Kremlin Fighting Statistical War Against Its Own Country and the West and All Too Often Winning There, Voronenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 29 – One of the most important fronts in Putin’s war against his own people and the outside world is the statistical one, a front that the Kremlin leader has had numerous victories because both Russians and outsiders are all too ready to accept statistics as somehow inherently true, Dmytro Voronenko says.

            That allows Putin to convince Russians that things are better overall than they may appear to individuals and too cause foreign governments to adopt policies he favors because his cooked statistics to hide the truth about Russia, the independent Ukrainian analyst says (ridl.io/ru/sem-oshibok-pri-analize-dannyh-iz-rossii-i-kak-ih-izbezhat/).

            Voronenko gives seven examples of Putin’s statistical sleight of hand, although he stresses that these are neither ranked nor comprehensive. Rather, he suggests, they are the tip of a very dangerous iceberg that Russian society and Western governments all too often Titanic-like risk running into. These include:

1.     Treating official figures as market prices when the state can set them thus contributing to the idea that Russia is really a market economy rather than an increasingly command one.

2.     Citing international sources which use Russian ones without mentioning that fact, thus giving more credence to Moscow’s figures and reducing the chance people will question them.

3.     Failing to mention Russian government laws and decrees that have changed what the numbers mean, leading people to compare apples and oranges without recognizing that fact.

4.     Changing the definition of categories so as to be able to leave out key components that are moving in a different direction than Moscow wants to advertise.

5.     Routinely changing the time frame data covers and thus presenting data sets “as if the last four years had not happened” and thus the impact of Putin’s war is concealed.

6.     Ignoring the ways in which Moscow counts stockpiles as part of production and thus buys time for itself when production falls.

7.     And last but far from least, pointing to special actions by the government as just a normal way of doing business and proof that the state is in control and that all is well.

The best way to protect oneself against such attacks by Putin on the statistical front, Voronenko concludes his detailed discussion of each of these, is to be aware of what Putin is doing and question his statistics just as much as would be the case if the numbers came from others, something that all too often now is not the case.

Russians and Europeans Must Recognize and Openly Declare that Putin’s Russia is a Fascist State, Skobov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 29 – For Russia to recover and for its threat to the rest of the world eliminated, both Russians and Europeans must recognize and then openly declare that Putin’s Russia is a fascist state and that only by its defeat can that crime and threat be overcome, Aleksandr Skobov says.

            The Soviet and Russian dissident now in prison for calling for Ukraine’s victory against Putin’s aggression says that it is time for Russians who have recognized this reality to create a new party that will openly declare that its  goal is to overcome fascism in their country (forumfreerussia.org/articles/opinions/2026-09-29/programma-partii-skobova).

            At the same time, Skobov says, it is critically important that Europeans recognize this reality because “modern Europe was born in the fight against fascism” and thus is threatened by what Putin represents and how he acts.  Unfortunately, both in Russia and Europe, there are many who “very much do not want to believe that we are again faced with this evil.”

            According to Skobov, “Putin’s Russia is the most dangerous evil for modern civilization. The suppression of its aggression and the elimination of Putin’s tyranny is therefore the common cause of all civilized humanity.” And a Russian party that understands this must convince Europeans of the same before it is too late.

            Once that position again becomes the common view of people in Russia and Europe then it will be possible for the kind of joint actions that will be necessary not only to defeat Putin but to reverse the damage he has done in the first instance to Russia and Ukraine but even more broadly to Europe and the values on which the continent has striven to put in place.  

Enormous Gap in GDP Per Capita among Russian Regions has Increased Even More since 1991, ‘Club of the Regions’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 29 – Since 1991, the GDP per capita has increased in all the federal subjects of the Russian Federation; but the gap between the richest and poorest has increased as well, with the richest being the two capitals and oil and gas producing regions and nine of the ten poorest being non-Russian republics, the ‘Club of the Regions’ reports.

            The wealthiest on this metric is the oil and gas-rich Nenets Autonomous District which has a GDP per capita of 538,965 US dollars, the portal says. The poorest is Ingushetia with a GDP per capita of 10,429 US dollars, less than two percent of that of the richest (club-rf.ru/theme/729).

            As horrific as that difference is, even more disturbing is the fact that the Russian government has done little or nothing to address this imbalance and that as a result, while the wealthier regions have gotten richer on this metric, the poorer ones have fallen even further behind than they were at the end of Soviet times.

            This imbalance in the Russian Federation is far worse than in other major countries, the portal continues. In China, the difference between the richest and poorest areas differs between five and six times, in Germany by three or four times, and in the United States by only two or three times.

            That has two major consequences, the Club of the Regions analysis says. On the one hand, it is leading to uncontrolled migration from the poorest to the richest regions; and on the other, it is sparking calls in the poorest regions for a new deal or even independence, thus threatening the territorial integrity of the country.