate as to how widespread this form of self-congratulatory fabrication of data is in Russia; but it is likely to be found in many places – and that in turn makes the summary numbers claimed in Moscow almost certainly wildly inflated and quite incorrect.