Putin Gives FSB Control of Membership of Numerically Small Nationalities

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 29 – Vladimir Putin has given the FSB control of the composition of lists of members of the numerically small peoples of the North and Far East, thus allowing the siloviki rather than anyone else to decide who is a member and who thus qualifies for the benefits of being so and for having a voice in the economic development of the region.

            The Russian constitution specifies that every citizen of that country has the right to declare the nationality of his or her choice or to declare none at all. But there is one major exception: members of numerically small nationalities whose members are granted special privileges in order to help them survive.

            That makes membership in those communities something valuable and so the Russian authorities have gone to some lengths to ensure that only those who are really members of these nations are able to claim those benefits, even going to court to have individuals forced to prove their nationality or be struck off.

            Until a few years ago, regional officials maintained these lists on their own. There was no all-Russian list. But as Russian corporations and the government have expanded into the North, Moscow concluded that it needed to be in control lest numerically small peoples get in the way of center-favored economic activity.

            With the establishment of government monitoring of ethnic problems in 2016, the task of compiling such lists was given to the Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs. But now it has been handed over to an inter-agency committee the FSB chairs, giving that siloviki body far greater powers (indigenous-russia.com/archives/7213).

            Only one other country has a list like this: China, which maintains one for minorities in the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region and has used the lists to decide who is to be confined in its notorious concentration camps. There is no sign that Moscow is about to take such a radical step, but the latest move gives the Kremlin a kind of leverage it cannot be trusted to use fairly.

Kadyrov Sets Up Special Agency to Work with Chechens Abroad

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 29 – Ramzan Kadyrov who is better known for his murderous attacks on his Chechen opponents in other countries has set up an Agency for Ties with Compatriots to try to mobilize this diaspora in support of his regime by providing legal assistance and language training (akcent.site/novosti/9489 and etokavkaz.ru/news/93915).

            Clearly modelled on Vladimir Putin’s similar organization for work with ethnic Russians and Russian speakers outside of the Russian Federation, the Chechen variant will give Grozny a plausible reason for dispatching his agents to diaspora centers where they are likely to seek to win support and attack the anti-Kadyrov forces.

            The possibilities for mischief and much worse by Kadyrov’s people are great given the size of the Chechen diaspora: There are now approximately 200,000 Chechens in Europe, and another 150,000 in the Middle East, in addition to smaller centers in the US and other countries.  The head of the agency is Akhmed Dudayev, Kadyrov’s new press and information minister.

40 Times as Many Russians have Been Infected as Moscow has Reported, Popova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 29 – The real number of Russians who now have immunity to the coronavirus is 40 million, a figure that means most have been infected and developed antibodies without being aware of it and also that the death rate from the pandemic is “40 times less” than officials have reported, Anna Popova, head of the Russian consumer protection agency, says.

            The undercount reflects the fact that few people without symptoms have been tested – 36 million tests have been administered in Russia so far (regnum.ru/news/3048920.html) -- and that the share of those tested who will be hospitalized and die is far higher than the facts warrant, she says (nakanune.ru/news/2020/8/29/22582487/).

            This much lower lethality rate also means, Popova suggests, that many Russians, including the elderly, were subjected to “unjustified limitations” on their activities on the basis of assumptions about the death rate among them. Her words will both further erode public confidence in official reports and willingness of people to follow government recommendations.

            New polls show that more than half of all Russians – 53 percent – do not believe that mass vaccinations are needed; and despite what some might think, about half are getting information on that from doctors and other medical personnel, with only 20 percent getting it online (iarex.ru/articles/77210.html).

            In this situation, Vladimir Putin has called on Russians to obey all recommendations by doctors and specialists on how they and their children should behave as the school year begins (regnum.ru/news/3048967.html).

            Russian officials announced that they have registered 4941 new cases of infection, bringing the cumulative total to 985,346 and 111 new deaths, boosting that toll to 17,025 (t.me/COVID2019_official/1379). Meanwhile, reports from the federal subjects show the pandemic is continuing to ebb and flow (regnum.ru/news/society/3045839.html).

            And in a report about how things can go wrong in this complicated time, doctors at an Omsk hospital have agreed to pay for the reburial of pensioners who died from the coronavirus and were interred earlier without the approval or even notification of their relatives (omskinform.ru/news/145342).