Russia’s Shortage of Nurses Seen Growing from 50,000 Now to 250,000 in Four Years

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 11 – Russia now has a shortage of 50 to 70,000 nurses, a figure that risks growing to as much as 250,000 in only four years, the result of low pay, bad working conditions, and the aging of current nurses, who now mostly are over 40, according to Yan Vlassov, the head of the All-Russian Union of Patients.

            The Putin regime’s response has been to call for expanding the enrollment and nursing institutions, but such a step, Vlassov says, won’t quickly or well. The government must address salaries and working conditions as well. Otherwise disaster looms (mk.ru/social/2026/05/11/k-2030-godu-nekhvatka-srednego-medpersonala-v-rossii-mozhet-uvelichitsya-do-250-tys-chelovek.html).

            The problems the situation of nurses in Russia and the response of the Putin regime to them resemble those in many parts of the Russian economy: a failure to appreciate why people are leaving certain jobs and the conviction of the authorities that simply adding more entrants to work in particular areas will suffice to solve the problem.

            In reality, however many students are trained to do certain jobs, many of them will leave the profession quickly and thus undercut efforts to fill existing gaps – a special case of the more general Russian predisposition to assume that extensive approaches will always work and that intensive ones are not necessary.

Judicial Statistics Gathered by Russian Supreme Court to Remain Classified for 20 Years

Paul Goble

              Staunton, May 12 – In what the Meduza news agency describes as “a catastrophe,” the Judicial Department of the Russian Supreme Court has declared that all judicial statistics it had released in the past will now remain classified for 20 years and all the data it had released since 2005 has been taken down from its website.

              There are more than 2,000 courts in Russia, and individually, they will continue to release information on their decisions; but the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court is the only body that gathers them and had released that data in the past (meduza.io/feature/2026/05/12/v-rossii-zakryli-dostup-sudebnoy-statistike-za-20-let-i-eto-katastrofa).

              Because there are so many courts, no individual or organization other than the department of the Supreme Court is capable of gathering it all together and then using it to track trends like treatment of dissidents, LGBT+ people, deaths in the military, and so on. This decision will thus prevent anyone from having comprehensive data on such issues.

              And because that is so, this decision is far more serious than most of the other cutbacks in statistics that the Putin regime has carried out most frequently since the start of the expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, leaving both Russian officials and independent analysts at a serious loss. 

‘Chief Task for Belarus is Not to Become Part of Russia After Putin’s War in Ukraine Ends,’ Babariko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 11 – The chief task of Belarusians today is to ensure that Belarus does not become part of the Russian Federation after Putin’s war in Ukraine ends, a real risk in that the Kremlin dictator may try to cover his own failings in Ukraine by annexing Belarus, Viktor Babariko says.

            Speaking to  Belarusian emigres in Lithuania, the former presidential candidate in 2020 who now lives in Berlin says that the threat of Russia absorbing Belarus is greater than it was in 2020 and that Belarusians must devote all their efforts to preventing that from happening (rfi.fr/ru/европа/20260511-виктор-бабарико-сейчас-главная-задача-для-беларуси-на-стать-частью-россии).

            Despite what Lukashenka and Putin have done, Belarusians won a major victory six years ago because “before 2020 there was never before such a growth of national self-consciousness in Belarus.” Indeed, one may say that “it was precisely then that the Belarusian nation was born.”

            Babariko who himself was a political prisoner before being released and then expelled and whose son is still behind bars in Belarus as a hostage says that he favors all forms of resistance to Lukashenka and Putin except for taking up arms. That would prove counterproductive, he suggests.

Yerevan Will No Longer Set Up Polling Stations Abroad for Armenian Diaspora

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 11 – Armenian officials say they won’t be setting up polling stations abroad for Armenians living there, although they will allow diplomats and military personnel on assignment there to vote, a decision likely to have profound consequences not only in the June parliamentary vote but beyond.

            This decision was announced by Seda Gukasyan, press spokesperson for the Armenian Central Election Commission, who said that this decision was the result of changes in election law in that country first introduced in 2012 (vz.ru/news/2026/5/11/1417972.html and vz.ru/world/2026/5/11/1418037.html).

            The Armenian diaspora not only is large but is more committed to the idea that their homeland must rely on Russia to defend it against Turkey and Azerbaijan while Armenians in Armenia and especially the government of Nikol Pashinyan believe Armenia’s future depends on ties with the EU rather than Russia and on cooperation with its Turkic neighbors.

            Yerevan has not released figures on just how many Armenians abroad with the right to vote will find it more difficult to do so because they would have to travel to Armenia itself to exercise that right, but even if it is a relatively small share of all Armenians abroad, this restriction could tile the elections in favor of those who share Pashinyan’s views.

Kremlin Narratives Preclude Not only Calling War in Ukraine a War but Conflicts among Nationalities Conflicts, Abramenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 9 – It is universally recognized that Putin propagandists insist that no one must call Russia’s war in Ukraine a war; but it is less widely understood that there are other issues where these same propagandists insist that other things must not be called by their own names, Olga Abramenko says.

            According to the Russian commentator, one of the most significant of these concerns the relationships between the dominant Russian ethnos and the non-Russian minorities which the Kremlin insists must never be referred to as “conflicts” (svoboda.org/a/pryamoy-uscherb-oljga-abramenko-o-sledah-kolonizatsii/33745160.html).

            That not only distorts reality but makes it far more difficult for those involved to talk about what is going on  and then address the problems that this verbal sleight of hand seeks to conceal, Abramenko says; and it is one of the first things that representatives of the non-Russian nations must fight to overcome.

            One of the places where this conflict has been most in evidence is at the UN’s Permanent Forum on the Issues of Indigenous Peoples, which has just held its 25^th annual session. There, representatives of Russian officialdom continue to deny there are any conflicts, while representatives of the non-Russian minorities argue just the reverse.

            The officials typically get more attention, but the minority representatives have the far better argument because their position not only is congruent with reality but also with the way in which most participants in these forums discuss issues concerning the relationship between dominant groups and minorities.

            According to Abramenko, “for those peoples who now live in the Russian Federation, there are several aspects of conflicts in the sense in which it is understood at the UN. There is the war of Russia against Ukraine which has disproportionately involved the indigenous peoples, the continuing impact of the colonial policy of the Russian Empire, the USSR, and present-day Russia and the thieving activities of extraction companies.”

            In addition, she says, peoples in the Russian Federation “who do not belong to the ethnic Russian majority experience racism and xenophobia which in recent decades has become a part of social life and, in the  assessments of experts, is growing; and the numerically small peoples … remain one of the most vulnerable and impoverished groups in the population.”

            This year’s meeting of the UN forum focused on health issues in particular. Representatives of the Russian government argued that any problems the minorities were experiencing in that sphere were the result of Ukrainian actions and those of other outside powers rather than the Russian state or Russian society.

            But non-Russian experts pointed to the consequences of Russian actions and insisted they were not directed solely at activists, as many outsiders assume, but at the non-Russian peoples as a whole. Abramenko offers as an example a recent statement by Eskender Bariyev of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center who makes that point (adcmemorial.org/statyi/vystupleniya-uchastnikov-diskussii-golosa-korennyh-narodov-protiv-repressij-so-storony-rossijskih-vlastej/ ).

With Widening Drone Attacks, Ukraine Driving ‘Wedge’ between Moscow and Federation Subjects, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 7 – Many had expected that Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s far-flung regions and republics would generate support for Moscow and demands across the country for a massive Russian response to what Kyiv is now doing, but the reverse is in fact the case, according to Abbas Gallyamov.

            The former Putin speech writer and now Putin critic says that as he at least expected, by attacking Russia’s regions, “the Ukrainians are driving a wedge between Moscow and the federal subjects (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/10415 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/odno-iz-samyh-uyazvimyh-mest-putinskogo-rezhima).

            That is because people in the regions and republics are now having to an increasingly true reality: the defense of Moscow is being carried out on the backs of the federal subjects – and the center is not defending them as it should if Russia were a truly united country.

            According to Gallyamov, “the only effective defense” against such thinking “would be for Putin to make regular visits to the Russian heartland and, while there, publicly announce decisions to supply each of the regions with a new air defense system.” But “the Russian president is incapable of doing that.”

            Indeed, the commentator says, it is clear that Putin “genuinely believes and with absolute sincerity that protecting the citizens of his country does not fall within the scope of duties the president is expected to fulfill.” Instead, his business is to bomb the enemy; as for how his subjects are faring, that is none of his concern.”

            That has been true for some time, Gallyamov suggests; but what the Ukrainians have done with their drone attacks on Russia’s federal subjects is to make that obvious to ever more people there and even in Moscow but clearly not to Putin who remains oblivious to the consequences of this development.  

            Moreover, although the commentator doesn't suggest it, his reference to "a wedge" between Moscow and the regions will cause many Ukrainians and their friends to think about ethnic Ukrainian areas within the current borders of the Russian Federation, areas that many Ukrainians describe as "wedges."  

Women Remain Face of Protest in North Caucasus Even Though They’ve Lost Relative Immunity They had Earlier, ‘Daptar’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 6 – In the North Caucasus, women rather than men are the ones who speak out most publicly “against abuses of power by the security forces, abductions or violations o children’s rights,” according to experts and activists with whom the Daptar portal spoke. And this has continued even though they have lost the relative immunity they had earlier.

            The portal, which tracks the abuse of women in that region, says that women showed that most prominently in 2022 when they dominated the ranks of protests against mobilization for Putin’s war (daptar.ru/2026/05/06/mat-sestra-doch-pochemu-na-severnom-kavkaze-imenno-zhenshchiny-stanovyatsya-golosom-borby-za-spravedlivost/).

            But they have long taken the lead, sociologists who study protest in the region say, in part because they have enjoyed relative immunity from prosecution because defending the weak is viewed by many there as the proper role of women. Now, however, the Russian authorities are changing their approach and arresting more women.

            Despite that, the portal’s experts continue, women in the North Caucasus remain the face of protest in the region because they have earlier experiences in challenging officials when they believe their rights and the rights of their family members have been violated – and they are likely to continue to do so in the future.

            According to Daptar, “a woman can speak from a position of suffering and protection—pleading rather than demanding, appealing to justice rather than engaging in open conflict. This mode of expression proves to be socially acceptable and, therefore, viable.”

            One Chechen activist says that “A woman’s public voice is accepted only as long as it aligns with the image of a mother protecting her child, or an individual seeking justice. But the moment her words go beyond that boundary and become direct accusations, attitudes can shift abruptly—and the risks of facing pressure and intimidation escalate."

            Yet “even now,” Daptar’s Nailya Keldeyeva says, women remain “the most willing to assume the risks and remain active. And while earlier this might be attributable to prevailing notions of ‘female immunity,’ today it is increasing a matter of the wealth of accumulated survival experience.”