Kyrgyzstan Requires Countries Receiving Its Water to Pay for It

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 29 – For more than two decades, Bishkek has urged the countries of Central Asia to pay for water entering their territories as the best means of promoting conservation and eliminating negotiations about amounts or balancing these amounts with deals for electric power.

            But while all the Central Asian countries have moved away from the Soviet-era practice that water is free good, none of the other has gone as far as Kyrgyzstan in seeking to extend that principle to water flowing from one country to another, declaring that from now on, those who get its water will have to pay (asia24.media/news/besplatno-bolshe-ne-budet-s-1-yanvarya-2026-goda-kyrgyzstan-vystavlyaet-scheta-stranam-tsentralnoy-a/).

            Kyrgyzstan, which along with Tajikistan, has long been considered a water surplus region which supplies water to the other countries of the region which are all downstream, understandably is more prepared to make that demand; but now the question arise as to how prices will be set and how they will be collected.

            With regard to the first, there are likely to be lively diplomatic debates regarding price and even the possibility that other countries will respond to Kyrgyzstan’s action by raising prices on goods they export to Bishkek. And with regard to the second, Kyrgyzstan is likely to find it difficult to block water from flowing downstream and thus not able to force others to pay.

            But despite that, what Kyrgyzstan has done appears likely to transform water debates in Central Asia from being about amounts of water to be shared to being about what prices those who have water will charge and how they will collect it. Given the impact that has had within these countries, Bishkek’s decision may prove a real turning point in the region. 

Declines in Number of Repressive Cases in Belarus Should Not Fool Anyone, Sociologist Says; They Reflect that Lukashenka has Already Repressed Most Possible Targets

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 29 – Some observers and foreign governments have been encouraged by the fact that the number of political cases the Lukashenka regime brought against its opponents this year is smaller than the number brought a year ago. But they shouldn’t be, Genadz Korshunau says.

            The head of the Belarusian Sociological Group and former director of the Minsk Institute of Sociology says that this trend does not represent anything positive but rather shows that the Belarusian dictator has been so effective at repression that there simply aren’t that many structures left the country to oppress (ng.ru/cis/2026-01-29/1_9426_belorussia.html).

            The supposedly “positive” figures from Belarus include the fact that the number of political prisoners fell from 593 in 2024 to 448 in 2025 and that the number of NGOs newly banned from 385 in 2024 to 107 in 2025 and that most of the NGOs banned in the more recent year were branches of NGOs earlier.

            By his repressive moves over many years, Genadz Korshunau says, Lukashenka has “exhausted the possibilities” for growth in repression because those opposed to his rule have either fled abroad, are already behind bars, or are too cowed by his repressive machine to take action. Thus, these supposedly encouraging figures in fact are very discouraging indeed.

Rosstat Releases More Data Highlighting Russia’s Continuing Demographic Decline

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 29 – Rosstat, the Russian government’s statistical arm which has in recent years cut back dramatically on the amount of demographic data is releases, has prepared a report showing that the situation there may be even more dire than critics have suggested up to now, Vedomosti journalists who have seen the report say.

            Among the developments the Moscow newspaper relates from that Rosstat study (edomosti.ru/society/articles/2026/01/29/1172461-rosstat-chislo-statsionarnih-mest-dlya-rozhenits-dostiglo-minimuma), the following are especially important because they point to a continuing and long term demographic decline:

·       The number of maternity beds in medical institutions has fallen to the lowest level in the post-Soviet period, with 14.2 beds per 10,000 women compared to 34.1 in 1990, a falloff that has accelerated in the last several years when the number of such beds fell from 52,300 in 2022 to 48,700 in 2024, the last year for which statistics have been released.

·       The number of women giving birth has also been falling. In 1990, 1.89 million Russian women gave birth; in 2024, that figure was 1.12 million, a decline of 40.8 percent.

·       As is happening in many countries, the length of time women are kept in hospital after giving birth has fallen from seven to ten days to only two to three, reflecting a more efficient handling of birthing.

·       Maternity wars and hospitals are being closed in remote and underpopulated areas and being sent instead to regional state hospitals, often 90 minutes of more from their homes. According to one observer, this trend however economically justified means that “healthcare has moved further away from the population.”

A Corrupt Colonial System: Russia’s Northern Regions Not Allowed to Develop Their Own Resources or Get Them from Neighbors but Forced by Moscow to Bring Them from Far Away

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 29 – Officials in Moscow and in the regions regularly celebrate the Northern Supply Operation which brings food and supplies to the people along Russia’s Arctic littoral, something that is essential if the Northern Sea Route is to become truly effective, Dmitry Verkhoturov says.

            But Siberian economist Dmitry Verkhoturov says that the way in which the Northern Supply Operation functions is a waste of money, with the federal subjects there compelled by Moscow to purchase raw materials like coal and timber from distant parts of the Russian Federation or even abroad rather than using resources of their own or neighboring regions (sibmix.com/?doc=19659).

            He gives as an example what has been happening in the Yamalo-Nenets AD. There. Moscow has compelled the region to import coal from as far away as Kazakhstan when in fact the region could provide as much energy and heat by harvesting its forests. But if it did, then Moscow’s profits and leverage would be less.

            The regions on the Arctic littoral, he continues, are forced to spend an enormous share of their resources and as a result constantly seek loans from Moscow to do what Moscow wants, something that gives enormous profits to people in the capital but prevents the northern regions from developing as they should.

              Verkhoturov does not use the words “corrupt” or “neo-colonial” to characterize this situation; but they certainly apply and help to explain why Moscow does what it does and why so many people in the Russian North suffer even as Moscow pockets the profits and drives their regions deeper into debt and dependency. 

Putin’s ‘Hero Mother’ Program Highlights Russia’s Demographic Problems Rather than Solving Them

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 29 – In 2022, Vladimir Putin restored the Soviet practice of awarding mothers with ten or more children the title of Hero Mother and paid each woman so identified a price of one million rubles, something that he clearly expected would lead women across the country to have more children and help Russia compensate for losses in his war in Ukraine

            (For background on this award that some Russian deputies have long called for and Putin’s expectations about its impact, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/06/putin-wants-to-restore-hero-mother.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/07/seventy-five-years-ago-today-moscow.html.)

             But things have not worked out as Putin intended. On the one hand, fertility rates especially in predominantly ethnic Russian cities have continued to fall. And on the other, the women most likely to have ten or more children and qualify for the award are women from Muslim nations in the Caucasus, hardly the pattern Putin wants to see.

            But in order to keep the award going and to suggest that there are at least some women who have given birth to and are raising ten or more children, Putin has had not choice but to give Hero Mother awards to women from those nationalities, even though it calls attention to Russia’s demographic problems rather than serving as a means to solve them.

            This week, for example, Putin named three new hero mothers. All three are from the Muslim republics of the North Caucasus. As has been largely true in the past, he did not find any Orthodox Russians to qualify, something that he almost certainly would have liked to be able to do (etokavkaz.ru/news/247394).

Aesopian Language Lives – Baikal Portal Carries Major Article on How Another Russian War to Annex Foreign Territory Sparked a Revolution at Home

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 29 – When a government makes it impossible for people to talk about actions of the government that the population rejects, as often happened in Soviet times, those who still want to talk about such things and to bring to the attention of others their thoughts routinely turn to Aesopian language.

            As the Putin regime has tightened the screws on Russia especially since the Kremlin leader launched his expanded war in Ukraine, authors in the Russian Federation have expanded their use of this technique to discuss the baleful consequences of that action not directly but rather by talking about other close analogies.

            A remarkable example of this is the publication today by the People of Baikal portal about “how a war for the annexation of new territories led to the overthrow of the state system in Russia 120 years ago” when Nicholas II launched what he expected to be “a good little war” to solve domestic problems.

In a 3,000-word essay, commentator Asya Gay describes how tsar’s plans after initially enjoying massive support backfired, led to general trikes and then to revolution in Irkutsk and ultimately the Russian Empire as a whole (baikal-stories.media/2026/01/29/polozhenie-otchayannoe-bunt-polnyj-vseobshhij/).

Gai’s detailed description of what happened in Irkutsk and her use of photographs from that time are fascinating in and of themselves, but it is unlikely that any Russian reading her article would fail to draw the possible and likely intended parallels to what is happening in Russia today and what may happen if Putin’s war continues.

 

Low Pay, Attitudes of Commanders Why Russian Policemen are Ever More Frequently Quitting, Pashkin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 28 – Low pay and the attitudes of senior officers explain why vacancies in Russia’s police force have risen from 30 percent three years ago to 40 percent now and will in a couple of months reach 50 percent when one could shut down the interior ministry entirely, Mikahil Pashkin, head of Russia’s police union (nakanune.ru/news/2026/1/28/22856417/).

            He did not mention two other causes that have also played a role: the higher salaries policemen can earn by quitting the force and joining the Russian army to fight in Ukraine and the increasingly negative attitudes of Russians. (For background, see jamestown.org/war-against-ukraine-leaving-russian-police-state-without-enough-police/.)

            Pashkin argues that the police force is destroying itself because all senior officers care about is meeting quotas and other targets set by their political masters rather that enforcing the law in a fair and equitable manner.  The union leader’s comments came on the heels of Duma testimony by deputy interior minister Igor Zubov.

            Zubov admitted that salaries were too long and would be raised, although likely not by enough to solve the problem and that the reputation of the police was now in tatters, something that needs to be rectified (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/01/28/v-mvd-zayavili-o-massovih-uvolneniyah-i-padenii-prestizha-sluzhbi-a185641).