Turkmenistan Announces Plans to Build Its Own Patrol Boats for Caspian Duty

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 28 – Of all the Caspian littoral states, Turkmenistan has attracted the least attention for efforts to build a fleet to protect its ports, coastal waters, and offshore oil and gas wells. But with the Israeli attack on the Iranian port last week, that is certainly going to change; and Ashgabat has taken a noteworthy step.

            Turkmenistan’s Şanly mekan company, which has produced yachts and small fishing vessels in the past, has announced that it will be building patrol boats almost certainly for use by the government to defend Ashgabat’s interests on the Caspian (httpscasp-geo.ru/turkmenskaya-kompaniya-planiruet-proizvodstvo-patrulnyh-katerov/).

            After a slow start reflecting its self-isolating policy of neutrality, Turkmenistan in 2020-2021 began to build up its shipping capacity on the Caspian, which included only some 20 merchant ships and 16 naval vessels, many inherited from Soviet times  (turkic.world/en/articles/turkmenistan/283953 and jamestown.org/program/russias-caspian-flotilla-no-longer-only-force-that-matters-there/).

            Last year, Ashgabat contracted with a Dutch company to modernize its Caspian port of Turkmenbashi; and it has asked South Korean yards to build more ships for its fleet (casp-geo.ru/kompaniya-van-oord-gotova-k-modernizatsii-porta-turkmenbashi/ and casp-geo.ru/turkmeniya-i-koreya-rasshiryayut-sotrudnichestvo-v-sudostroenii/).

            Now that Turkmenistan is going to build at least some ships on its own, that will make Ashgabat a more credible force on the Caspian and at the very least mean that Turkmenistan’s navy and merchant marine should no longer be ignored in any discussion of the balance of forces on that body of water. 

Even Before Becoming Veterans, Russian Soldiers Increasingly Engage in Violent Crimes against Civilians, ‘Vot-Tak’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – Many Russians are terrified that veterans returning from fighting in Putin’s war in Ukraine will spark a serious rise in crime. They have good reason to be worried to judge from the results of a study of crimes committed by Russian soldiers still in uniform that has been conducted by Vot-Tak TV.

            Russian soldiers in Ukraine and even in units stationed elsewhere “kill, rape, and rob Russians, often outside the zone of military actions,” the study says; and it notes the most explosive growth in the number of such crimes took place in 2025 (vot-tak.tv/92314740/territoriya-bezzakoniya-prestupleniya-rossiyskikh-voennykh).

            During last year, military courts tried 352 soldiers for murder, “a third more than a year earlier,” Vot-Tak TV says. Relatively few of the crimes involved soldiers killing other soldiers – less than 20 percent – but rather soldiers killing friends, acquaintances or people they happen to encounter.

            The number of murder charges brought in military courts against Russian soldiers was not only 1.5 times as large as in 2024 but 16 times more than in 2022, the year when Putin launched his expanded war against Ukraine. For the period since then, military courts have brough 729 cases against Russian soldiers for murder.

            These cases cannot be explained, the investigation says, by the increase in number of troops. That figure is only 1.5 times larger than the expansion of the Russian army as a whole, a figure by the increases not only in murder but in rape and other serious crimes, including crimes against property.

            Up dramatically have been the number of Russian soldiers charged with rape. Since 2022, there have been 549 cases involving that charge. Of these, “no fewer than 312 were crimes against minors, including 249” – almost half – against persons who had not yet reached the age of 14.”

As horrific as all these figures are, they almost certainly understate the extent of crime among Russian soldiers, some of whom of course were convicted criminals before going to Ukraine and others have become corrupted by the violence that their officers either ignore or even promote.

The report says that “the entire zone of military action is a territory of illegality.” At least some of the soldiers who return to their homes after military service in Ukraine or even in the Russian military more generally are almost certainly going to continue to act in this way and harm other Russians. 

Impact of Ukrainian Drone Attack on Russia’s Oil Ports in Baltic Highlight Its Logistical Bottlenecks

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – The successful Ukrainian drone attacks on the two largest Russian oil ports on the Baltic Sea, Ust-Luga and Primorsk, highlight not only the skills of Ukrainian forces but the logistical bottlenecks that Moscow has taken remarkably few steps to overcome and thus has left itself at risk of such attacks.

            Despite Russia’s enormous size, these two ports had been handling almost half of Russia’s oil exports, a reflection not just of the absence of other ports that might do so but of rail, road and pipeline connections from the point of extraction to the point of export (nakanune.ru/articles/124515/).

            Few other industrialized countries and none anywhere near as large as the Russian Federation have so many bottlenecks of this kind and thus, in time of war, are at such enormous risk of serious losses from attacks on a relatively small number of places both within the country and as far as its ports are concerned.

            So far, instead of considering how it might improve its logistical network, the Kremlin has focused on trying to improve its anti-drone systems. But until it creates a denser and more complete logistical network, something that will take enormous time and money, Russia will remain far more vulnerable to attacks with consequences far greater than they’d be elsewhere.

CIS Remains Useful but is Less Important than It Used to Be, Kazakhstan Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – The Commonwealth of Independent States was created when the USSR disintegrated both to manage that process of peaceful divorce and to maintain cooperation among its members, two Kazakhstan experts say. It has achieved the first but is only one organization in which the countries involved interact.

            As a result, it is less important to them in general and to Kazakhstan in particular, political scientists Daniyar Ashimbayev and Talgat Kaliyev say, the CIS is less important than it was i but is still useful as one of the places in which former Soviet republics can interact (orda.kz/maksimalno-mirnyj-razvod-sostojalsja-zachem-kazahstanu-sejchas-nuzhno-sng-413117/).

            Ahimbayev stresses that the primary task of the CIS was to achieve a peaceful divorce of the post-Soviet republics to the maximum extent possible, and it has achieved that to a large degree. But it still represents one of several places where these countries can meet and talk about common problems.

            Kaliyev stresses that when the CIS emerged, its members were in most cases not involved in other multi-national groupings large or small. Now that has changed, and so the CIS does not have the unique role it did. That doesn’t mean it can’t play a useful role, but that role is now less than it was.

            Kazakhstan is able to use both the CIS and other organizations,” he says, because “to put it crudely we are in the Russian world, the Western world, the Chinese world, the Islamic world and the Turkic world,” all of which have their own organization. Consequently, the CIS now “isn’t some center of development but remains a working instrument.”

Targeted Government Financial Support and Outright Bans Won’t Reverse Collapse of Fertility Rate in Russia, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – The Russian government acts as if targeted financial support of potential parents and outright bans of abortion will be sufficient to reverse the country’s rapidly declining fertility rate, but Russian experts say that such actions are insufficient because they do not address deeper trends that would have to be overcome for birthrates to rise significantly.

            And one of them, Yan Vlasov, the vice president of the Russian Patients Union, says that unless officials recognize this and address these other causes rather than assuming money and bans are enough, the population of the country will fall by more than half to 70 million by mid-century (nakanune.ru/articles/124513/).

            He adds that any family policy must recognize that a family involves multiple generations and not just “he, she and the dog.” Moreover, it must recognize that the share of young people whose physical and/or psychological state does not allow them to have children is both large and growing in Russia.

            There are many reasons for this, Vlasov says. “In schools there are no standards for food and among school graduates only a third are health. Children now sit for hours with their computers and don’t move around, and without movement, their hormonal balance suffers.” All this needs to be addressed rather than giving money and banning abortions.

            A second specialist, Mariya Milyutina who works as a gynecologist and reproduction expert, adds that “the level of testosterone among young men [in Russia] now is lower than it was 40 years ago and the quality of activity of sperm ahs fallen by ten times over the last 50 years.”

            She says that has led to less sexual activity among young people than among their parents. Unwanted pregnancies are thus fewer, but so too are pregnancies overall. Instead, young people turn to computer games and the like and won’t have more children or even can’t at current levels of sexual activity.

            And a third expert, Moscow psychologist Yevgeniya Ogarkova says that socio-cultural factors are at work as well. Many young people find it far more difficult to cope with the challenges of adulthood especially under capitalism than their parents did and thus decide not to have children.

            Moreover, many young Russians grew up in single parent families and don’t have any desire to repeat the experience. Some 40 percent of children are being raised in single parent households and unless that changes, a large share of them will decide not to form families and raise children either.

 

            Improvements in the economy and especially toward a more predictable future will help, but what won’t, the experts are unanimous in saying, is banning abortions. They should be the woman’s choice, and they warn that if abortions are banned in medical facilities, women will still get them at risk to themselves and to the chance they will ever be able to have more children.

Desertions from Russian Army in Ukraine Doubled from 2024 to 2025, Kyiv Agency Says

Paul Goble 

            Staunton, Mar. 26 – Between 2024 and 2025, the desertion rate in the Russian army nearly doubled, with at least 70,000 or ten percent of the total Russian force in Ukraine having fled from their units, according to Ukraine’s OSINT Insight portal which provides estimates Kyiv officials have made about the state of the Russian invasion army.

            The Ukrainian source adds that Moscow convicted “more than 18,000 people” of desertion between February 2022 and August 2025, handing out sentences of as much as 13 years, although this judicial effort has not slowed the flow of deserters (severreal.org/a/nu-ya-i-vystrelil-v-sebya-dezertirov-iz-rossiyskoy-armii-stanovitsya-vse-bolshe/33710680.html).

               According to the Idite Lesom project which helps those who want to avoid service or escape from it, the volume of inquiries they have received increased by 30 percent at the start of this year, from what was already a high baseline if the OSINT figures are assumed to be at least roughly accurate.

            In reporting this Ukrainian finding, the SeverReal portal notes that “there are no precise figures on the total number of Russian military personnel who have fled abroad” but that “experts estimate the figure “to be in the low thousands.” Initially, many went to Kazakhstan, but now Armenia has become the center for those who have deserted and fled.

            Russian deserters in that country have set up an organization called The Hard Sign to help those who want to flee. It provides information on how to do it and supports those who have fled the war once they reach Armenia with finding housing and work and ensuring they have the necessary documentation.

Putin Signs Law Making It Far More Difficult to Bring Russian Soldiers who Perpetrate Sex Crimes to Justice and Blocking Sharing of Genetic Information with Foreign Researchers, Russian Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 26 – At the end of February, less than two months after the government introduced it, Vladimir Putin singed a law “on the state regulation in the field of genetic engineering activities,” a measure that Russian experts tell researchers from Radio Liberty’s The System project has several dangerous consequences.

            By making all genetic data to be deposited in a national genetics center classified, they say, it will allow the government to decide whether genetic information could be released in the cases of Russian soldiers charged with sex crimes, a restriction making their convictions far more difficult (svoboda.org/a/suverennaya-genetika-rossiyskaya-biologicheskaya-nauka-ambitsiozno-otmezhevalasj-ot-mirovoy/33716011.html).

            The experts also say that classifying and restricting access to genetic information in the way the new law does will limit the ability of Russian scholars to develop useful medicines and also their ability to share information about genetic research in the Russian Federation with foreigners, thus reducing the chance for cures of certain diseases.

            And they say that the use of classification in this area will feed the mistaken notion of Putin and many around him that the West is developing biological weapons that will be used against ethnic Russians. That is impossible as Russians lack a common genome, experts point out, and so the notion that Russia should counter something that isn’t being done is absurd.

            None of the experts doubts that Russia and other countries need to develop laws to ensure the safe handling of genetic data, but they are unanimous that the measure Putin rushed through the parliament and now has signed is not the way to go about it. Far more research and discussion is needed, or the results of such a law are likely to be dire indeed.

For First Time in Fifty Years, Migration Flows have Now Shifted Away from Russia’s Major Cities toward Smaller Ones, Moscow Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 26 – Russian geographers and economists speaking at a Moscow conference this week say that for the first time in almost half a century, migration flows have shifted away from major cities toward smaller ones, with more residents leaving the megalopolises and fewer from elsewhere moving into them.

            This process, Russian experts say, began during the covid pandemic when people not only worked at home but chose to move to their dachas outside of the major cities to avoid the danger of infection; but this trend is being exacerbated by drone attacks on high-rise apartment buildings in the largest cities.

            As reported by Anastasia Bashkatova, an economics expert at Nezavisimaya Gazeta,  ever more Russians see living in high rise apartments posing greater risks to themselves than living in single-family housing. There is more of the latter in smaller cities and so Russian urbanites are moving there (ng.ru/economics/2026-03-26/4_9462_concept.html).

            The largest beneficiaries of these concerns, real estate experts say, are not mid-sized cities far from Moscow or St. Petersburg but satellite cities located closer to the existing megalopolises. If the war in Ukraine continues this trend will likely continue as well, changing the economics of home ownership and reducing the still strong pull of the largest urban center.

            And that in turn means that Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s largest cities are going to have yet another set of consequences for Russia, including casting doubt on the growth of large cities at the expense of smaller ones, given that ever more Russians apparently aren’t prepared to take the risk of living in such high-density places anymore.

Moldova’s Exit from CIS Shows It is Becoming ‘an Anti-Russia’ like Ukraine, Kiselyov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 26 – Moldova’s decision to leave the Commonwealth of Independent States “symbolizes not simply its institutional break with the post-Soviet space but also a broader reorientation of the country which ever more frequently is acting like the model of an ‘anti-Russia’ offered by Ukraine,” Ilya Kiselyov says.

            The pro-Moscow Chisinau journalist says the Moldovan government has justified its exit by suggesting that the original values and principles of the CIS are being violated “above all by the Russian Federation” (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-03-26--vyhod-moldovy-iz-sng-etap-ee-prevraschenija-v-anti-rossiju-86689).

            “But behind this formula is hidden a profound transformation of the foreign policy course of Moldova itself” and its adoption of a position in which any ideas “different from Western ones are considered as undesirable or even dangerous,” Kiselyov continues in his attack on this decision.

            Kiselyov’s article mirrors this: He lists a variety of reasons why breaking with the CIS without any certainty of admission to the EU is likely to cause trouble and argues that Chisinau should  rethink what it is doing or at least proceed more cautiously lest it find itself in difficulties.

            But behind that at least superficially reasonable approach is his conclusion that if Moldova leaves the CIS, it will become “an anti-Russia” like Ukraine already is – are deceived by the ostensibly reasonableness of Kiselyov’s arguments on one level but also because some will fail to see that behind that is his insistence Moldova remain a member of the CIS – or else.

            That approach not only will drive Moldova out of the CIS even faster, but it is likely to have the same effect on the other remaining non-Russian countries that emerged following the collapse of the USSR, one more instance of Russian truculence and authoritarianism leading to exactly the opposite outcomes the Kremlin clearly hopes for. 

Kremlin Policies Ensure Veterans Returning from Putin’s War will Be a Far Larger Problem than the Afgantsy were a Generation Ago, Russian Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 27 – The Kremlin’s own policies regarding the Russian military in Ukraine and the handling of veterans of that conflict on their return home ensure that the veterans from Putin’s war will be a far larger problem than the Afgantsy were a generation ago, according to leading Russian specialists.

            Three of these are especially important, these experts believe. First of all, Moscow not only made service there all about money but recruited heavily from Russian prisons to fill the ranks, guaranteeing that criminal values and an obsession with cash will dominate the veterans (dw.com/ru/boevye-bratstva-veterany-svo-organizuutsa-v-opg/a-76571419).

            Second, Moscow has made it virtually impossible for employers to fire any veterans they do hire, a policy that is backfiring because most employers don’t want the problems that presents and thus aren’t hiring veterans in the first place, forcing an even larger percentage of them into or back into a life of crime.

            And third, Moscow must deal with the fact that few veterans fear new jail terms for any crimes they do commit, confident that they can always volunteer again to fight in Ukraine or in some other war Putin may start and see their sentences for any crimes commuted or even cancelled altogether.

            All these factors, not to mention the way in which the Kremlin is promoting veterans as the new elite and giving them special privileges such as priority entrance into higher educational institutions is deepening the divide between veterans and non-veterans and leading the former to look at the latter as their enemies and appropriate targets for attack.

            The Russian experts Deutsche Welle spoke with believe that this will lead Moscow to avoid allowing any single mass return of veterans lest that lead to an explosion. Instead, the Kremlin will likely try to organize the return of some while keeping others in the field either in Ukraine or in some other military action elsewhere.

            And to the extent that is so, Moscow’s growing fears about the impact of the returning veterans on Russian social and political society could quickly become a reason that the Putin regime will choose new targets for the use of its forces abroad – lest veterans of his war in Ukraine threaten Russia and himself.

Once Large and Active Ukrainian Diaspora in Russia Currently ‘Lost to Ukraine,’ Former Kyiv Diplomat Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 22 – Since 2010, Moscow has worked to suppress or take full control over all organizations in Russia involving Ukrainians as part of its effort to force members of that community to give up their language and identity or face the near certainty of repression and the inability to get and keep good jobs, a former Ukrainian diplomat who worked in Russia says.

            Speaking to Radio Liberty on condition of anonymity, he says that as a result of these Moscow actions, “the Ukrainian diaspora in Russia is lost for Ukraine” however much Kyiv might like to change that (svoboda.org/a/ukraintsam-opasno-vyskazyvatjsya-otkryto-ukrainskaya-diaspora-v-rossii/33711715.html).

            Moscow began by targeting organizations involved in political or even public life, banning their operation, driving activists into emigration, or in some cases even killing their leaders – and then replacing them with “puppet” groups that the FSB totally controlled even though they retained references to Ukrainians in their names.

            The survivors are now typically led by retired military officers who came from Ukraine in Soviet times, served in the Red Army, and then retired in the Russian Federation. They appear sufficiently Ukrainian to fool some in Russia as well as many in Ukraine and in western countries.

            But the greatest pressure against ethnic Ukrainians inside the Russian Federation came in 2018-2019, the diplomat says. At that time, many ethnic Ukrainians were informed that they would lose their jobs or at least any chance for advancement unless they gave up their Ukrainian citizenship and became ethnic Russians.

            Many of these people lined up at Ukrainian consulates to take the necessary steps, thus allowing Moscow to claim on the basis of the census in 2020-21 that the number of Ukrainians in Russia had fallen by more than half in the last decade, although it is likely many avoided identifying as Russians but were among the 11 percent not declaring a nationality at all.

            Irina Klyuchkovskaya, the director of Lviv’s International Institute of Education, Culture and Ties with the Diaspora, provides additional information on the trends the anonymous diplomat has talked about. She says that the Russian authorities have been successful in suppressing organized life of the Ukrainians inside Russia and of their use of Ukrainian.

            Russian oppression of ethnic Ukrainians, including in some cases the murder of their leaders, was “a test for the reaction both in Russia and in Ukraine and in the world,” she suggests. There wasn’t much of a reaction in any of these places, in part because Ukrainian organizations had ceased to trust one another given the FSB’s control of so many.

            The current situation of ethnic Ukrainians in Putin’s Russia is dire, but it isn’t necessarily irreversible. Many Ukrainians within the current borders of the Russian Federation retain a cultural identity even if they no longer speak their native language. If conditions in Russia change as a result of the war, the Ukrainian community in Russia almost certainly

Returning Ethnic Kazakhs Rather than Arriving or Departing Ethnic Russians Dominated Kazakhstan’s Migration Flows in 2025, Astana Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 26 – In 2025, 23,700 people moved to Kazakhstan from other countries while only 7600 left, according to Kazakhstan’s Bureau of National Statistics. More than half of those arriving were ethnic Kazakhs (12,900) while smaller numbers of Karakalpaks (1800) and Uzbeks (1700) were involved.

            As far as ethnic Russians are concerned, 3400 came to Kazakhstan for permanent residence while 4300 left, a major change from earlier decades. And ethnic Germans, another nation whose members left in large numbers, declined to 993 (spik.kz/2583-vneshnjaja-migracija-pogodu-delajut-kandasy-a-rossijskij-faktor-obnuljaetsja.html).

            This shift in which Kazakhs from abroad (the so-called Oralmane or Kandasy) set the weather by coming back rather than Russians and Germans represents a major change from the past, and it is a trend that the Kazakhstan government has tried to regulate more closely while opposition groups have called for an even more welcoming approach.

            According to Astana, 62,4 percent of the ethnic Kazakhs returning from abroad were from Uzbekistan last year, 20 percent were from China, 6.5 percent were from Turkmenistan, 5.1 percent were from Russia, 3.5 percent were from Mongolia, and 2.5 percent from all other countries combined.

            Both the arrival of ethnic Kazakhs from abroad and the declining departures of ethnic Russians and ethnic Germans from Kazakhstan reflect the ethnic sorting out that has been taking place across the former Soviet space. Most Russians and Germans who were in Kazakhstan earlier have left, and many Kazakhs living abroad are now returning.

            And what this means, of course, is the reintegration of ethnic Kazakhs from abroad is now a larger problem for Kazakhstan’s government and society than coping with the departure of ethnic Russians, however much it remains the case that outflows of the latter continue to attract more attention at least outside of Kazakhstan.

For First Time Since 1998, More than Half of Russians Don’t Attend Orthodox Church Services, Levada Center Poll Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 24 – For the first time since 1998, a majority (55 percent) of Russians say they don’t attend Orthodox Church services; and only 16 percent say they participate in such services several times a month, a Levada Center survey finds, a remarkable decline and one likely attributable to the Moscow Patriarchate’s servile support for Putin’s war in Ukraine.

            Sixty percent of men, 69 percent of people younger than 25, 59 percent with less education, people living in mid-sized cities, 62 percent of workers, and 71 percent of students don’t attend church at all; while 51 percent of women, 51 percent of those over 55, 61 percent of Muscovites, and higher shares of educated and well off do (levada.ru/2026/03/24/poseshhenie-religioznyh-sluzhb-v-fevrale-2026-goda/).

            Wars typically lead to an increase in church attendance as people try to make sense of what is going on; but in the case of the ROC MP, the reverse appears to be happening, largely because it appears the jingoism and the militarism of most but far from all priests and hierarchs is off-putting.

            Thus, yet another victim of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine may be the Moscow Patriarchate which he clearly views as one of his most important allies. The Levada Center survey did not explore how those no longer attending Orthodox services are finding spiritual solace, but it is likely that at least some are turning to other denominations.

Fewer from Abroad are Taking Russian Citizenship Now and More who Do So are Migrant Workers from Central Asia, Further Reducing Ethnic Russian Share of Country’s Population

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 24 – The number of people from abroad taking Russian citizenship has dropped from 691,000 in 2022 to 152,400 last year, Russian government statistics show; and a growing percentage of those who continue to do so are not ethnic Russians returning to their homeland but non-Russian migrants from Central Asia trying to protect their families.

            Prior to the beginning of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine, Moscow promoted the return of what it calls “compatriots” to their homeland, and it used these returnees to hide the demographic decline of its own population (nemoskva.net/2026/03/23/menshe-grazhdan-bolshe-shtrafov-interes-inostranczev-k-rossijskomu-grazhdanstvu-stremitelno-snizhaetsya/).

            Because most of these 600,000 to 700,000 people a year were ethnic Russians or at least Slavic, Moscow was also able to claim that the share of ethnic Russians in the population had not declined but if anything increased, something that pleased both the Kremlin and the increasing number of Russian nationalists in the population.

            But with the onset of the war in Ukraine, this source of immigration has rapidly declined both overall and in terms of its ethnic content.  According to Pavel Pryanikov, who edits the Tolkovatel telegram channel, ever more of those claiming Russian citizenship are not ethnic Russians but Muslims from Central Asia (svpressa.ru/society/news/508033/).

            That has happened, he suggests, because Moscow’s ever harsher policies toward migrants have made some of their number decide that the best course for themselves and their families is to take Russian citizenship. That has kept the number of people taking Russian citizenship from declining still further, but now that number includes many non-Russians as well.

            As a result, Russian statisticians will find it more difficult to continue to hide the obvious: the population of the Russian Federation is not only declining overall but the share of the ethnic Russian part of that population is declining as well – while the share of that population which is non-Russian is increasing, at least in part because of the Kremlin’s own policies.

 

Kremlin has Been Closing Psychiatric Clinics Even Though More than 20 Percent of Ukrainian War Veterans Need Treatment, Doctor Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 23 – Vladimir Putin’s healthcare “optimization” program, a euphemism for the closing of medical facilities across the country, has created a situation in which the Russian government does not have anything like the number of such facilities it needs for the rehabilitation of veterans of the war in Ukraine, Sergey Vetoshkin says.

            In Moscow alone, the psychiatrist says, the Putin regime has already shuttered 14 of the 17 psychiatric clinics which were open there before he seized Ukraine’s Crimea, creating in their place small “memory clinics” that are not capable of addressing the needs of the population there let alone the returning veterans (svpressa.ru/health/article/507734/).

            Given the estimated 20 percent of all veterans of the war who will need treatment, Vetoshkin says, there is no chance that they will get the support they need; and thus their problems will become the problems of Russian society as a whole, problems far greater than the veterans of the Afghan war (“the Afgantsy”) presented at the end of Soviet times.

Putin Using Notion of ‘Genocide of Soviet People’ to Present Russians as ‘a Messianic Nation' and Justify Rebuilding Empire, Khapayeva Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 25 – “The concept of ‘the genocide of the Soviet people’” is allowing Putin to portray that group “as a messianic nation, simultaneously both victor and victim” and to use that as a basis to argue that “the messianic sacrifice of one’s ancestors grants their descendants the exclusive right to determine the global political order, Dina Khapayeva says.

            As part of this claim, a Russian historian now at the University of Helsinki says, Moscow says “throughout history, Russia has sacrificed itself for the sake of humanity” and “finally saved civilization by defeating fascism,” leaving the door open “for all kinds of policies and above all attempts to restore the empire” (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/03/25/dyrokol-dlia-pamiati). 

            In a lengthy article, which deserves a more detailed summary than can be given here, Khapayeva provides a number of key arguments and even specific facts which in most cases have not received the attention they deserve or the discussion among Russians and students of Russia they merit.

            Among the most important of these are the following:

·       This effort is at odds with the definition of genocide provided by the UN in 1948. Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians were not killed because of their ethnicity but because of their actions. On the territory of the USSR, other groups like Jews, Roma, and those with mental illness were; but not the main components of “the Soviet people.”

·       Putin came to power without a clear ideology and fastened on the Soviet victory in World War II and Soviet losses there, using those historical events as Stalinists had before, as universal moral solvent to defend Stalin and to obscure the Soviet dictator’s crimes.

·       Putin began his operation to create “an artificial national amnesia” about the Stalinist past at the start of his time as president and this effort is now “entering its final stages” with the destruction of the Gulag Museum and the promotion of the concept of the Soviet people as a victim of a genocide. 90 of the 110 monuments to Stalin in Russia were erected in Putin’s time.

·       What Putin is doing also has its roots in the hypocritical position of Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin campaign which was not only partial but set the stage for discussions about what could be restored as opposed to what must not be.

·       Directly connected to the idea of “the genocide of the Soviet people” is “a new Orthodox post-Soviet aspect of re-Stalinization, the struggle for the canonization of Stalin,” something Putin has given a new impulse to by his talk about genocide.

Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine has Led Many Komis to Become More Attached to Their Language, Their Republic and Their National Identity, New Survey Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 26 – Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine since 2022 has led many Komis to become more attached to their language, their republic and their national identity, according to a necessarily unrepresentative survey of 30 members of that Finno-Ugric nationality carried out by the Komi Daily portal.

            One responded to the open-ended questions by saying that Putin’s move prompted him to re-think his relationship to his language, his republic and his national identity, the portal reports. Another wrote back that “after 2022, I began to value the fact that I am a Komi” (komidaily.com/2026/03/26/komi-ne-yazyk-suvenir/).

            In these responses, the portal said, Putin’s invasion has had a “direct” effect on Komis who are now revising their views about a civic Russian identity and now are trying to view “Komi not as ‘a region of Russia’ but as a space with its own history, culture and right to a separate voice.”

            Now, whenever anyone asks “where are you from?” one of the respondents said, “I want to respond not ‘from Russia’ but ‘from the Komi Republic.” Another said he was proud when he could say that the Komi Republic was among those regions which voted against the amendments to the Constitution in 2020.”

            The survey  also provides details on the experiences of its respondents about when they first felt shame about being Komi, how they overcame that feeling, and how they believe they should promote their language and identity in the future. Among the most interesting response was one suggesting the Komis should follow the course set by Tatarstan.

Ethnic Russian Hatred of Minorities at Home a Harbinger of Ultimate Ukrainian Victory, Kazakh Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 26 – Sometimes, the Kazak Altyn-Orda portal says, “a single short video speaks louder than thousands of analytic reports;” and it points to a clip that has gone viral on social media in which a Russian woman screams at a Tatar: “I hate you, you Tatars … soon my president, Vladimir Putin, will come and kick you all out.”

            According to the portal which tracks ethnic relations not only in Kazakhstan but in the Russian Federation as well, the woman’s words are “not merely an outburst of emtoions.” Hey are a symptom of deeper problems that will “hasten Russia’s defeat and strengthen Ukraine’s position” (altyn-orda.kz/nenavist-k-tataram-kak-prigovor-pochemu-takie-nastroeniya-vnutri-rossii-rabotayut-na-pobedu-vsu/).

            The Russian woman’s words, moreover, reflect “a conviction of one’s own exceptionalism and the perceived right to determine the fates of other peoples and a contempt for ‘smaller’ nations, for neighbors and for anyone who does not fit into the imperial model.” And that in turn is “a strategic blunder” of the greatest importance.

            “A war is not won by the army alone,” Altyn-Orda says; “it is won by society. And a society in which hatred becomes the norm begins to disintegrate from within because it loses the capacity for unity, for trust and for mobilizing toward the achievement of a shared future,” while Ukraine has shown just the opposite.

            In Russia, in contrast to Ukraine, internal tension is increasing: “national republics, ethnic groups, and distinct regions—all observe how they are treated. And videos featuring such remarks merely confirm the truth: the issue at hand is not equality, but a hierarchy—one that distinguishes between those who are on top and those who must be below them.”

“History teaches us that such systems cannot withstand prolonged strain. They fracture precisely at moments of crisis. Therefore, videos like this are not merely a scandal. They are a signal. It is a signal of a deep internal rift—of the fact that, beneath a veneer of ‘unity,’ lie hidden mistrust and mutual animosity.”

All this means that “time is working against such a model” and for the contrasting one in Ukraine, just one of the many reasons “why [the Ukrainian struggle] resonates so powerfully beyond Ukraine’s borders” even as Russian behavior alienates ever more of them at the very same time.

Russians Marry Later Now than in the Past and All Signs are That They will Marry Even Later in the Future Regardless of What Moscow Does, ‘To Be Precise’ Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 25 – Russians are now marrying approximately four years later than they did a little over a century ago, following with a certain lag the same pattern in most other countries and one that experts say shows that this trend will continue well into the future, the To Be Precise portal says.

            Vladimir Putin would like to reverse this trend in order to boost the birthrate, but he has not been able to slow let alone reverse this trend and he is also up against a fact of life that he doesn’t appear to take into consideration. Even those who marry earlier now have fewer children than their coevals earlier (tochno.st/materials/v-kakom-vozraste-rossiiane-zakliucaiut-brak).

            In 1897, Russian men entered into their first marriage at 24.2 years and Russian women at 21.4, the portal says. “By 2021, the age of marriage rose by 3.7 years in the case of both men and women. In Soviet times, most Russians followed the following pattern: complete school, get a job and then start a family. All those things are happening later now.

            According to To Be Precise, Putin has been making yet another mistake in his demographic calculations. He routinely talks about the need for Russians to follow the traditions of the peoples of the North Caucasus which he believes include early marriages and thus larger families.

            But in fact, the portal says, “four of the six republics of the North Caucasus are among the ten regions where people get married latest of all. These are Ingushetia, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachayevo-Cherkesiya. Moscow and St. Petersburg are also in this list of ten.

            One reason that the North Caucasus republics report older marriages is a statistical artifact. Rosstat doesn’t distinguish between registered and unregistered marriages, the portal says. But another reason is that marriages there are arranged by families and cost a lot, both of which delay marriages but don’t by themselves reduce fertility rates.

            The To Be Precise portal highlights something else that many do not yet factor in to their thinking. Since the end of imperial times, “the difference” in age at first marriage “between cities and villages has almost completely disappeared.” So suggestions that ruralizing Russians would lead to earlier marriages and higher birthrates are almost certainly without foundation.

            The most important conclusion the portal offers is that “marriage, the birth of children and sex are ever less connected with one another.” A major reason is that having children outside of marriage is less stigmatized in the past but having children within an early marriage is a quick path to poverty.

            In Russia as in other industrialized countries, “later marriage is the widespread choice of today’s generations,” something that reflects the requirements of modern economies for investment in human capital – “and consequently, a longer period of education and a later transition to adulthood.”

            “The processes can be reversed only briefly and at the cost of putting enormous pressure on society, according to the demographers with whom To Be Precise spoke. And states that engage in such practices are likely to find that their efforts will fail to achieve the outcomes they seek.

Failure of Russians to Take Care of Spaces around Where They Live has Multiple Causes, Semendayeva Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 19 – Visitors to Russia are frequently struck by how much energy Russians devote to taking care of the insides of their apartments or houses in contrast to how little they give to taking care of the land just outside their front doors, Mariya Semendyaeva points out.

            In fact, the journalist who runs the podcast “Russia Too” says there are multiple reasons for this pattern, one that has been in place for centureis and that sets Russia apart from other countries where people typically devote far more attention to taking care of the spaces beyond their homes than Russians do (cherta.media/interview/pochemu-v-rossii-stolko-razrukhi/).

            At the top of the list, she says, is Russia’s harsh and long-lasting winter climate. It is simply impossible to maintain spaces outside of one’s home and places that aren’t residences or places of business are not looked after and fall into ruin far more quickly than in places with more moderate climates.

            The second factor which plays a role in this arises from Russian history, she says. “For the greater part of that history, from the 16^th century until 1861 when serfdom was abolished, people lived in houses that did not belong to them and on land that was not their own … How could this fail to affect their attitude toward the surrounding land?”

“Then came the Revolution, giving rise to a multitude of displaced persons. Some remained in the villages, while others migrated to the cities,” Semendyaeva says. “The experience of communal living—so often depicted in satirical sketches—was, in reality, quite traumatic and born not of choice, but of dire necessity.”

She continues: “During that same period, old buildings and churches were dismantled, as people had no access to bricks and nowhere else to procure them. This, too, was a matter of infrastructure and cost. The Soviet government had different priorities: it preferred to pay an American engineer than to concern oneself with the housing needs of the populace.”

“Forcible collectivization also left its mark,” she says, and then “the next monstrous upheaval was the deportation of entire peoples.” All these things have contributed to a still powerful sense that “you own nothing in your surroundings and that your life is utterly unpredictable” – and that has led Russians to take less care of the land around them.

But these are far from the only factors at work, the journalist continues. Many Russians are poor, and they have long been accustomed to thinking that the state will take care of things outside their homes, an attitude the flows from both traditional deference and the attitudes the state itself seeks to inculcate.

Even Pro-War Z Bloggers Now Talking about ‘Pre-Revolutionary Situation’ in Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 3 – Over the last month, Ivan Filippov of the Vot-Tak TV says, ever more pro-war Z bloggers are talking about the possibility of a coup in Moscow now that they say Russia is in “a pre-revolutionary situation;” and some of them are planning to emigrate because life in Russia is becoming ever more repressive and victories at the front far between.

            In language that rivals or even exceeds that of self-identified opponents of the Kremlin, the TV journalist says, “’the passionate patriots’ in the most direct sense of the word do not see any indication that the situation could improve and instead think that there can be no doubt that it is going to get worse” (vot-tak.tv/92208231/z-rossiya-predrevolucionnaya-situatsiya).

            Filipov gives as an example the following observation by a member of the Dontstopwar channel: “Over the past few months, the country has been experiencing a very disturbing sense of a shift in direction. It feels like, instead of development, we've embarked on a course of total restrictions, and this can't be a simple coincidence. It feels like well-planned sabotage."

            Indeed, this Z blogger says, “Every new day brings either a new ban or a new piece of bad news. And the Z-community views each such event as a "link in a f**king chain"—as part of a conspiracy by some unknown enemies who have infiltrated every level of the Russian government and are now trying, with all their might, to ‘destabilize the country.’”

            The blogger gives as example of this “the Telegram ban, constant mobile internet outages in Moscow and major cities, the slaughter of farm animals in Siberia, new and new bans devised by the State Duma, the lack of significant progress on the front lines and any military victories, and, most importantly, the endless lies.”

            Many are not paying attention, he continues, because Russian television “which paints a picture of a blissful life in a country at peace, is lying. It only takes 30 seconds for television to report on the missile strike on Bryansk, and it's not even worth mentioning that veterinarians and security forces are forcibly taking cows from hapless farmers in Siberia.”

            Filippov gives a variety of other examples, but he stresses what may be the most important point: “Just like liberal publications, the Z authors raise the question: why can’t the powers simply speak with people in a human way by explaining and answering questions. Why does the system presuppose only two possible ways of interacting: lies or force?”

            Unlike most liberal commentators, the Z bloggers want the war to continue and are criticizing the Kremlin for its ineffectiveness and failure to achieve victory. But the fact that even supporters of Putin’s criminal war are now criticizing him and it and talking about “a revolutionary situation” certainly suggests that Putin is facing ever more difficult challenges.

Putin’s Stalinism Still Less Frightening than Repulsive But That May Soon Change, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 21 – What we are now watching in Moscow is something suggested by the Hindu religion, Vladimir Pastukhov says, “the transmigration of the Stalinist spirit into Putin-era laws.” So far, that development has been less frightening than repulsive; but it is entirely possible the situation will change for the worse.

            The latest sign that this is going on is “particularly striking,” the London-based Russian analyst says, and takes the form of draft legislation authorizing the Russian president to use armed force abroad if a Russian citizen is arrested there (t.me/v_pastukhov/1853# reposted at echofm.online/opinions/pereselenie-stalinskogo-duha-v-putinskie-zakony).

This measure serves as a means to legitimize Putin’s right to wage war against the entire world. That said, he cannot physically reach the *entire* world; otherwise, Russia would have been at war with America for the past twelve years over the Magnitsky Act.  But it is clearly intended to prepare for subversive activities against Europe.

            The timing of this step is “perfect,” Pastukhov says. Europe is holding firm in its support against the Russian invasion “while it retains the option to simply remain on the sidelines (the unwise scenario) or intensively prepare for future wars (the wise scenario),” neither of which “suits Moscow.”

            What the Kremlin leader will do, the analyst says, is to “seek to destabilize the situation, to attempt to leapfrog over Ukraine to ‘strike’ at Europe, both literally and figuratively.” Indeed, “unless he manages to engineer a ‘rest’ with the help of Trump …  he likely will try to ‘pounce’ on Europe before the latter can succeed in ‘smothering’ him with the Ukrainian cushion.”

            The latest draft bill before the Duma, a truly “paltry and laughable” action thus represents the clearest possible sign that Putin is “clearly preparing for just such a leap,” Pastukhov concludes.

Many Russians in Smaller Cities Unchanged from 2000 and in Some Ways Even Worse Now than in Soviet Times, Vladimirov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 20 – Lev Vladimirov, who writes regularly on the situation in his native city of Samara, says that the people there are essentially the same people they were 20 years ago, Soviet in mindset and behavior but even more prideful, angry and aggressive because they feel that they don’t have the overseers they did in Soviet times.

            According to him, they are “mindless, dull-witted, and ill-mannered. Angrily shoving one another inside nearly empty public transport. Aggressively snapping at strangers while waiting in line at the hypermarket. Glaring with hatred at anyone simply dressed in neat clothes with clean shoes” (kasparovru.com/material.php?id=69BD4DC356442).

            Indeed, Vladimirov continues, “when it comes to boorish behavior, the residents of Samara have—since the days of the Soviet era—consistently outdone those of other cities in the Middle Volga region. Now that the smart, cultured people have fled Samara due to the war with Ukraine, the city has devolved into nothing short of a primate zoo.”

            Putin’s war in Ukraine has made the situation worse, he argues; but it is entirely possible that in places like Samara, the end of the war will only intensify things in that direction. The police there are already complaining about that all too real possibility, likely reflecting the views of more than just themselves.

            “At the start of the war,” Vladimirov says, “there was a lull in the courtyards of the country’s lumpen districts; the riffraff had gone off to fight. ‘the veterans’ are returning, and they are drinking and engaging in hooliganism even more aggressively than before. The social stratum of these vatniks remains as base as ever.”

            (A vatnik, it will be recalled is someone who wears cheap quilted clothing,who is extremely pro-government and jingoistic and who blindly follows whatever the Kremlin line may be. As such, it has become a term of abuse among those opposed to the regime and its policies.)

            “Now, it is front-line veterans who are getting drunk in the courtyards—veterans whom the police are too afraid to even fine,” Vladimirov says. “And what will happen when the "Special Military Operation" finally ends? Will these courtyards suddenly become oases of culture with a population like that?”

            His answer is damning: “Russia is like a Soviet-era dormitory. I’ve had occasion to visit them. In those dorms, the only person with a telephone was the superintendent—typically a war veteran or a former cop—who oversaw the residents on a voluntary, civic basis. His job was to ensure people didn't make a pigsty of the communal kitchen or defecate in the showers.

            “After 1991, the rooms in these dorms were privatized, and the superintendents vanished. Capitalism descended upon these former dormitories: the residents began drinking around the clock, abusing illicit substances, and undergoing a process of moral decay.” That has left Rusia “like a dormitory without a superintendent.”

            In such circumstances, it is being “overrun by ill-mannered Huns—people who are mentally unstable, addicted to alcohol and energy drinks, and seething with hostility toward others. Yet they carry themselves with the proud air of owners—the owners of a dormitory where the showers stopped working long ago, and the communal kitchen lies in filth and ruin.”

Moscow’s Blocking of Telegram Costing Pro-Kremlin Media More It is Opposition Outlets, Preliminary Figures Show

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 20 – Preliminary figures show that Moscow’s decision to block Telegram channels is costing pro-Kremlin media outlets more viewers than it is opposition ones, according to Alesya Sokolova, a Cedar researcher who also writes on data issues for Novaya Gazeta Europe.

            Indeed, it is fair comment, she suggests, to say that “opposition media have suffered significantly less [from this Kremlin action against Internet channels] than are pro-regime ones” (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/03/20/provlastnye-media-postradali-ot-blokirovok-telegram-v-dva-raza-silnee-chem-oppozitsionnye-news).

            After the blocking began in earnest, Sokolova says, the number of views of pro-government channels fell by 23 percent from its earlier averages, those of regional outlets by 25 percent, but those of opposition sites only ten percent, exactly the opposite of what the Kremlin clearly hoped for.

            On the one hand, as she suggests, these are only preliminary figures concerning 15 pro-government sites, 14 opposition ones, and 105 regional channels. Many factors are at work and over time the numbers could shift in directions more favorable to the Kremlin than these initial ones are.

            But on the other hand, these numbers do suggest that the Kremlin may be shooting itself in the foot once again by its policies and highlight the fact that those already viewing opposition sites are either living abroad or more loyal to the sites they have been looking at than are those who rely on government ones.

            For more on these changes, see both Sokolova’s Cedar research (t.me/research_for_democracy/324) and additional Novaya Gazeta Europe coverage (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/03/21/issledovanie-blokirovki-telegram-udarili-po-provlastnym-media-v-dva-raza-silnee-chem-po-oppozitsionnym-bolshe-drugikh-postradal-solovev-news).

Putin Regime Bringing Charges Against Russians for Posts They Made Online Long Ago

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 19 – Internet comments and pictures Russians posted online many years ago are being examined by the Putin regime’s Center E and used as the basis for criminal charges now, even if the posts were in no way criminal when they were made and even if the individual involved has completely changed his positions, Vera Chelishcheva says.

            The Novaya Gazeta journalist who follows legal issues notes that the authorities are quite prepared to dig up these old posts so that they can go after those who are critics of the regime now with whom the Kremlin wants to settle old or new scores  (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/03/19/post-sdal).

            Efforts by those charged on the basis of these old posts to have the charges dropped have failed in the Russian courts; and consequently, any post that any Russian has made in the past at least potentially can be used by the powers that be to impose a criminal sanction if the authorities think that it shows hostility to the Kremlin.

            Chelishcheva gives several examples of such cases, including ones in which the powers now use pictures posted a decade to show that someone supported enemies of the regime or supported gay rights and thus could be charged with promoting homosexuality, not crimes then but crimes now.

            She suggests that any among the roughly one-third of Russians who use social media should be aware of the dangers they are unintentionally putting themselves in with any post and urges those who do put posts up that might be a problem to take them down lest they lead to criminal charges.

            Taking down posts, of course, won’t preclude the possibility that Center E and other agencies of the regime will be able to track them down; but at least it will make the task harder and perhaps these the new repressors to turn to other targets in their search for new victims on the basis of old posts.

Russia’s Richest Regions Growing Richer while Poorest Ones Grow Poorer, Academy of Sciences Study Documents

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 18 – The 10 richest federal subjects of the Russian Federation – the two capitals and eight resource extraction locations – are all growing richer while the 10 poorest – consisting exclusively of non-Russian republics in the North Caucasus and southern Siberia – are all growing poorer, according to an Academy of Sciences study.

            That pattern threatens to trigger conflicts between members of these two groups as well as to leaving much of the rest of the Russian Federation in stagnation and demographic decline as the population leaves for the better-off regions of the country, all of which are creating serious problems for the country, the study says.

            (The study appears in the current issue of the Academy of Sciences journal Narodonaseleniye, and a full text is available online at journal-socjournal.ru/index.php/socjour/article/view/10974/10620. It is discussed in detail by Nakanune journalist Yevgeny Chernyshov at nakanune.ru/articles/124483/.).

            Sergey Dokhonin and Mariya Vershina, researchers at the Federal Research Center of the Academy of Sciences, classified the more than 80 federal subjects into three groups based on what they suggested were their key economic characteristics: the 10 wealthy leaders, the 10 most impoverished, and the rest whom they described as “middle of the pack.”

            As Chernyshov points out, “the very composition of these groups speaks volumes: the top 10 list includes the two national capitals along with primarily the leading resource-extraction autonomous districts and regions where per capita income significantly exceeds the national average.”

            This leading ten as counted by the two Academy of Science experts thus includes the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and the Sakhalin, Magadan, Moscow, and Murmansk Oblasts.

            The 10 poorest federal subjects include the republics of the North Caucasus and Southern Siberia, areas with the lowest levels of fiscal capacity, high unemployment and as a result the lowest per capita incomes. These are Ingushetia, Tuva, Karachay-Cherkessia, Altai, Kalmykia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Mari El, North Ossetia, Chechnya, and Altai Krai.

            The per capita incomes of those in the top 10 exceed those in the bottom by 95,000 rubles a month to 25,000 rubles and the poverty rate in the former is less than six percent while in the latter it is more than 21 percent. The Gini coefficient is higher in the former than in the latter, meaning that in the latter the population is generally poor across the board.

            In the bottom ten, mineral extraction counts for only three percent of the gross regional product while it accounts for 25 percent for Russia as a whole; and traditional manufacturing contributes very little in the poorest regions. And the top 10 receive 4.3 times more investment per capita than do the bottom 10.

            Moreover, Chernyshov says, “the situation is only worsening.” In 2014, per capita incomes in the top ten exceeded that figure for the bottom 10 by a factor of three. Today, that advantage is nearly four. “Over the past decade, nominal incomes in wealth regions have nearly doubled while in poorer ones, they have risen by only 50 percent.”

            According to the Nakanune writer, “experts argue that current regional policy is predominantly compensatory in nature—relying on various subsidies—and fails to address underlying structural problems “ -- or as the Narodonaseleniye article puts it. "An excessive concentration of resources risks permanently 'depopulating' vast tracts of the country and exacerbating the effect of 'spatial compression' already in evidence.”

And they continue: “It is a paradox: on the one hand, the advancement of technology and transport networks ought to 'compress' space, rendering it more homogeneous and accessible. In practice, however, we observe the opposite effect: intensifying polarization. Economic space does not compress uniformly; rather, it 'collapses' around a few select agglomerations, siphoning off resources and human capital from the vast periphery.”

In short, the authors of the study conclude that unless radical changes are made in state policy, “the ‘rich get richer’ mechanism is indeed at work in Russia … Russia’s economic space constitutes ‘an archipelago’ of a few prosperous ‘islands’ … within ‘an ocean’ of stagnating or deteriorating periphery.”