Development of Shipping Routes in Arctic will Cost More than 120 Billion US Dollars over Next Decade, Rosatom Head Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 31 – The development of the Trans-Arctic Transportation Corridor, which includes the Northern Sea Route, will cost more than 120 billion US dollars between now and 2026, according to Rosatom head Aleksey Likhachev, whose agency is in charge of this project.

            The Russian government can’t afford to spend that kind of money on this project and so will work to involve private Russian investors and international ones in order to complete the job, he suggested (expert.ru/transport/skolko-deneg-potratyat-na-razvitie-arkticheskogo-ledovogo-puti).

            What that means, although Likhachev did not say so, is that the completion of the project may depend on the ability of Russian firms and the willingness of international sources both governmental and private to make such investments, the possibility of which is far from clear given Russia’s economic problems and the international situation.

            Experts say that private firms domestic and foreign may be willing to invest in some aspects of the project but warn that unless the entire project as outlined by the Kremlin is completed, many of these investments may not yield the returns they expect. That may make it hard for Moscow to attract such investments until far more progress has been made.

            According to the Expert portal which interviewed Likhachev, Rosatom’s development plans have now been sent to the Russian government for consideration and approval. While they are likely to be given the go ahead, the ability of Moscow to fulfill Putin’s plans is very much in doubt, especially as the NSR is not now carrying anything like the amount of cargo he projected.

Wealth, Urbanization, and Small Populations Make Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenets ADs Best Places to Have Children in Russia Today, ‘To Be Precise’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 30 – Wealth from the extraction of natural resources, extraordinarily high rates of urbanization, and small populations make the Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenets Administrative Districts the best places to give birth in the Russian Federation, according to a rqanking compiled by the To Be Precise portal.

            The portal rated the regions on the basis of nine indicators ranging from maternal and infant mortality rates to the availability of obstetricians, pediatricians and neonatologists and highlighted both differences among the federal subjects and continuing problems with available data (tochno.st/materials/gde-lucse-rozat-reiting-kacestva-rodovspomozeniia-v-regionax-rossii).

            At the top of the ranking were the Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous districts, largely the result of three factors. Both are wealthy areas because of their natural resources, both have high urbanization rates which make access to care easier, and both have small populations which mean that women can get access to larger medical infrastructure.

            They rank as far better places for giving birth than Moscow, which ranks seventh, and St. Petersburg, which ranks 11^th, in part because women with serious problems are often sent there for birthing but do not survive and thus depress this rating of the treatment of women ready to give birth.

            At the other end of the ranking are Ulyanovsk Oblast and the Buryat Republic. In the first case, this may be an artefact of statistics: hospitals there appear to assign as stillbirths what are classified as deaths from infant mortality; but in the second, there is a severe shortage of hospital beds and doctors.

            To Be Precise found that the existence of federal medical centers in the regions can either improve the ranking of the federal subjects or depress it. These provide better medical care than do ordinary hospitals; but because they do, especially ill women are often sent there and despite this care die more often.

            But many of the most serious differences in the impact of childbirth are rooted in geography and the lack of an adequate transportation network. Predominately rural regions rank lower than more urbanized ones; and even among those where care is good in cities, women in rural areas can’t get to the cities for timely care because of infrastructure problems.  

Anyone with Courage Can Become a Human Rights Defender Even in Authoritarian Countries, Tajikistan’s Bobonazarova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 29 – Many Central Asians think that only lawyers can become human rights defenders, Oynikhol Bobonazarova says; and some of them do. But because the state licenses them and can end their careers, a large number of them don’t. The situation is similar in many other professions.

            “Not everyone is capable of making the sacrifices” that human rights work requires, the 77-year-old Tajik woman who has been decorated internationally for her work in Tajikistan says; but everyone needs to remember that “anyone can become a human rights advocate.” It isn’t a path that is limited to only those in a few professions (asiaplus.news/2026/08/29/ne-kazhdyj-sposoben-vyderzhat-takuyu-zhertvu-ojnihol-bobonazarova-o-pravozashhitnikah/).

            The closure of more than 2,000 independent organizations in Tajikistan in recent years has certainly reduced the number of those speaking out on human rights issues, often because of state intervention and the decision of the government not to provide them with grants, she continues.

            But that doesn’t mean that individuals can’t achieve a great deal in helping Tajiks to overcome their fears of what will happen if they dissent and at the same time, albeit more slowly, to convince the Tajikistan government that actions in defense of human rights helps the state correct problems before they grow into threats.

            Among the successes she and those working with her have achieved in recent years are ensuring that migrant workers pay alimony to ex-wives left behind in their homeland, reducing torture in the military, and securing the ability of rights activists to visit prisons and publicize problems there.

            One of her greatest worries now is that attacks on the media in the United States and other Western countries, places that had been models for human rights activists in Central Asia, are being exploited by officials to impose even tighter controls over their populations without regard to anyone’s opinion.

            According to Bobonazarova, “until the developed nations of the world restore their former positions and authority in this sphere, it will be extremely difficult to change the situation.”

Chinese Students in Russian Universities Using AI Translations rather than Learning Russian, Moscow Official Complains

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 29 – Even as 47 Russian and Chinese universities celebrated the creation of an Association of Joint Educational Organizations, an official of the Russian ministry overseeing higher education expressed concern that AI translations, which were supposed to integrate scholars from the two countries are having the opposite effect.

            Vera Skorobogatova, who works on educational cooperation at the Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education, said that all too often Chinese students at Russian universities are using AI translations rather than learning Russian as Moscow had hoped they would do (asia24.media/news/nikakikh-neudobnykh-voprosov-47-universitetov-dvukh-sverkhderzhav-sozdali-unikalnyy-alyans/).

            They can read texts that have been translated by AI and they can even listen to lectures via headsets where AI-generated translations are provided, she says. Consequently, they see little need to learn Russian and thus are not being integrated with Russia as had been the case earlier. Indeed, now, “they prefer not to learn Russia.”

            “This is a systemic failure,” Skorobogatova continued. “The technology that was supposed to be bridge instead has turned out to be a wall as a student with interpreter headphones may be physically present but intellectually remains thousands of kilometers away” in his or her home country.

            Judging by reports of the meeting at which she spoke, the Russian official did not address what almost certainly is behind the decision of Chinese exchange students not to perfect their language: Russian is no longer a language in which cutting edge research and scholarship is published, and so Chinese students looking to the future are learning other languages instead. 

Putin’s Russia Embodiment Today of Fraenkel’s ‘Dual State’ Theory about Nazi Germany, Lea and Borukh Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 29 – In 1941, Ernst Fraenkel, a German-Jewish legal theorist, described Nazi Germany as “a dual state,” one in which adopted laws and court decisions governed most of the population but in which the state reserved to itself the right to deal with its enemies in any way it saw fit.

            Today, Aaron Lea and Borukh Taskin, two Israeli scholars of Russian origin, say that Putin’s Russia embodies this theory and thus uses law in this way instead of viewing all law as the weapon of the ruling class or in the case of Russia today of the ruling loyalist camarilla (kasparovru.com/material.php?id=6A92D8601945F&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook).

            They are explicit: “The Russian Federation is a modern embodiment of the "dual state." Civil courts, arbitration tribunals, and commercial law operate with a fair degree of predictability -- precisely what ensures the economic stability the regime needs to survive. For decades, foreign investors have worked with Russian counterparts by relying on this "normative state."

            But as the cases of Navalny and Khodorkovsky show, there is the other part of the state as Fraenkel described it, “the prerogative state” in which the rulers decide  how to act. Even in these cases, the Kremlin sought to maintain “a procedural façade” but “behind it, Lea and Borukh say, “the rules were broken.”

            What is critically important, they continue, is to avoid “conflating the normative state with the prerogative state” because that oversimplifies the picture of what is happening in Putin’s Russia now and how different it is from the definition of the role of law in totalitarian states which act as if all law is simply a weapon of the ruling class.

            That is especially important given that today’s “Russian ‘ruling class’” is not a class in the usual sense. Rather, it resembles what Max Weber called “a patrimonial ‘clientele’ – a personalistic network where loyalty to the leader personally supersedes all other criteria for membership.”

            This group is “not a  class defined by background, wealth, or professional affiliation. Rather, It is a collective defined by a single criterion: recognition of the center’s right to set the boundaries of the permissible and a willingness to act within those limits,” Lea and Borukh argue. 

            Today, support for Putin’s war in Ukraine has become “the ultimate litmus test for membership” in the clientele, they say. Those who express any doubt or reservation about Russia’s actions in Ukraine are immediately and necessarily excluded from the normative realm and put at risk as members of the prerogative legal regime.

            They conclude: “the Russian Federation is therefore not a totalitarian state where the entire legal system serves as a political weapon. Instead, it is a dual state in which the ruling clientele employs the prerogative sector against its enemies—while reserving the normative sector for itself and those loyal to it.

Putin’s Monopoly on ‘Russianness’ has Allowed Him to Continue to Wage War in Ukraine and Must Be Challenged, Bilunov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 29 – Ever more people around the world recognize that the Russian Federation includes a variety of non-Russian nations who make up an increasing share of that country’s population and aspire to greater autonomy and in some cases even independence from Moscow.

            But they still treat those whom the Russian census counts as “ethnic Russians” as an undifferentiated whole and even accept the idea that even those who speak Russian should be included part of that community. That is no small thing, and Denis Bilunov argues that it has given the Kremlin the ability to continue its war in Ukraine (region.expert/monopoly/).

            The former editor of Kasparov.ru who is now a graduate student at Prague’s Charles University says that the Kremlin leader’s “monopoly on ‘Russianness’” is so strong that many in both the Russian Federation and the West accept it as somehow natural and fail to recognize that those called Russians are extremely diverse culturally and politically.

            As long as Putin can successfully make this claim, his regime will remain stable and he will be able to conduct aggressive wars as now in Ukraine. But, Bilunov says, “if this monopoly can be challenged convincingly enough, the regime will lose its stability, and the chances for real change for the better will emerge.”

            To that end, the West must adopt “a proactive strategy” aimed at challenging Putin’s claims  to have a monopoly on the representation of ‘Russianness,’” depriving him of the chance to claim to speak for all Russians and Russian speakers and supporting the diversity of people lumped together as ethnic Russians so that these can lead to “an organic process capable of garnering mass support.”

            These must involve first of all the recognition of how diverse those labelled ethnic Russian by Moscow in fact not only politically but culturally and even linguistically as well are and then on “institutional recognition” by such means as allowing representatives of these multiple Russias to compete under their own flags or have their own places in activities of various kinds abroad.

            That is going to be difficult given Moscow’s media campaign and the inertia of western thinking, but the fact that there has been so much change first in recognizing that the union republics of the USSR were different and now in acknowledging that the non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation gives hope that Bilunov’s call will gain support. 

Putin’s ‘Optimization’ Campaign which First Hit Medical Points and Local Governments is Now Leading to School Consolidation – and Parents are Protesting

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 29 – Putin’s “optimization” campaign, a response to declining population in rural parts of the Russian Federation designed to save money for his war in Ukraine, has now moved beyond government offices and medical points and is leading to school consolidation. Outraged parents are protesting against the bussing of their children to distant schools. 

            Villagers in Siberia are especially angry, according to regional commentator Aleksey Aksyutenko. If in European Russia alternative schools are close by, east of the Urals, they are distant; and closing a school means children must travel by bus long distances or parents will have to move, threatening the survival of the villages (svpressa.ru/society/article/529592/).

            Not surprisingly, parents are taking to the streets in villages in Siberia – Svobodnaya pressa gives one example --and equally not surprisingly, officials are threatening those taking part with criminal reprisals if they don’t send their schools to distant places, something that will eliminate much of the savings Russian officials are counting on by the closing of small schools.

            Two things are surprising, however, Aksyutenko says. On the one hand, Russian law requires the parents of children must be given multiple options if schools are closed; but in the current round of school consolidation, officials in the regions have not done so, further angering the people.

            And on the other, these officials are taking this step only a few weeks before the Duma elections, angering people who might otherwise have been expected to vote the way the Kremlin wants. After all, official moves which affect children almost invariably produce a far stronger reaction among Russians than those which affect only adults.

Altay Shamans Say Unearthing of Siberian Mummy Loosed Violence on the World --including War in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 28 – Shamans in the southern Siberian republic of the Altai are demanding that a Siberian mummy scholars unearthed from the permafrost in 1993 had stood guard at the gates of the underworld and that the body must be reburied or the world will continue to suffer from calamities like the war in Ukraine.

            Many cultures have traditions that disturbing the dead will unleash horrors on those who do so; but the case of what has come to be known as the fate of the “Altai princess” is especially fraught, Leyla Latypova says (themoscowtimes.com/2026/08/28/calls-to-rebury-a-siberian-mummy-unearth-decades-of-distorted-history-a93588).

            When the remains of a fifth century BCE woman were uncovered more than three decades ago, the Russian journalist notes, it was an international sensation and became a tourist attraction. Now, however, shamans in the region are “calling for the mummy to be reburied.”

            They have attracted attention by claining, Latypova writes, that the mummy’s remains had “’stood guard at the gates of the underworld’ and that disturbing them had opened a Pandora’s box of natural disasters and political conflicts, including not least of all the ongoing war in Ukraine.”

            Scholars say that the myth of the Altai princess was developed by the scientists who unearthed her remains and that the idea she was noble and a guard of the underworld are ideas that have attached themselves to her body in the years since. And they point out that she can’t be reburied because of the rapidly melting permafrost.

            At the same time, however, many researchers point out that the removal of the body from the Altai to Novosibirsk for preservation represented a kind of cultural imperialism and that they favor reducing the extent of archaeological expeditions to the Altai because these activities disturb the countryside there.

            Consequently, what might appear to be the kind of story that emerges only during the slow news days of late August has the potential to energize the national movement in the Altai in the future. (On that movement, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/another-sign-this-time-in-altai.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-mountainous-altai-where-russians.html.)

As Long as Putin’s War in Ukraine Continues, Russian Economy will Stagnate, ‘Consensus’ Forecast of HSE Economists Holds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 28 – As long as Putin’s war in Ukraine and his standoff with the West continue, the Russian economy will stagnate, leaving the country unable to tackle its most important domestic problems and ensuring that on a wide variety of measures, Russia will fall ever further behind other countries, according to the “consensus” prediction of HSE economists.

            This year, the Moscow economic experts say, Russia’s GDP growth will be no more than 0.6 percent, with no prospects that this metric will rise to more than two percent into the 2030s (dcenter.hse.ru/consensus_forecast discussed at ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/08/28/rossii-predrekli-pochti-desyat-let-ekonomicheskogo-zastoya-a204681).

            Given that the IMF now assumes that the growth in GDP for the world as a whole will rise 3.1 to 3.2 percent a year over the next seven years, this means that Russia will fall ever further behind and will lack the resources and technology to tackle the problems that plague that country.

            Moreover, according to the economists at the Higher School of Economists, Russia will lose over this period whatever remaining technological advantages it has and its best educated people who will either leave or not be able to get the kind of education needed to put Russia on track to renewed growth.

            Government officials and pro-government analysts argue that Russia will be able to avoid such a disaster and even that the war itself is putting Russia on track to grow at a far more rapid rate than the consensus view suggests. But this view, one echoing the conclusions independent Russian scholars abroad (https://case-center.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/the-dictators-legacy-a-new-zastoy-ru.pdf), is viewed by the consensus as “utopioan.”

            Only if the Kremlin ends the war and its break with the West, those who take the consensus view say will Russia be able to resume anything like the growth it had before 2022.

Hard-Pressed Siberian Oblast Cuts Budget for Two Minority Groups for Third Year in a Row

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 27 – In what is likely a countrywide trend, the Kemerovo Oblast in southwestern Siberia has cut the regional budget for the support of the two numerically small Turkic nations who live on its territory, the 2800 Shors and the 2500 Teleuts, for the third year in a row.

            This trend is not something Moscow wants to advertise or that the regional government in Kemerovo is even prepared  to explain, given the fact that it contradicts the region’s plan for the development of these two peoples. But alongside other budgetary cuts for the population as a whole, it is certainly hurting these two small nations ( indigenous-russia.com/archives/49850).

            According to the Indigenous Peoples of Russia portal, Kemerovo allocated 19 million rubles for the support of the two minorities in 2024 but is providing only 16 million now. These funds are supported to help preserve traditional ways of life, develop infrastructure in remote settlements, provide medical care and education, and support research on these nations.

            Given that these figures have not been adjusted for inflation, the real cuts in support for these minorities are likely to be much larger, something that will make it ever more difficult for the Shots and Teleuts to survive given the multiplicity of tasks this small amount of funds is supposed to support.

            There is every reason to belief that most of the federal subjects are doing the same thing even though no details are available, given their deficit financing and need to reduce spending so that taxes from them can support Putin’s war in Ukraine. 

Caspian’s Water Level Decline Accelerating Despite Expectations that the Sea’s Declining Surface Area would Mean Less Evaporation

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 28 – In 2020, the water level of the Caspian fell by eight centimeters; but last year, it fell by 23, despite the predictions of many experts that the decline would slow because the area of the sea had contracted by almost 30,000 square kilometers and thus the amount of evaporation would be reduced.

            This change, experts from the littoral states say, reflects both rapidly rising air temperatures as a result of global warming and declines in the flow of rivers emptying into the Caspian as a result of increased human use (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-08-28--primorskie-strany-obespokoeny-zdorovem-melejuschego-kaspijskogo-morja-89919).

            Because the Volga is the largest of these rivers – the Ural River is a distant second – many in the non-Russian countries are focusing on Russia’s failure to take steps to ensure that the decline in the flow of that river into the Caspian won’t increase. And their objections are infuriating many Russian experts and commentators.

            Kazakhstan has called for a consortium to help regulate the flow of the Volga, something Moscow opposes; and Russian experts like Mikhail Bolgov of the Russian Academy of Sciecnes are now arguing that it is “impossible” to regulate the water levels of the Caspian, a confession of Russia’s failure to do something and something certain to infuriate other littoral states.

            As a result, the Caspian’s water level is certain to decline and at an increasing rate. A much-ballyhooed proposal to spend 450 million rubles on the problem in the coming years turns out to be hollow: all that money is to go for research and not any of it for steps to limit let alone solve the problem.

            Unless Moscow changes course or unless outside powers with an interest in transit across the Caspian get more actively involved, it is virtually certain that the inland sea is on course to follow the Aral into oblivion, a development with enormous and currently incalculable consequences for the littoral states and all those who rely on the Caspian.

Immigrant Workers Now Outnumber Indigenous Non-Russians in Many Cities of the Urals, Moscow Expert on Regional Affairs Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 27 – Migrant workers from Azerbaijan and Central Asia have flooded into the cities of the Urals in search of high pay, a pattern that until recently was aided and abetted by local officials and that has frightened indigenous non-Russians who are outnumbered there and angered ethnic Russians who fear the ghettoization of the country, Vadim Trukhachev says.

            “When I came to Surgut, the largest and oldest city of the Khanty-Mansiisk AD,” the Moscow specialist on regional affairs says, “I could not believe my own eyes: practically the entire population consisted of migrants; and there was not a single person who looked like a Slav” (svpressa.ru/society/article/529469/).

             When the oil industry developed there in Soviet times, Trukhachev continues, the area saw an influx of workers from Azerbaijan who had experience in the oil fields there. Now, the migrants coming in are from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as well, something local officials have supported.

            What is important to remember, he says, is that “all these diasporas fight among themselves. In the cities of the region have formed genuine ghettos where the indigenous population of Russia” – non-Russian and ethnic Russian alike – are not allowed” and are being forced out of the economy by migrants who’ll work for less.

            To combat this trend, the Moscow specialist calls for the establishment of quotas in all regions that will set “the percentage of residents who may be migrants” and use forced expulsions to get the numbers down to those levels.   Otherwise, Russia will be overrun by immigrants who bring disease and crime.

            Trukhachev’s claims about the Urals as a whole are hyperbolic. Few cities there are in fact threatened by the influx of migrants he suggests, although it is the case that in many, which have relatively small indigenous non-Russian populations, migrants may dominate in the non-Russian sector and shape how Russians will view both.

            What is worrisome is that such notions are circulating not just among Russian nationalists but among acknowledged experts like Trukhachev, an indication that they may have far more traction in official circles than most observers now believe. 

Moscow Must Double Share of Spending on Demography to Three Percent of GDP if Birthrates are to Stop Falling, Just Russia Party Candidates in Tatarstan Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 26 – Russians are not having children because housing prices are so high and future earnings are so uncertain, candidates from the Just Russia Party in Tatarstan say; and the only way to boost the number of births is to double government spending on demographic issues from the current 1.5 percent of GDP to three percent.

            That can be done, they acknowledge, only by making the income tax rates more progressive and imposing special taxes on major corporations and banks, steps that the Putin regime won’t take but calls for which are not only popular but the only way forward if Russia is to see its fertility rate rise instead of continuing to fall (business-gazeta.ru/article/709813).

            At a recent campaign rally, Just Russia Party candidates in Tatarstan said that just how dire the demographic situation in Russia is becoming are currently being obscured by Moscow which is simply no longer releasing data but argued that enough is known about birthrates and the factors affecting them that it is clear what needs to be done.

            The candidates said that over the last five years, the only reason the population of Tatarstan has grown is as a result of the influx of migrants. Among women living there, the fertility rate has fallen dramatically to 1.4 children per woman per lifetime, high for Russia today but well below the replacement level of 2.2

            The average age at which women in Tatarstan are giving birth has risen dramatically as well, the candidates say, up from 26 in 2005 to “more than 29 today,” something that has by itself depressed the number of children such women have further. The Putin regime is trying to encourage women to have more children, but its approach isn’t working.

            The Just Russia candidates concede that part of the reason for the decline in the number of births is a reflection of the fact that women now in prime child-bearing cohorts were born in the 1990s when there were fewer births. Thus, today, there are fewer women who are in a position to become mothers.

            But that isn’t the reason those who are potential mothers aren’t doing so. Having a child and even more having several is the quickest path to poverty given the skyrocketing costs of housing, the absence of enough child care facilities, and the need for young people to get started on their careers before they think about having children.

            The Just Russia candidates call for introducing a law specifying that those who have parents should be paid a minimum amount, making maternal capital not a one-time payment but a continuing one, eliminating housing debt by cancelling mortgages of those who have children, ensuring the payment of alimony, and increasing benefits for children.

            Doing all these things may be expensive but they are necessary if the population of the Russian Federation is going to slow its decline, the candidates say. They call for doubling the amount Moscow spends on demographic programs and taxing those who are better off and big business and banks to get the necessary money.

            What is important about such calls is not that they are likely to lead the Kremlin to fulfill them but rather that they are an indication of the judgment of opposition politicians about how people really feel and what these politicians think will appeal to them as part of their parties’ programs.

            Because the candidates in this case are from Tatarstan, their appeals have an obvious ethnic dimension; but because they cast them in terms of demography rather than ethnicity they avoid the kind of sanctions such candidates would likely  be subject to if they posed them in more ethnically specific ways. 

Moscow Mulls Creation of Folklore Day and Folklore Medal, Two More Steps in the Reduction of Non-Russian Nations to Folklore Alone

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 27 – Russia’s State Council Commission on Culture and Traditional Values has called for the creation of a new national holiday, the Day of the Folklore of the Peoples of Russia, on July 17 and the establishment of a new award, “the Guardian of Folk Traditions.”

            These proposals will be taken up at a December meeting of the full State Council (nazaccent.ru/content/45868-den-folklora-narodov-rossii-predlozhili-otmechat-17-iyulya-na-federalnom-urovne/) and they represent another step in Putin’s effort to reduce Russia’s nations to cultural communities alone (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/07/putin-seeking-to-reduce-nations-to.html).

            What may seem to some as only yet another way to offer the people a new form of entertainment in fact is a profoundly political challenge to the existence of nations within the Russian Federation and their right to have republics and other forms of political action. If Putin can achieve the folklorization of nationality, he will further rein in nationalities.

            The current proposals apply not only to non-Russians who will thus be encouraged to focus on folklore exhibits and fairs but also to ethnic Russians as well. But that last may run into some problems especially if the proposed date for the holiday isn’t changed: July 17 after all is the anniversary of the murder of the last tsar and the imperial family by the Soviets. 

Russia’s Gas Crisis Prompting Central Asian Countries to Look Elsewhere for Fuel, Kazakh Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 27 – Gas shortages in Russia are not only beginning to have a political impact at home but a geopolitical one at home and not just because of Moscow’s much publicized effort to find other countries who will see it gasoline to fill the tanks of Russian automobiles, Askar Kubayzhanov says.

            Even more significant, the Kazakh commentator says, is the fact that Russia’s gas shortages are prompting the countries of Central Asia to seek new suppliers of fuel because they can no longer count on Russian deliveries (timesca.com/russia-fuel-crisis-pushes-central-asia-to-seek-alternatives/).

            As Kubayzhanov documents, given Russia’s problems, “Kyrgyzstan is arranging supplies from China; Tajikistan has requested large volumes of crude oil and fuel from Iran, while Kazakhstan plans to more than double its refining capacity and eventually sell more petroleum products to its neighbors.”

            To be sure, he continues, “Russian refineries will most likely restore capacity sooner or later. But the contacts established with new suppliers and the alternative routes tested will remain as will the investment in domestic refining.” And those changes now will contribute to a further decline of Moscow’s influence in Central Asia. 

For Five Reasons, the Russian Empire Won’t Revive This Time Around, Independent Ukrainian Blogger Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 16 – For much of the last millenium, Russia has experienced cycles of imperial decay followed by imperial rebuilding so frequently that many both there and elsewhere assume the collapse of the empire in 1991 is currently on the path to the restoration of a new empire, Warden Null says.

            But there are five reasons why that won’t happen this time around, the independent Ukrainian blogger writing under this pen name says; and so Russia faces the prospect of either creating a genuine federation based on democratic values or a slow decay into a situation like the one on view in Somalia (region.expert/track/).

            The five reasons that the empire won’t come back again, Null says, are as follows:

·       First, over the last quarter century, “Russia hasn’t been building a new empire,” despite all the rhetoric coming out of Moscow and the fears expressed elsewhere. Instead, “it has been living off the corpse of the previous one” – and across the board, that resource is rapidly running out and can’t be easily replenished.

·       Second, Russia today doesn’t have the people it needs for the restoration of the empire. “Any aggressive autocracy capable of mobilization relies on surplus biological energy: it needs young, cheap and passionate ‘meat.’ In 1917, Russia was a young country and had such people. Now, it is “an aging, urbanized country” and doesn’t.

·       Third, Stalinist mobilizational methods – the use of terror and force – won’t work anymore. Stalin could get people to dig canals and fell trees by pointing guns at them; his successors can’t get computer engineers to come up with new programs or chips by doing the same thing. That won’t work, Null argues.

·       Fourth, to build a new empire, Russia would need to be a sovereign “power center.” The Soviet Union was, but Russia today “is sovereign only on television.” In reality as ever more people can see, It is absolutely, totally and humiliatingly dependent on China” and even on North Korea. That isn’t a recipe for empire building.

·       And fifth, any such imperial project needs an idea people feel is worth dying for. The Russian Empire had one as did the Soviet Union; but what the Kremlin offers now is “a schizophrenic mix of Ilyin, Soviet flags, priests at cosmodromes and hatred of gays. “That’s not an ideiology.” Instead,  it is cynicism and “a new imperial cycle” can’t be built on that.

According to Null, there are only two paths for Russia in the future, the difficult one of building a democratic and federal system or the continuing slow but increasing degradation of the system as it devours resources rather than creating new ones with no prospects for anything better. The second path unfortunately is far more likely.

Northern Sea Route Shows that ‘Shortest Path is Not Necessarily the Most Profitable,’ Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 26 – Moscow invariably suggests that the Northern Sea Route will beat out the Suez Canal as the primary sea path between Asia and Europe; but that argument is deeply flawed because “the shortest path is not necessarily the most profitable one,” Vladislav Inozemtsev says.

            There are many reasons why this is true in the case, the Russian economist says; but before considering them in detail, it is important to remember that Moscow’s claim that the NSR is shorter is itself flawed because it is measured from northern China rather than other Asian ports further south (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/08/26/sokraschayuschaya-rasstoyaniya-mechta-a204315).

            But the most important is that the speed ships travel on the NSR is very different from that of vessels using more southerly routes. Because of ice, NSR transit often proceeds at two to three knots compared to 19 to 20 elsewhere, a difference which in itself vitiates the advantages of the geographically shorter northern route.

            There are other problems with the Russian assumption about the advantages of the NSR, Inozemtsev says.  Most large container ships require deeper water to sail through than is available in parts of the NSR. A ship drawing 15 meters which many do simply can’t pass through the NSR which in places drops to far less, only nine or ten meters.

            Another problem is that ships using the southern route typically drop off and pick up cargo at ports along the route, but in the case of the NSR, these are few and far between; and so shippers lose that advantage as well, something the enthusiastic Muscovite backers of the NSR ignore

            Beyond that there is the problem of ice. Of the 116,000 merchant ships in the world, Inozemtsev says, only “about 360” of the container ship segment are ice class, that is, built to withstand ice and required by insurers for passage via the NSR. Building more ships is hardly an attractive option when there are other ways to bring goods to market.

            And there is the problem of icebreakers which must accompany even ice capable ships along the NSR. According to Inozemtsev, “Russia’s icebreaker fleet is too small to handle” a flow much great than the one now, which is far belong what Putin called for only a few years ago and which can’t approach the volumes he and others have projected.

            Changing any of these things would be massively expensive, far beyond the means of the Russian state. That means Moscow would have to hope for and then rely on foreign investors, something that would make the NSR anything but the bulwark of Russian greatness and national security Putin hopes for.   

Russians and Ukrainians Increasingly Divided in Their Assessment of Stalin, Levada Center Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 25 – Ever more Russians over the last 15 years have had a positive assessment of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, while among Ukrainians, attitudes toward the Soviet dictator have deteriorated sharply from an already low point to an even more negative one since Putin launched his expanded war there in 2022, according to Levada Center surveys.

            Last month, the independent Russian polling agency said, slightly more than half of Russians surveyed said they had a positive attitude toward Stalin, about a quarter were indifferent to him and about a tenth were negative (levada.ru/2026/08/25/otnoshenie-k-figure-stalina-v-iyule-2026-goda/).

            The share of Russians expressing a positive attitude toward Stalin has been increasing since the 1990s and reached its highest level in recent times in 2023. Ukrainian attitudes toward Stalin were never as positive as those of Russians, but since 2022, they have plummeted. Now only three percent of Ukrainians say they view him positively.

            Because of the terror famine Stalin conducted in Ukraine and his repressions of Ukrainians more generally, he has never been popular there; but the new polls show that Putin’s action in Ukraine has deepened the divide between Russians and Ukrainians on this question as well as on so many others.

            And that in turn suggests that if and when Putin’s war there ends, it will be far more difficult for Russians and Ukrainians to view each other in positive ways, especially given how central Putin has made Stalin and his role in World War II in the construction of present-day Russian identity. 

Russian Universities Increasingly Recruiting Students to Serve in Putin’s War and Offering Drone Studies Programs

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 25 – Under pressure from the Kremlin to provide more support for Putin’s aggressive foreign policy, ever more Russian universities are pressuring students to sign up for military service in Ukraine now and creating drone studies departments whose graduates will presumably help not only in that conflict but in future ones as well.

            More than 80 percent of Russia’s highest-ranked universities now push students to sign up for military service although in many cases this effort is ostensibly for non-combat positions (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/08/25/47-iz-50-luchshikh-rossiiskikh-vuzov-agitiruiut-studentov-zakliuchit-kontrakt-s-minoborony-vyiasnila-novaia-evropa-news).

            That is an extension of efforts the Putin regime has put in place since 2022 to ensure that it will be able to fill the ever-depleting ranks of Russian forces in Ukraine and thus is no surprise. But the decision to create drone studies programs at 32 of the 50 top higher educational institutions is something new and disturbing.

            While using drones against Ukraine and defending Russians against Ukrainian drone attacks is a politically useful tactic, most of those who might enroll in drone studies programs almost certainly won’t be ready to work in this military sector in Putin’s current aggressive campaign in Ukraine.

            Thus, the decision to create such programs highlights something far more disturbing: the intention of the Kremlin to continue its aggressive foreign policy beyond Ukraine and to use drones to do it, a technique that it had not prepared for earlier but now recognizes is going to be a feature of most future conflicts.

Putin’s ‘Optimization’ Policy and War in Ukraine have Made Doctors and Nurses among the Most ‘Protest Prone’ Groups in Russia, Expert Says

Paul Goble

Staunton, Aug. 25 – Putin’s healthcare optimization policy has reduced the number of hospital beds by 20,000 a year over the last decade even as his war in Ukraine has placed ever greater demands on Russia’s healthcare system and the doctors and nurses who work in it, Sasha Fokina says.

That combination has made these medical workers among the most overburdened and underpaid professionals in that country, the feminist activist and political analyst say, and made them among the most “protest prone” of all groups there (posle.media/article/healthcare-in-wartime-how-womens-labor-is-changing).

These protests typically take the form of petitions, media campaigns and meetings with officials rather than with the more politically risky demonstrations, Fokina says, because other than emigration, Russia’s health workers can’t change jobs easily and thus are trapped by the system.

According to research she cites, in 2025, social and labor conflicts in the healthcafre sector accounted for 62 percent of all such clashes; and in 2026, healthcare is among the top three conflict-prone sectors, even though repressive measures have reduced the number and overall share.

One of the reasons Fokina has focused on this issue is because women dominate the medical professions in Russia, forming 70 percent of all doctors and 95 percent of all nurses, and because they have suffered the most from Putin’s policies which are exactly the reverse of what they should be in wartime.

In order to keep fielding an army, she continues, the Russian government should be providing the medical system with more funding and medical staff with higher salaries; but instead, Putin has cut back both, increasing suffering not only among patients but also among doctors and nurses.

Putin’s ‘Authoritarian Legalism’ has Soviet Not East German Roots, Lea and Taskin Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 25 – Many observers argue that Putin’s commitment to authoritarian legalism has its roots in his experience while serving as a KGB officer in East Germany; but in fact, Aaron Lea and Boruch Taskin argue, what Putin is doing now just like what the GDR did earlier arose from Soviet theory and practice under Stalin.

            The current Kremlin leader uses law to cover whatever he wants to do so as to simultaneously “paralyze” Western democratic institutions who forcing them into bureaucratic games and “neutralize” domestic opponents who are thereby stripped of the moral high ground, the Israeli analysts of Russian origin say (kasparovru.com/material.php?id=6A8DC886F3A48).

            Because the GDR pursued the same approach and formalized it, many assume that Putin picked its principles up from his service there, but in fact, his approach, like that of the Stasi, arose of “the Leninist concept that law is not a neutral arbiter over the state but a class instrument of the ruling party.”

            And that principle was elevated to a dominant feature of Soviet reality under Stalin when his prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky sought not to destroy the power of law but rather to appropriate it for use by the dictatorship itself against the people in whose name that power ruled, the two analysts say.

            To be sure, Lea and Taskin continue, “the Soviet tradition of political processes was public and crude. East German refined it to invisibility: psychological destruction without traces, legal persecution without obvious political motive, and even social death without physical violence.”

            This system worked in the GDR and is working in Russia now because of what they call “the Gulliver effect” because the system works not as a result of “a single massive chain by which the state shackles a person” but rather because it leaves people who wake up to discover that they are “held fast by hundreds of slender threads, each of which in itself is negligible.”

No single rule of this kind creates a totalitarian state on its own -- indeed, many exist in any modern legal system. The difference lies not in the existence of an individual thread, but in how they are combined,” Lea and Taskin say, pointing out when the state so chooses, “hundreds of regulations” work in concert to produce totalitarianism.

That is what has been happening under Putin, and this must be understood now and after he leaves office because then lustration of the kind that was visited upon the former GDR will be a minimum requirement for overcoming the system the current Kremlin leader is using. 

Azerbaijani-Central Asian Relations Acquiring a Military Dimension, Kazakhstan Portal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 25 – Last week, defense officials from Kazakhstan met in Baku with their Azerbaijani counterparts to discuss expanding military cooperation in the coming year, the latest example of the formation of a military-political association of Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan and through them with Turkey, Kazakhstan’s Altyn-Orda portal says.

            Azerbaijan and the countries of the former Soviet Central Asian region “are increasingly building relations not only in trade, logistics and energy but also in the field of defense” and with Azerbaijan as the bridge with Turkey as well, the portal continues (altyn-orda.kz/tyurkskij-oboronnyj-poyas-tsentralnaya-aziya-i-azerbajdzhan-usilivayut-voennoe-sotrudnichestvo/).

            The reason for this is the rapid growth in a new economic space involving these countries involving the middle corridor route between Asia and Europe, a route that “cannot exist in a geopolitical vacuum.” That makes “the coordination” of defense issues “the logical next step.” And “this process is already beginning.

            Azerbaijan has taken the lead in this development; and while in the period since 1991, “the security of Central Asia was built largely around Russia” and Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan remain members of Moscow’s Collective Security Treaty organization. “But in recent years, the geopolitical situation there has changed.”

            According to Altyn-Orda, “Russia’s war against Ukraine has drastically reduced Moscow’s ability  to act as the only guarantor of security in the vast Eurasian space;” and as a result, “the states of Central Asia are pursuing an increasingly independent foreign policy, developing relations” with a variety of countries.

            In this shift, Azerbaijan and Turkey are playing a special role. Azerbaijan “geographically connects Central Asia with Turkey and Europe. It has an army with modern combat experience, actively uses Turkish and military technologies and at the same time closely cooperates with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.”

            And Turkey has the ability to “become the main military-technological partner” of an association of Azerbaijan and the Central Asian countries, given its “production of drones, armored vehicles, ammunition, communication system and military training,” resources that will allow the regio to “reduce its dependence on Russian weapons.”

            This emerging group and its moves toward becoming an alliance of its own “does not necessarily have to be a copy of NATO” and need not be directed against any particular country. But rather it can help the countries be in a position to deal with security problems as a region rather than individually, something that will give them greater independent influence. 

Putin Elite has Three Immediate Reasons for Devoting Ever More Attention to Emigres, Sonin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 25 – Putin and his inner circle in recent weeks have been devoting ever more attention to Russians who have left Russia,  attention that at times has risen to a kind of “collective hysteria,” Konstantin Sonin says; and he argues that there are three reasons that the issue of emigres and “relocants” is now so fraught in Moscow.

            First of all, the economist and commentator says, Kremlin propagandists need a new “abstract enemy” now that Ukraine has become a real one with its attacks on Russian cities and infrastructure because it is easier to create propaganda about an abstract enemy than about a real one (echofm.online/opinions/prichiny-isterii).

            Russians abroad at present are no threat to the regime, but memories of the role that emigres played in the past provide just enough fuel for Putin and those around him to believe that such people could threaten those in power once again and to use propaganda tropes like those the tsars and commissars did.

            Second, Sonin argues, there is “’the technical’ perspective,” driven by the fact that “the potential for whipping up hatred against Ukrainians has been exhausted.” Having lost the target it has been concerned about, Putin’s propaganda machines “must always be kept busy with something;” and emigres and those who have moved abroad are a good target in that regard.

            And third, some members of the Putin elite suffer from an intensifying “fear of the future,” even though Sonin argues, this fear which has to do with the isolation of Russia is “largely unfounded” but “fear – even when irrational – is a powerful force” – and so fears that the departure of Russian is a sign that Russia has been cut off from the West are real.

            Consequently, the Kremlin’s current obsession with emigres and those who have relocated abroad is likely to continue and perhaps even intensify given its problems in Ukraine and at home, highlighting along with everything else the paranoia and lack of good judgment currently at the top of the Russian political system.

In at Least a Fifth of Russia’s Federal Subjects, Forcible Mobilization for War in Ukraine Already Taking Place De Facto, Rights Activists Report

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 24 – While Kremlin spokesman continue to claim that suggestions Moscow will launch a mobilization campaign after the Duma elections are Ukrainian propaganda and that Russia doesn’t need any mobilization to man its arm, in at least a fifth of Russia’s federal subjects, a forcible mobilization is already taking place.

            For Kremlin claims that reports about mobilization are Ukrainian propaganda and that Russia doesn’t need any mobilization, see meduza.io/news/2026/08/25/kreml-nazval-informatsionnymi-utkami-soobscheniya-o-novoy-mobilizatsii-v-rossii and ura.news/articles/1053121221.

            For reports by rights activists that officials are using violence and threats to force men to sign up for the military and serve in Ukraine in 17 federal subjects, approximately one-fifth of all of these, actions that look very much like what a mobilization would, see the detailed article at verstka.media/pravozashhitniki-soobshhili-o-nasilstvennyh-zaderzhaniyah-i-prinuzhdenii-k-kontraktu-kak-minimum-v-17-regionah-rossii.

            What these reports almost certainly mean is that Putin plans to run a covert mobilization campaign, handing off the task to regional officials and paid recruiters and then denying that a mobilization effort is taking place and disclaiming any responsibility for what is happening, a pattern he has adopted with regard to other policies already.

            And that in turn means that Putin likely won’t declare a mobilization even after the election largely because he won’t have to: his appointees in the oblasts, krays, and republics of the Russian Federation are already carrying one out in all but name. 

 

Outcome of Kazakhstan Election Shows Where Russia and Other Post-Soviet States are Likely Heading, Grashchenkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 24 – The outcome of the elections to the new single chamber Kazakhstan parliament shows the direction that party building is likely to take in the Russian Federation and other post-Soviet states, according to Ilya Grashchenkov, the director of the Center for the Development of Regional Policy.

            The victory of the pro-government Adilet Party with 71.7 percent of the vote “may look like the emergence of a new super party” but in fact, the way the new party was formed and how it structured the opposition shows something more profound, the commentator says (politrus.com/20260824/ilya-graschenkov-17/).

            The former party of power in Kazakhstan which Nazarbayev assembled did not go into the opposition but instead joined Adilet largely because “the old party brand was too closely connected” with the past, Grashchenkov says. And that is “an important example for United Russia” which may be compelled to do the same thing for the same reason.

            At the same time, he continues, the opposition was divided in a quite meaningful way and the most dangerous form of opposition leadership was excluded so that “there is no one party there that provides a focus for protest for everyone.” Instead, there are two relatively clear directions.”

            On the one hand, there are two parties, Respublika and Ak Zhol which are right wing and entrepreneurial; and on the other there are three, the Ayul Agrarian, the Social Democrats and the Peoples Party who represent demands for social justice and are left of center paternalists. These two wings of the Kazakhstan political spectrum received roughly equal shares in the election.

            But what is “especially significant” not only for Kazakhstan but for Russia and other former Soviet republics, Grashchenkov says, is that there is no analogue to the LDPR of the late Vladimir Zhirinovsky. That is, there is “no party trying to be at one and the same time nationalist, social, protest and fully systemic.”

            According to the commentator, “the LDPR model worked as long as there was a politician capable” of appearing set to oppose the regime within limits. “The Kazakh arrangement now shows a more modern design” with entrepreneurs voting for business parties and left-wing voters for socialist ones.

            Grashchenkov concludes: “Kazakhstan thus offers the voters a design” and those in power with a model “here the new party of power as a result of transit and several small parties representing limited but understandable interests.” Russia and the others may choose to follow such an arrangement. “That’s something to think about.”

Moscow Rapidly Expanding Use of AI Technology to Increase Repression of Non-Russians, Saami Activist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 23 – At various international conferences, Russian representatives frequently claim that Moscow is using artificial intelligence to protect non-Russians living in the Russian Federation; but that is an outright lie that must be countered, Andrey Danilov says.

            The Saami activist says that in fact Moscow’s use of AI is making it ever easier for Russian officials to search out those whom Moscow has already defined as extremist and then take steps against them, an increasing share of whom are non-Russians (indigenous-russia.com/archives/49776).

            It has just become known, Danilov continues, that researchers at the Southern Urals State University have come up with an AI system that “automatically analyzes texts and searchers for terms like ‘foreign agents,’ ‘extremists,’ ‘undesirable organizations’ and other categories” and comparing these texts with Russian government data bases.

            Consequently, he concludes, what everyone needs to remember and be reminded of is that “artificial intelligence itself does not protect human rights. Instead, it strengthens the system that is making use of it.” When it is in the hands of those who want to expand human rights, AI can have one result; when it is in the hands of those against that, it has a very different one.

More than Their Elders, Younger Russians View Corruption as ‘Normal’ and Even Acceptable and are Less Willing to Cooperate in Struggle against It, Moscow Sociologist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 24 – Russians aged 18 to 23, that is those born in the Putin years, are more inclined to view corruption as something entirely “normal” and to accept many forms of it as acceptable than are members of older age groups, according to Yana Ardelyanova of the Moscow Institute of Sociology.

            The Russian scholar says that this is the case if one looks beyond the near universal willingness of people to say that corruption is wrong in principle and recognizes that this is part of a growing lack of trust in the government and social institutions (ng.ru/economics/2026-08-24/1_4_9566_corruption.html).

            Even worse than their willingness to view corruption as somehow part of life now, Ardelyanova says, young people are more willing to take part in corrupt schemes than are their elders because they view many forms of corruption like paying off professors or doctors for preferred treatment as quite normal.

            She says that this represents “a clear decline” among young Russians “regarding the values of service to the state and society” and even “a crisis of trust in state and public institutions, the result among other things of the digital environment in which informal leaers such as bloggers are displacing that of officials.”

            According to the report about the sociologist’s findings published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, other polls and scholarly investigations provide additional support for her conclusions, making this finding far more likely to be true and thus far more worrying than many might be inclined to think. 

To Keep Armenia in Russia’s Orbit, Moscow May Soon Use Migration Weapon, Shustov Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 24 – Roughly a quarter of Armenia’s GDP consists of transfer payments by Armenians working in the Russian Federation; and if Yerevan pursues EU membership, Moscow will be “compelled” to consider imposing restrictions on Armenian migrant workers in Russia, Aleksandr Shustov says.

            So far this possibility and the deadline Moscow has supposedly set for Yerevan to make a choice about its future have been mentioned only in the Armenian media, the Russian nationalist commentator says (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2026-08-24--naskolko-silna-migracionnaja-zavisimost-armenii-ot-rossii-89830).

            But since Armenia gives no sign of changing its direction, Shustov continues, Moscow will have to “use new instruments” to influence Yerevan, and “one of these soon could be limitations on labor migration” from that country, something that the figures show would be devastating for Armenia.

            According to the Armenian Central Bank, Armenians working in the Russian Federation sent home 3.87 billion US dollars in 2025, an amount equal to 13.3 percent of Armenia’s GDP. That is less than the share of transfer payments to Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan but still enormous and potentially crippling.

            That the Kremlin is thinking about doing precisely this, Shustov continues, was suggested by Putin’s remark earlier this year that if Armenia breaks with Russia economically, it will suffer an economic loss of 14 percent of GDP, less than a single percentage point different from what ending such transfer payments would be.

            The number of Armenian workers in the Russian Federation has been falling in recent months, but until then, with the singular exception of the covid year, it has been running at about 160,000 a year over most of the last decade. If these people are forced to go home, Yerevan will find it difficult to support them; and they will find it very difficult to find work in other countries.

            This is what Armenia should be thinking about rather than pursuing what Shustov clearly considers the will of the wisp of EU membership; and his words suggest very strongly that Moscow is quite prepared to take this step, something that Armenia’s friends and supporters should take into consideration as well.