Hard-Pressed Orenburg Oblast Turns to Better-Off Nizhny Novgorod for Money to Pay Bonuses to Those Signing Up for the Russian Army

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 6 – The governments of Russia’s poorer regions find themselves in a bind: Moscow rates them on their ability to get men to sign up for service in the military but neither leaves enough tax money in the regional government’s pockets to pay or returns enough in subsidies to allow them to compete with better off regions.

            Now, one poor region, Orenburg, has come up with a solution of sorts. It has borrowed money from wealthier Nizhny Novgorod Oblast so that it can get enough men to sign up so as to avoid problems with Moscow (storage.googleapis.com/istories/stories/2026/02/06/rossiiskii-region-vpervie-poprosil-dengi-na-viplati-kontraktnikam-u-drugogo-subekta-rf/index.html).

            According to the Important Stories portal, this is a first; but it does recall the arrangements of the first decades of Soviet power when better-off oblasts were required to help their poorer counterparts -- although the new arrangement has potentially more serious consequences because the regions themselves and not Moscow are behind it.

             The portal’s Sonya Savina says that Nizhny Novgorod in December 2025 transferred to Orenburg 400 million rubles (six million US dollars) to pay for 1,000 bonuses that the poorer oblast had agreed to pay to men who had signed up in the last quarter of that year but did not have the cash on hand to do so.

            Aleksandra Prokopenko, an expert on Russian politics and economics, says that this arrangement resembles “a ‘horizontal’ subsidy in which the expenditure obligations of one budget are covered by another,” an arrangement that was legalized by Moscow in August 2019 but that hasn’t been reported being used except for cooperative projects like bridges.

            “If the goals correspond to the powers of the recipient region, and the Nizhny Novgorod region has sufficient budget funds for this, the parties conclude an agreement with clearly defined conditions: what exactly the funds can be spent on, within what time frame, what results need to be achieved, and how to report,” the expert says.

In this case, Orenburg won’t have to return the funds to Nizhny Novgorod unless the former violates the terms of its agreement with the latter.  That is very unusual, Prokopenko says. “Usually regions do not finance each other’s expenses;” and she adds that she doesn’t think this was “an initiative” by Nizhny Novgorod.

Rather, she suggests, it may well be “one of the ways [for Moscow] to solve the problem at a regional level without allocating additional funds from the federal budget.” Prokopenko is probably correct in that, but the Orenburg-Nizhny Novgorod lash up may open the way to kinds of cooperation among regions that could lessen rather than increase central control.

Both History and Current Problems Behind High Rates of Recidivism and Violent Crime in Urals Region, Russian Police Say

Paul Goble     

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – Federal subjects in the Urals region of the Russian Federation lead that country in terms of both recidivism and violent crime, a pattern police say reflects the presence of so many people who were sent to the GULAG as well as their descendants and rapidly intensifying social problems, including the widespread availability of guns.

            The Russian interior ministry has released figures on recidivism rates and violent crime in the federal subjects of the Russian Federation. The oblasts and krays of the enormous Urals Federal District lead the country in both rankings, the data show, often by wide margins (svpressa.ru/society/article/501426/).

            The explanation for this pattern is simple, current and former MVD officials there say. On the one hand, they say, the presence in the region’s population of many who were dispatched to the GULAG or otherwise deported and later to prison camps means a large portion of the population suffers from grievances and is used to viewing law enforcement as the enemy.

            On the other, they say, the region has a high rate of gun ownership because so many trophy guns have ended up there, something that has intensified in recent years, and is suffering from increasing poverty and even more from a widening gap between the wealthiest and the poorest elements of society, characteristics that feed grievance and violence as well.

            What is a particular problem, one former MVD officer says, is that those who have been released from prisons in recent years typically remain unemployed. According to data from 2025, “more than 60 percent of former inmates remain unemployed in the course of the first year after they are released.” Such people often turn to crime to make ends meet.

Russian Intelligence Targeting Svalbard and Finmark, Using Russian Crews on Foreign-Flagged Vessels to Do So, Norwegian Police Security Service Warns

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 6 – In its annual report on security challenges, Norway’s Police Security Service warns that Russian intelligence is targeting Svalbard, an archipelago that belongs to Norway, and Finmark, the northern portion of Norway, and using Russian crews on foreign-flagged vessels to do so.

            The report says that Moscow’s actions include “cyber and influence operations, sabotage, recruitment of human sources, evasion of sanctions and export control regulations as well as security-threatening economic measures” (pst.no/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Nasjonal-trusselvurdering-2026.pdf discussed at thebarentsobserver.com/security/police-russian-crew-members-pose-a-significant-espionage-threat/444849).

            “To hide” what it is doing, Moscow is using civilian vessels and especially “Russian crews on board civilian vessels registered in a third country.” These pose “a significant threat within the sphere of cover maritime intelligence in 2026,” the Police Security Service warns in its report. 

            According to the PST, “Russian intelligence and security services are active throughout Norway,” but it notes that “the northernmost counties and Svalbard are of particular interest and therefore particularly exposed to intelligence and influence activities. This applies, among other things, to the border areas in Finmark and the Russian presence in Svalbard."

            This new PST report provides the most detailed documentation in the public domain about Russian intelligence operations in Svalbard and the ways in which they may presage a Russian move against NATO there. (For background on this posssibility, see jamestown.org/moscows-first-move-against-nato-could-take-place-in-norways-svalbard-archipelago/ and jamestown.org/moscow-using-svalbard-to-test-natos-readiness-and-resolve/.)

Power to Tax is Power to Destroy, and Moscow is Now Deploying It Against Aboriginal Peoples

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – Until last year, non-Russian peoples in the far north and far east were not charged taxes on the land where they practiced their traditional ways of life, such as pastures for reindeer herding and the like. But in 2024, Moscow changed the tax code; and at the end of 2025, these communities were faced with tax bills they couldn’t pay.

            The full impact of the new arrangement is yet to be felt, because the authorities aren’t charging taxes on land if it is in a traditional place as defined by the powers but are if these land plots are beyond the borders of those areas, according to Tatyana Britskaya, an investigative journalist for Novaya Gazeta (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/02/06/chernye-vezhniki).

            In Sakha, she says, officials have defined as “traditional” only places where people actually live and not where they herd animals. That means that only four of 37 land plots the indigenous peoples view as their own are “exempt from tax.” The other 34 “have to pay several million rubles a year for reindeer pastures,” a completely “impossible sum.”

            What this is intended to do, Britskaya says, is to allow the officials to restrict the amount of land that the indigenous peoples can actually call their own without declaring any change in internal borders and thereby open the way to the exploitation of land they in fact have used from times immemorial to development by Russian mining interests.

            What these means is that many indigenous peoples will find that the state has confiscated the lands they need to continue to practice their traditional way of life; and when they give that up, the state will then hand the land over to Russian corporations, which will complete the destruction of these nations.

            The Russian authorities can and undoubtedly will present the new tax arrangements as a matter of simple justice. After all, if other groups use land, they have to pay taxes on it. But in this case, the power to tax is the power to destroy – and with this new tax arrangement, Moscow has accelerated the demise of the numerically smallest peoples of the north and far east. 

‘Daptar’ Portal Launches Bulletin on Femicide in the North Caucasus

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 6 – A dozen years ago, the Mothers of Dagestan for Human Rights organization launched what it described as “the first Internet resource devoted to the problems of Dagestani women” (kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/237901/). In the intervening period, it has expanded its focus on the status of women across the North Caucasus.

            For many stories about this topic, the Daptar portal is the only reliable source; and over the past decade it has achieved some victories against those there who oppress women. But mostly, it has simply chronicled what is going on. Windows on Eurasia has often relied on it to discuss what is happening in the North Caucasus.

            Despite Daptar’s efforts, he tragedies large and small the women of the traditional societies of the North Caucasus suffer because of the attitudes of men and the rulers of these republics both locally and in Moscow that it has chronicled when few others do have only increased in number since 2012. 

            To expand its coverage and protect more women in that region, the Daptar staff has launched a new bullet devoted to the continuing femicide there. Its first issue has now been posted at the Daptar portal side (daptar.ru/2026/02/06/byulleten-daptara-femicid-prodolzhaetsya/).

            Among the stories it features are the following; a Dagestani mullah kills his second wife, rights activists are seeking to get Georgia to investigate kidnaping of a Chechen woman and her forcible removal to Russia, Ingush courts quash charges against a local woman who fled violence for supposedly stealing money, and a Dagestani has been sentenced to eight years in prison upon returning from Syria.

Almost Half of Muslims in Russan Federation At Present want to Have Three or More Children, More than Double the Share of Ethnic Russians who Do

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – Fertility rates have been falling among Muslim nationalities in the Russian Federation just as they have been among traditionally Orthodox Christian ones, but it is still the case, experts say, that nearly half of all Muslins in that country want their families to have three or more children, more than double the share of ethnic Russians. 

            While that does not mean that all the Muslims who do will achieve that goal, it strongly suggests that the Muslim nations of the Russian Federation will have more large families and thus form an ever larger share of the population of that country in the future, especially given the demographic decline of the ethnic Russians.

            That is just one of the findings reported by the Russian Orthodox Church’s Mercy portal in an article explicitly intended to dispel many of the myths about large families that now circulate in that country (miloserdie.ru/article/mnogodetnye-v-rossii-ih-pochti-3-milliona-semej-no-o-nih-vse-eshhe-ochen-malo-znayut/).

            Among the most noteworthy of the portal’s findings are the following:

·       There are now more large families now than there were only a few years ago, 2.9 million as against 1.1 million in 2013, because families with two or more children have been giving birth to 30 percent of all children, while those with fewer or none have been giving birth to smaller shares.

·       Data on families with children are unreliable because until last year the regions were allowed to set the rules for which families were counted as being large. In Kamchatka, only families with five children were counted as large; in the Far North, those with just two; and other regions set different ages to which the families had to raise their children in order to be counted.

·       Russian families have three or more children for a variety of reasons, ranging from desires and plans to accidental pregnancies that lead to an increase in the number of children.

·       Every third Russian family with three or more children is poor, and, according to the portal, “the more children, the higher the risk that the family will be in that income group.

·       A small but growing group of families with three or more children is to be found among richer parents.

·       Psychological studies have found that people in families without any children or who have three or more feel better about themselves than do families with one or two offspring.

Sexual Violence Cases Tripled over Last Year in Russia's Belgorod Oblast Neighboring Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – The Russian interior ministry has reported that sexual violence rose sharply in Belgorod Oblast, which is on the border with Ukraine and where there are many Russian soldiers involved with Putin’s war in Ukraine, in 2022 and 2023, fell slightly in 2024 and then tripled in 2025.

            This trend has attracted widespread attention from independent Russian media (verstka.media/belgorodskaya-oblast-lider-sredi-regionov-rossii-po-chislu-iznasilovanij-v-2025-godu, meduza.io/feature/2026/02/05/belgorodskaya-oblast-lider-po-chislu-zaregistrirovannyh-iznasilovaniy and t.me/tochno_st/752).

            But the Russian government has stopped publishing the data that would be needed to make a definitive diagnosis of why this is happening. Detailed statistics about sexual violence cases stopped being published in 2022, conviction data ended in 2024, and court rulings in such cases are classified and unavailable to researchers.

            The independent researchers say that it is likely that the amount of sexual violence in Belgorod is related to the fact that there are a disproportionate number of Russian men who are being prepared for combat in Ukraine. But they acknowledge that this can’t be conclusively proved because there have not been similar increases in such crimes in other border regions.

            Regional government experts suggest that the rise in numbers over the last several decades there what they call “multi-episode crimes,” such as abuse within families that often a continues for a long time (media.mvd.ru/files/application/5422615). But that explanation calls attention to the fact that many of the victims of such crimes in Belgorod.

            Indeed, according to interior ministry sources, 42 percent of the victims of such crimes were children, a figure that rose to 66 percent in 2023, the first full year of Putin’s expanded war and the last for which such data are available (media.mvd.ru/files/application/5958851). However that may be, many will blame the war for this rise and fear the return of veterans.

Another Result of Putin's War in Ukraine: Violence in Russian Schools Ever More Frequent and More Lethal

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 4 – For most of the past 25 years, Russians have referred to the relatively rare cases of violence in their country’s schools as “Columbines,” a reference to the 1999 mass shooting in an American high school. But as the frequency and lethality of violent attacks has increased, ever more of them have had to confront the domestic roots of Russian school violence.

            London-based Russian commentator Vladimir Pastukhov says that “the surge in attacks by pupils on their classmates” in Russian schools is hardly random. Instead, it is a reflection of the way in which violence now “permeates the atmosphere” of the Russian Federation at a whole (t.me/v_pastukhov/1810 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/to-li-eshhe-budet).

            According to him, “there is a direct link between these outbreaks of violence and the propaganda of war as a universal way to resolve all and sundry conflicts, a law of interconnected violence so to speak.” And that means in countries like Russia where war has become a cult, there is going to be more violence not just in schools but throughout society.

            Just  how widespread such school violence in Russia has become especially in the last few months has been documented by Radio Liberty journalist Maryana Torocheshnikova (svoboda.org/a/strah-i-nenavistj-v-shkole/33670618.html). She reports that there were at least 11 such outbursts in 2025 and that there have been nearly half that many already in 2026.

            What is most disturbing, she reports that in almost a third of these cases, attackers used guns and children were wounded or even killed as a result. Because of these trends, ever fewer Russians are talking about these as imports and instead viewing them as a product of trends that Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine are producing.

Russia’s ‘Hidden Unemployed’ Now Coming Out of Shadows as One in Seven Russians has Fallen into This Group

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 3 – Moscow has long kept its reported unemployment figures extremely low because it counts as fully employed not only those with full-time jobs but those whose employment per day or per week has been cut back as well as those who have been sent on unpaid leave.

            But as the Russian economy has slipped into recession, the share of working-age Russians who form part of what many observers call “hidden unemployment” has risen dramatically. Now, according to Russia’s Federation of Independent Trade Unions, such people form 14.4 percent of the workforce (ehorussia.com/new/node/34057).

            If one adds even half of these to the official unemployment numbers, this means that ten percent of Russians are unemployed, with a majority of those not receiving any compensation from the government or their employers to help them cope and thus falling ever more often and rapidly into poverty.

            As even the Russian government’s Rossiyskaya Gazeta has acknowledged, this figure or at least one close to it better reflects the problems that now plague the country’s civilian economy, even though many Russian propagandists and Western observers continue to cite the much lower “official” unemployment numbers (rg.ru/2026/02/01/v-rezhime-ozhidaniia.html).

 

Ever More Russians Homeschooling Their Children, Many to Escape Kremlin War Propaganda

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – Although relatively few Russian parents homeschool their children, the number who do has been increasing rapidly in recent years, with many of those now deciding to educate their children at home to avoid the increasing militarization of the curriculum in Russia’s government schools.

            Although the some 200,000 Russian children now being homeschooled makes up a miniscule percentage of the roughly 18 million in public schools, the number of those homeschooled has been rising rapidly (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/05/rossiyane-nachali-tisyachami-zabirat-detei-iz-shkol-na-domashnee-obuchenie-posle-usileniya-voennoi-propagandi-a186473

            A decade ago, there were only 17,900 children being homeschooled, roughly one tenth of one percent of the total; now, they form almost one percent of the total, with much of the increase coming in the last four years, the period during which Vladimir Putin has been conducting his expanded war in Ukraine.

            There are few official figures about this – and they do not count homeschooled children not attacked to a public school -- and even less data about why parents choose to homeschool. But there are some obvious reasons: rising violence in schools and especially the militarization of the public educational system, a cause that the Moscow Times identifies as a major reason. 

            Many Russian politicians are opposed to homeschooling believing that it keeps young Russians from being socialized in the directions the Kremlin wants. But few are trying to block it altogether because it remains popular in families where at least one of parents does not work or does not work fulltime and thus can manage this form of instruction.

Russian Firm ‘Earlier Proud of Resisting Sinification’ Moves to China to Try to Survive, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 1 – The Irbit Motorcycle Factory, the only firm in Russia that had been manufacturing heavy-duty motorbikes, faced bankruptcy after sanctions were imposed on Russia in response to Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine. To try to survive, it shifted its operations from Sverdlovsk Oblast to Kazakhstan; but it was unable to recover its sales from there,

            Then, the Horizontal Russia portal, which covers developments beyond Moscow’s ring road, reports that the IMF, despite its earlier “pride” in resisting what it saw as “the general ‘sinification’” of the market in Russia decided to move its manufacturing to China (semnasem.org/articles/2026/01/28/ural-pereehal-v-kitaj).

            But despite its hopes, the IMF continued to suffer losses, at least in part, the portal says, because Russians who might have been interested in purchasing its products were reluctant to spend money on motorcycles bearing the name “Ural” that they knew had been produced not in Russia but in China.

            Putin tried to help the firm out by giving an Alaska native a Ural motorbike when the Kremlin leader had his summit in Anchorage with US President Donald Trump. But that did little good for a company that in the past had sold many of its products to foreign countries and now can’t do so because of sanctions.

            At least one reason the IMF has had problems in China is that its leaders as recently as 2016 celebrated the fact that their firm “had not given in to the general ‘sinification’” of industry in Russia east of the Urals and instead had held on in Russia to produce a Russian motorcycle in Russia, something they no longer do (irbit.info/business/imz/).

            To have any chance of surviving, experts in the industry say, the IMF must produce first and foremost for the Chinese market and also come up with new models of lower costs if it hopes to recover any of its former position in the Russian one given that Russians can buy motorcycles from elsewhere rather than ones with Russian names but produced in China. 

Migrant Workers Leaving Russia Because Their Children Can’t Get into Schools There, ‘To Be Precise’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb.  4 – The Two Be Precise portal which gathers statistics on key issues in the Russian Federation has not focused on the number of children who are either citizens of other countries or do not have citizenship at all. Perhaps its most important finding is that their parents who are migrant workers are leaving Russia because their children can’t get into school.

            Because Russian law now requires that foreign students pass a Russian language examination before being admitted, many children are left without the opportunity to study; and in response, their parents are going home so that their children will be able to get an education (tochno.st/materials/v-tri-raza-mense-pervoklassnikov-s-inostrannym-grazdanstvom-posli-v-skoly-v-2025-godu).

            Among the key findings that the portal gleaned from official accounts and discussing this issue with experts, some of whom preferred to remain anonymous because of the political sensitivity of this issue, the following are especially noteworthy:

·       In 2025, there were 7,000 foreigners enrolled in the first grade in Russian schools, a decline from 19,000 the year before. For all grades, the number of foreign pupils fell by 44,000 between these two years and declined the numbers of 2021.

·       In the 2025/2026 school year, 130,000 children who held foreign citizenship and another 3,000 without citizenship are studying in Russian schools in all grades. A year earlier, there were 44,000 and 1500 more for each of these groups.

·       Because of the introduction of the Russian language requirement, 60 to 80 percent of all children of migrants “cannot get into school,” one anonymous expert says. And as a result, “many migrant families with children are leaving” the Russian Federation and going home.”

·       In the current academic year, 96 percent of pupils with foreign citizenship are from countries which emerged from the disintegration of the USSR. Most are from Tajikistan (48,000), Uzbekistan (22,000) and Kyrgyzstan (19,000). Armena with 12,000 pupils in Russian schools and Azerbaijan with 8,000 complete this list.

·       Migrant children who aren’t admitted to schools in the Russian Federation have few prospects and aren’t socialized in ways that the authorities would like. At least some are becoming problems, and many require the kind of intervention they aren’t receiving. 

Key Russian Firm that Identified Major Mineral Reserves in Arctic Shuts Down

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 4 – Despite Vladimir Putin’s push for Arctic development, the Russian Polar Marine Geosurvey Expedition company which pioneered in the location of mineral resources in the polar region has shut down because of massive debts it sees no possibility of paying off.

            That leaves Moscow without that company’s skills, honed over more than two decades of exploration, highlights how the shift of resources for the war in Ukraine is hurting priorities elsewhere and the importance of tracking what Moscow is actually doing rather than just what it claims (fontanka.ru/2026/02/04/76246717/ and thebarentsobserver.com/news/russias-renowned-polar-geological-company-is-closing-its-doors/444728).

            The company announced on its portal that it will close down completely on February 12, a declaration that was met with incredulity and even anger by those familiar with what the company has done and what its absence will likely mean (vk.com/al_feed.php?w=wall-1247763_971960).

            And another asked bitterly but obviously rhetorically "How is it possible to close a company that has no equivalent anywhere in the world at a time when the president has set a course for the exploration and development of the Arctic and the Antarctic?”

In a ‘Revolutionary Development,’ Moscow has Succeeded in Getting Russians to View the State ‘as a Service,’ Central Bank Chief Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 4 – The state is now viewed by Russians “as a service,” Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina says, a development that “marks the completion of another stage in the evolution of relations between society and the authorities” and a truly “revolutionary” one at that.

            The Club of the Regions reports her remark and says that it reflects what the Kremlin has been trying to do for some time given that it is “not satisfied with the role of just a regulator” but wants to be perceived as a servant, something that Club experts say strengthens the Putin regime while forestalling any challenges to it (club-rf.ru/theme/637).

            While the Putin regime casts its initiative in this regard as a way of “meeting the demands of the citizens in the 21^st century,” in fact, what it has been doing that Nabiullina has called attention to, is the creation of a platform supporting the government. In short, “by making life easier for te average citizen, the state is simultaneously solving its own problems.”

            According to the Club experts, “the state is creating an ecosystem in which it ceoms the chief trusted source of information for millions of its citizens,” “creating an alternative to elections,” and ensuring that those unhappy with particular situations can be offered things of value if they show loyalty and do not protest.

            So far, the Club suggests, this effort has brought the Kremlin enormous success. Whether it will have the resources and will to extend it remains to be seen.

Epstein Scandal Resembles Rasputin Scandal of 1916 and Could Have Equally Fateful Consequences, Akunin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – As the Epstein scandal continues to grow and involve more people in more countries, Russian writer Boris Akunin suggests that perhaps the best way to understand what it is and what it may become is to recall the Rasputin scandal at the end of tsarist times, given that the two have so much in common.

            He argues that “the Epsteinshchina” – inventing a word that combines the figure at the center of this and the Russian suffix for affair -- is “pure ‘Rasputinism,” that is, “an old scandal that in new circumstances has grown to universal proportions” (t.me/EtoBorisAkunin/706 reposted at https://echofm.online/opinions/epsteinshchina).

            Akunin says that in 1916 “there was an indecent man who attached himself to the royal family” of the Russian Empire. Now, there is “an indecent high-society manipulator” who attached himself to some of the elites in a wide variety of countries. In neither case is the individual “remarkable” but the consequences of their actions clearly are.

            Rasputin did not do everything he was accused of doing, and it may be the case that neither did Epstein. But in the former case, it was widely believed that he had and even more widely believed that Rasputin succeeded in penetrating the Russian imperial elite because it was so corrupt; and in the latter, something similar is happening; and the elites are terrified.

            “Epstein has been gone for a long time, his dirty tracks have already been overgrown with grass – and suddenly such a stir,” Akunin says. While some doing the exposes are focusing on Trump’s political opponents, many who support Trump “are perfectly aware of Trumps ‘moral character,’ and they don’t care.”

            Akunin continues: “But the politicians and oligarchs of the opposing camp who have also been caught up in the crossfire have something to lose. And they are losing it.” Indeed, many in Western societies are less interested in Trump that in the moral collapse of “the respectable pillars of society.”

            What such people have concluded on the basis of the Epstein files is “how disgusting you all are up there!” Existing elites are being discredited and that “clearly isn’t accidental” given that these elites really “are tiresome, they have disappointed and many people really want them to disappear.”

            Akunin says that he believes “’the Epstein affair’ is another harbinger of big changes in the countries that are commonly called ‘democratic.’ Of the same kind as the widespread crisis of old parties, the success of far-right movements, the collapse of international organizations and alliances, and the destruction of the old rules of political behavior.”

            It thus appears, the Russian writer concludes his post, that “we are in [another] 1916” and that “ahead of us are upheavals, a redrawing of the world map, a change of elites, different norms of relations between ‘the top’ and ‘the bottom, the collapse of old alliances and the emergence of new ones.”

            “In ten or even five years, the world will be completely different from what it is now,” Akuninn says, a prospect that is both “disturbing and interesting.”

Azerbaijan’s Exit from CIS Now ‘Inevitable,’ Baku Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – Azerbaijan’s exit from the Moscow-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) now “inevitable,” an action that will seal “the end of ‘the post-imperial space,’” according to A. Shakur, a foreign policy commentator for Baku’s Minval agency in an article that is already being reposted and translated.

            One of the saddest scenes in the world of theater involves aging actors who no longer have a role to play and can attract attention only when they walk through the foyer of theaters where they may garner attention from an audience that remembers what they once were and wants to see them for that reason, Shakur says (minval.az/news/124514976).

            But there is something even more pathetic than that, he continues, and that is the activities of international cooperation formats that were once relevant because they reflected common interests but are no longer so because those common interests no longer exist. They may hold meetings, but they are no more than aging actors in a foyer.

            “One such outdated structure is the Commonwealth of Independent States,” an organization that is now capable “only of organizing informal summits” but that at the outset in the view of Moscow at least was to be the matrix for the restoration of some unified state centered on the Russian capital.

“In the 1990s, both Moscow and the West seriously considered the chance that the CIS would become the framework under which the former Soviet republics would merge into a new confederation or federation. Publicly, the organization was presented as ‘a civilized divorce;’ but in reality, repeated attempts were made to establish supranational structures within it.”

Given that closer integration projects have emerged, “the CIS itself has in effect entered a vegetative state,” an organization Moscow has “continued to try to use to promote supranational elements, including in such seemly harmless areas as the teacher of the Russian language in other countries,” Shakur writes.

But those efforts and meetings can’t hide the reality that the CIS is already half dead, he continues. The three Baltic countries were never members, Georgia and Ukraine have left after Moscow invaded them, and Moldova is preparing to withdraw. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan may soon follow given their problems with Russia.

If Azerbaijan leaves, that will be the end because Moscow has few resources at present to do anything about this approaching end of the former Soviet space. Its economy isn’t going well, and both its use of force against its neighbors and mistreatment of citizens of these countries in Russia are only driving ever more of these states away from Russia.

Equally or even more important, countries beyond the borders of the former Soviet pace are “strengthening their positions,” including but not limited to the Organization of Turkic States, China, the EU and the US. And Shakur points out that “Azerbaijan’s closest allies -- Türkiye and Pakistan — are not CIS members. Nor are many of its main economic partners.

All this, the commentator concludes, “prompts a fundamental question: what practice purpose does the CIS serve for Azerbaijan, especially given Russia’s continuing ambitions within that framework” including by the use of naked force. “Has the time not come for Baku to leave this platform altogether?”

On a personal note, the author of these lines owns a poster that won a competition in Azerbaijan 30 years ago. It shows a house of cards labeled the CIS with only one showing a member country, Azerbaijan. The legend on that poster reads “To Be or Not to Be.” Then Baku answered one way; now it appears to be on the way to answering it in another. 

Countries in Organization of Turkic States Adopt Common History Textbook

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 3 – The Organization of Turkic States have adopted a common textbook on the common history of the Turkic peoples, a development that Kazakhstan commentator Seri Maleyev says will create “a common optic” through which these peoples will see their unity as far more important than anything that divides them.

            “The main consequence of the appearance of a common history is the formation of a common cultural code,” one that will unite them in far-reaching ways, he says (altyn-orda.kz/v-shkolah-tyurkskogo-mira-poyavilas-obshhaya-istoriya-pochemu-eto-sobytie-menyaet-uchebnuyu-programmu-navsegda/).

            According to Maleyev, “it is important also that the textbook consciously focuses on period which united and did not divide,” the period before the era of “colonial divisions” of the Turkic world and the conflicts into which some parts of that world were drawn into with other Turkic peoples.

            Whether textbooks alone can achieve the goals the Kazakhstan commentator suggests remains to be seen, But this effort shows that those promoting the re-emergence of a unified Turkic world have already achieved more than Putin in his efforts to promote a common Russian World.

            In Soviet times, Moscow imposed a common history on the various peoples of the USSR. That fell apart in the 1990s when the Soviet Union did. Putin has sought to recreate such a common historical education across the various peoples of the Russian Federation; but he has had absolutely no success in promoting it more broadly.

            And that suggests that those who want to talk about the rise of cultural worlds broader than a single country should be looking at the Turkic one rather than the Russian, even though today Russia because of its nuclear weapons and pretensions invariably attracts more attention in most places.

Russia’s Infrastructure Problems Built Up Over Decades Now So Disastrous that Tariffs are Skyrocketing Beyond Ability of Citizenry to Pay

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 3 – Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and in some cases even earlier, officials did not spend what was necessary to keep power and water infrastructure in good repair; and this winter, an especially cold one in many places, has led to massive breakdowns that are receiving widespread attention in the media.

            But what is really infuriating Russians is not the breakdowns themselves but the decision of the officials to boost communal services tariffs far above the rate of inflation and often the ability of consumers to pay as operators struggle to fix current problems and prevent future ones (newizv.ru/news/2026-02-04/gnilye-truby-za-vash-schet-kak-rossiyan-zastavlyayut-oplachivat-desyatiletniy-iznos-setey-438751).

            In many places, consumers simply can’t pay their bills and aren’t; and as a result, the companies are finding it ever more difficult to come up with the funds to make repairs, utility company officials and academic experts say. And what that means is the situation with communal services in Russia is likely to get far worse before it gets any better.

            Indeed, they suggest, this may become a political problem as people across the Russian Federation are confronted with the twin problems of a collapse of service and higher communal service bills, something that one expert suggests has created “a perfect storm” in the Russian social and political marketplace. 

In Words Kremlin will Welcome, Senior Russian Muslim Leader Says Faithful Should Avoid Praying in Public

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 4 – The approach of Ramadan means that tens of thousands if not more of Russia’s Muslims will gather outside the few mosques the Kremlin has allowed them to open, an event that attracts widespread attention among Russians because it highlights just how many religious Muslims there are in the Russian Federation.

            Moscow officials have tried to discourage the faithful from attending in various ways, but now they have gained an important ally in that effort: Talgat Tajuddin, the head of the Central Muslim Directorate in Ufa, the last Soviet-appointed mufti still in office, and the self-styled Supreme Mufti of Russia.

            The mufti said that while Islam allows for prayer “practically anywhere, believers are required not to inconvenience others and not to disrupt public order,” a statement he made after Dagestan’s nationality policy and religious affairs ministry said that prayer, “not being a political action or missionary work,” is “not a violation of the law” (readovka.news/news/237587/).

            Tajuddin’s position is closer to that of the Russian authorities who are typically upset when thousands of believers come to mosques but are forces to pray outside especially at holidays because the mosques are too small or too few in number to handle believers who want to participate.

             A few muftis in the Russian Federation have taken a similar position, but most have not spoken out on this issue (readovka.news/news/234954/). One creative response to what appears to be government pressure comes from the government of Bashkortostan (nazaccent.ru/content/45103-v-bashkirii-budut-translirovat-pyatnichnye-namazy-iz-mecheti/).

            Ufa promises to televise prayers from the main mosques there so that believers can participate in them without leaving home and going to the mosques where they will spill into the street. Whether such broadcasts will increase or decrease the religious enthusiasm of believers remains to be seen.

Veterans Returning to Impoverished Russian Regions Likely to Have Even More Problems than Those Returning to Most Non-Russian Republics, Rybakova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – Putin’s decision to complect his army from impoverished federal subjects ethnic Russian and non-Russian alike and his demand that these subjects bear primary responsibility for veterans means that such regions and republics will bear a disproportionate burden as soldiers return from the war, Tatyana Rybakova says.

            These federal subjects will have more returnees and fewer resources to help them, making it likely that crime rates will go up far more in them and in the country as a whole, the Not Moscow Speaks journalist says (nemoskva.net/2026/02/02/prishel-soldat-s-fronta-est-li-u-vlasti-plan-ego-adaptaczii/).

            But she adds that the problems the returning veterans represent are likely to be far higher in impoverished but predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays than they will be in what are often as poor or even poorer non-Russian republics in the North Caucasus and the federal subjects east of the Urals.

            Strikingly and perhaps for most unexpectedly, Rybakova continues, “the fewest problems will probably be faced by those veterans from the North Caucasus. As a rule, people from there have a place to return to and fairly large and close-knit circles of relatives” who will try to help them out.

            The chief problem the veterans returning to the North Caucasus will present, she argues, will be women. “On the one hand, traditional societies there are more tolerant of violence against them; and on the other, those returning from the war will mainly have the opportunity to vent their aggression on the women of their families.”

            In Buryatia and Tuva, the situation is also likely to be less bad than in oblasts and krays where ethnic Russians form the majority. In those to republics, the journalist says, “a cult of war and the military” still exists, and that means that society will help returning veterans to adapt even if officials lack the funds to help.

            The situation in impoverished ethnic Russian oblasts and krays will likely be bad because poverty rates are high and there is little in the way of a tradition for society to help veterans and little money available to the regional governments to take the steps the veterans will need, especially those who have been left handicapped.

            Perhaps the worst situation of all will not be in these two types of regions and republics far from Moscow but in megalopolises like the Russian capital to which veterans who can’t get help in their home regions are likely to flee in the hopes of getting help there. Unsurprisingly, the ethnic Russian veterans are more likely to do that than the non-Russian ones. 

Public’s Fears have Different Political Impact in Democracies than in Authoritarian Systems like Russia’s Today, ‘Nezavisimaya Gazeta’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – When people are fearful, their fears have political consequences, the editors of Nezavisimaya Gazeta say; but these are very different in democracies where the population expects that it will have the chance to change those in charge relatively soon than in authoritarian systems where people have little or no expectation that they can change rulers.

            In democracies, fearful people often blame those in power and seek to replace them, often falling victim to populists who promise solutions but can’t deliver; but in authoritarian systems, the editors of the Moscow paper say, those who fear often rally around the leader even if they blame him or her for their problems (ng.ru/editorial/2026-02-02/2_9428_red.html).

“In systems where power changes little or not at all despite the formal existence of democratic institutions,” they write, “the ruling elite still fears that anxious citizens will behave in the same way as people in the first type of society. Because of this, restrictions may be tightened; and populism or mechanisms of ‘a social state’ may be activated.”

It appears, the paper argues, that “the authorities seem to distrust the stably functioning psychosocial mechanism that they themselves have been preserving and supporting year after year,” one based on the logic that “fear does not lead to questioning the competence of the authorities (except perhaps at a very low level) but on the contrary, to rallying around them.”

As a result, however “paradoxical” it may seem, the paper says, “the approval ratings of the authorities in periods of anxiety in such systems do not decrease, and often even increase.” Moreover, the editors add, such societies if fears intensify, can be “calmed down quite quickly even if the anxiety-inducing context remains unchanged.”

Russian Conservatives See Halal Certification as ‘Threat’ to the State, But Moscow Officials Say It Helps Boost Russian Exports to Islamic Countries

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – Conservatives in the Duma, the Moscow Patriarchate and in Russian society at large say that the practice of certifying foodstuffs and other goods as “halal” and thus cleared for use by Muslims represents “a threat” to Russian national security and to Russian identity more generally.

            In the latest issue of NG-Religii, Andrey Melnikov, the editor of that publication, surveys the statements of several of these nationalists in this latest expression of anger by some members of one group to practices of another; but he says that they are unlikely to get their way, however much noise they make (ng.ru/ng_religii/2026-02-02/9_611_halal.html).

            The reason is simple: Russian officials say that halal certification helps Russia to export foodstuffs and other goods to Muslim countries, something that the powers that be do not want to give up. Consequently, halal products are almost certain to continue to appear on the shelves of Russian stores.

Not One Russian University Remains in World’s Top 200, ‘Krisis-Kopilka’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – Not a single one of Russia’s universities ranks in the world’s top 200. The highest-ranking Russian school is Moscow State University which ranks 227^th, down 12 positions from last year and 29 places from 2021, the year before Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine, according to the annual rating by the University of Leiden.

            Other Russian universities ranked even lower: St. Petersburg State University stood at 533^rd, the Higher School of Economics at 824, the Urals Federal University at 898, Kazan State University at 1053^rd, Novosibirsk State University at 1189, and the Moscow Physical Technological Institute at 1244^th (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/105337).

            No Russian university made the top 50 in physics or mathematics, traditionally Russian strengths. Moscow State was the highest at 68^th in physics, and the Higher School of Economics was the highest Russian university at 315^th with Moscow State University ranking only 479^th in the world.

            Other studies of scholarly productivity in Russia also show declines since the war in Ukraine began. In 2024, for example, 21,608 patents were issued in Russia, 1800 fewer than the year before and 7100 fewer than in pre-war 2020. An another has been the brain drain as Russian scholars leave to work abroad either because of differences with the regime over policies or because of the insertion of unqualified but well-connected rectors supervising their work. 

Kazan Spiritual Academy to Expand Because ‘Russian Orthodox Church Needs Specialists on Islam,’ Its Rector Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – The Kazan Spiritual Academy is expanding to include a doctoral program because the Russian Orthodox Church needs “specialists on Islam” to work with and potentially convert Muslims living in the Russian Federation, according to Nikita Kuznetsov, the academy’s rector.

            By so doing – and Kuznetsov’s efforts which enjoy Moscow’s approval are described at ng.ru/ng_religii/2026-02-02/9_611_academy.html – appears set to reclaim the role that Kazan played in the 19^th century when Turcologist Nikolay Ilminsky oversaw translations of the Bible and other efforts to bring Orthodoxy to the Muslim peoples of the Russian Empire.

(On Ilminsky’s activities and the continuing influence they have had in the thinking nof the Moscow Patriarchate’s thinking, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/04/moscow-patriarchate-reviving-ilminsky.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/01/russian-orthodox-church-wants-to.html.)

In his interview with an NG-Religii journalist, Kuznetsov did not say that the expansion of the academy is a harbinger of a major new push to convert Muslims; but it is likely to be the case that at least some of the graduates of his institution will be involved with such an effort, a move that could unsettle relations between Christianity and Islam in the Middle Volga.

Nakhchivan to Drop References in Its Constitution to 1921 Treaties that Made Russia and Turkey Guarantors of that Autonomous Republic

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic is preparing to drop references in its constitution to the Moscow and Kars treaties of 1921 which made Moscow and Ankara guarantors of the borders of that non-contiguous Azerbaijani territory, a move that puts the status and borders of Nakhchivan AR completely under the discretion of Baku alone.

            That means that Baku could reduce the autonomous republic to the status of any other district in Azerbaijan or change its borders in the event that developments make it possible for Baku to extend its sovereignty over the Zengezur corridor, something that Armenia opposes and that the agreement on TRIPP would appear to delay at least for a time.

            Farkhad Mamedov, head of the Baku Center for the Study of the South Caucasus, suggests that Ankara will have no problem with this because it has already signed agreements with Baku that supersede the 1921 treaty. Moscow won’t like it but will do nothing beyond complaining (minval.az/news/124514495).

            According to the Baku political scientist, this historic change reflects shifts in the geopolitical situation in the South Caucasus which have led Azerbaijan to become more assertive and to end any arrangements with Moscow that would limit its sovereign right to run its own affairs.

            For background on Russian thinking about Kars and its meaning for Moscow, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/12/moscows-nuclear-diplomatic-option-on.html.  

Vatniks are the Soviets of Today and West Must Deal Decisively with Vatnikistan, Vladimirov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – The overwhelming majority of residents of the USSR were “Soviets” by nationality, and Moscow should have allowed them to declare that, Lev Vladimirov says. Now, at least 80 percent of the residents of the Russian Federation are “vatniks,” a term that arose from an Internet meme in 2011 to refer to Russian residents blindly loyal to the Kremlin.

            Because they are so numerous and because they will quite willingly be equally uncritical of a future Russian dictator, the vatniks are the true nationality of the Russian Federation today, dominating the country now and likely to continue to do so in a post-Putin future, the Russian commentator now in emigration says (kasparovru.com/material.php?id=69806A66B1DBA).

            Like many Soviets in the past, the vatniks of today are hardly loyal to their country as such, he continues. Many of them want to “leave Russia, find a city abroad with a large Russian-speaking population, and get a job as a courier, plumber or drive,” naively believing “they can create their ‘Soviet’ mentality abroad.”

            “To some extent,” Vladimir says, “this was the case in Brighton Beach [in New York city] in the eighties;” but that era has passed – and indeed, the era of the vatniks may be passing as well, although hardly in ways that many in the West say they hope for and indeed with a possible change that may make things even worse.

            According to the Russian commentator, “even with all their backwardness, their prison-camp ideals in everyday life, and their aggressiveness, the vatniks are losing out to the Chinese and to residents of neighboring countries; and it is logical that these segments of the population will replace the vatniks.”

            If that happens, he continues, “Russia will become Asiropa; but this will only happen if the West, despite the Russian threat, continues to sit on its hands and speculate about ‘what to do with Russia?’” According to Vladimirov, “it’s high time to deal decisively with Vatnikstan. Enough of liberalism.”

“Do the Europeans not fear the smell of Russian footcloths, the devastation of Berlin, Riga, and Prague by the soldiers [an army directed by Moscow]?”  he asks. “Can they not imagine how these roughnecks, who didn't fight against Ukrainians in Ukraine, will defecate in their beds and rape their women and daughters?”

And Vladimir concludes: “it's time for Europeans to cast aside secular humanism. Russia needs to be put in its place. Like a failing student in school, like a kindergartener who wets the bed. Otherwise, the vatnik gang will impose their habits, both in immigrant forums and in political refugee camps.”

Emergency Medical Services, Now More Important than Ever in Russia Because of Putin’s Optimization Program, Bleeding Staff and Failing to Get Equipment

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 31 – Emergency medical services, including ambulances capable of giving first aid and carrying those who need it to hospitals for further treatment, were supposed to be the key link that would ensure that Russians who have seen local medical services disappear as a result of Putin’s healthcare “optimization” program received adequate treatment.

            But in fact, these services have been nearly destroyed by the policies of the Putin regime. Salaries have been cut by as much as 50 percent, and staff often have to turn to self-funding measures to provide equipment; and as a result, an increasing number of doctors and nurses involved have quit.

            That is the finding of a new study of the situation EMS workers face that was carried out  by The Replica internet portal (thereplica.io/post/emergency-medical-service-crisis) and that has now been reposted at doxa.team/articles/emergency-medical-service-are-losing-staff). Given the lack of official data on this problem, its findings, albeit anecdotal, are devastating.

            Ambulance teams responsible for numerous villages which no longer have medical personal in them are frequently without the staff and equipment they need, and so all the hype about efficient coming out of Kremlin outlets is just that because it is coming at the cost of suffering by Russians who aren’t able to make it to the remaining hospitals.   

Putin has Used Unresolved Traumas of Russian People to Build a Dictatorship and Launch a War, Grozovsky and Postnov Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 31 – Russians suffer from a surfeit of traumas inflicted over centuries and largely unresolved, Russian observers Boris Grozovsky and Viktor Postnov say. What is especially disturbing, they say, is that Putin has used these unresolved traumas to build a personalistic dictatorship and launch his war against Ukraine.

             The Kremlin leader has been able to do so, they write, because he has suspended the process of resolving older traumas while inflicting new ones, thereby “destroying the ability of individuals to ensure minimal security and internal integration while producing instead feelings of fear and hopelessness” (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/01/31/travmirovannaya-natsiya-a185946).

            That pushes off even further into the future the time when Russians will be able to recover from the “sickness” that the experience of trauma inflicts not only on those who have passed through it but also on their children and their children’s children who suffer traumas as a result of what their parents and grandparents relate to them.

            One thing that sets Russia apart, Grozovsky and Postnov argue, is that it has suffered so many traumas that overcoming them appears to most Russians as something impossible – unlike the East Europeans who also suffered traumas but who have concluded that they must and can address them.

            And that has another unfortunate consequence, the two write. Russians traumatized by their own past and convinced that they cannot overcome the traumas they have suffered both directly and indirectly are more disposed to accept authoritarian rule with its new traumas than are those societies which have addressed this issue.

            Indeed, the two authors continues, “in the mass consciousness” of Russians, the conviction has been formed that an individual is not the master of his own fate. Instead, his life depends on the arbitrary decisions of the nobleman, the bureaucrat and the tsar,” an attitude that “has given rise to passivity, a sense of hopelessness,” and a willingness to servilely adapt.

And they conclude that as a result, “there is a strong demand in society for ‘a strong leader,’ ‘a benevolent tsar,’ who will restore the vertical power structure, establish order, and govern justly from above. And the elites in this situation always think that ‘the people are not ready.’”

Indeed, Grozovsky and Postnov say, the nature of the problem has not changed as much as many are inclined to think: “The rhetorical strategies used to justify serfdom in the first half of the 19th century are remarkably similar to the arguments of Russian reformers in the 1990s, who convinced themselves and their supporters that reforms must necessarily be ‘unpopular.’”

            Until the traumas the Russian people have suffered are faced openly and honestly and until the society begins to cure itself, there is little chance that the traumas and the impact they have on Russian life will ever be overcome however much many want that to happen without the kind of efforts it will require.

Moscow Increases Its Focus on Two North Atlantic Archipelagos – Denmark’s Faeroes and Norway’s Svalbard

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 30 – Over the last several years, Russian analysts and commentators have talked about islands in the Baltic Sea – Gotland, the Aaland Island and Bornholm – and in particular two archipelagos in the North Atlantic – Denmark’s Faroes and Norway’s Svalbard as possible targets of future Russian moves against the West.

            Russian writers have devoted especial attention to the Faroes and Svalbard because while they belong to two NATO countries, they have special legal regimes, the first a 1920 treaty which gives signatories the right to engage in economic activity there and the second because of an arrangement by which the Faroes are not always subject to EU arrangements.

            (For background on these two objects of such interest, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/12/with-trump-again-talking-about.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/12/moscow-promises-response-to-faroe.html for the Faroes and jamestown.org/moscow-using-svalbard-to-test-natos-readiness-and-resolve/ jamestown.org/moscows-first-move-against-nato-could-take-place-in-norways-svalbard-archipelago/ for Svalbard.)

            This past week, Moscow commentators have devoted more attention to these two archipelagos, a possible indication that the Kremlin is considering moves against one or both and is laying the groundwork with arguments Russia would likely use in the hopes of dividing the West in such a case.

            On the Strategic Culture Foundation portal, Dmitry Minin argues that Norwegian officials need to recognize that Moscow is not a threat to Oslo’s control over Svalbard but defends the 1920 treaty which awarded that archipelago to Norway (fondsk.ru/news/2026/01/30/ssha-v-arktike-za-grenlandiey-posleduet-shpicbergen.html).

            And that should become ever more obvious if as seems like the United States having declared that it must control Greenland for its national security should decide at some point in the future that it needs to bring Svalbard under its direct administration as well, the Moscow commentator says. 

            Unfortunately, he says, Oslo doesn’t act on the basis of an adequate appreciation of that threat; and in 2022, it extended its EU sanctions against Russia to Svalbard, thus violating the provisions of the 1920 accord and opening the way to an American move  against that archipelago and thus against Norway.

            In this situation, Russia is the chief defender of Norwegian sovereignty and control over Svalbard, Minin says, thus using the kind of argument it has employed before when it has suggested that it is the defender of those whom others are supposedly attacking or ready to attack as justification for Russian moves. 

            The article about the Faeroes is likely to attract less attention but it too contains a not so implicit threat that Denmark is acting in ways that challenge the status quo and that Russia will seek to defend that status quo by trying to mobilize the people of the Faeroes against Copenhagen.

            In the Military-Political Analytics portal,  Moscow analyst Aleksey Baliyev says that Copenhagen’s moves to have the Faeroes join the EU sanctions regime against Russia violates a 1977 agreement which allowed the Faeroes to operate independently of EU rules (vpoanalytics.com/sobytiya-i-kommentarii/farerskie-ostrova-v-tumane-soglashenie-1977-goda-stavitsya-pod-vopros/).

            The issue now concerns fishing quotas. Russia had fishing quotas in the waters around the Faeroes that had not been restricted by EU sanctions, but now Copenhagen is seeking to force the Faeroes to follow those sanctions, something that has outraged Moscow and led it to express the hope that the Faeros regional parliament won’t go along.

            Again, as in the case of the Svalbard controversy, Moscow wants to present itself as a defender of the existing rules of the game and to shift the blame away from itself to others when they have been changed, an approach the Kremlin has often followed when it plans to change them even more by its own actions.