Number of Russians Seeking Vaccination Collapses in Moscow, Other Russian Cities

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 28 – At the start of the year, 300,000 Muscovites were seeking vaccination every month. By March, that figure had declined to 100,000, a pattern found in many Russian cities and one that is prompting ever more regional officials to try to increase rates, even by employing forceful methods (znak.com/2021-05-28/kak_glavy_regionov_pytayutsya_privit_interes_rossiyan_k_vakcine_ot_koronavirusa).

            Among these is vaccinating people in hospital for other things with the coronavirus shots without telling them. Such measures are outraging many Russians, and in some places they have even taken to the streets to protest against them (znak.com/2021-05-28/v_ulyanovske_nachalis_pikety_protiv_prinuditelnoy_vakcinacii_ot_koronavirusa).

            At the same time, some are suggesting the officials aren’t doing enough and that Moscow is spending more time trying to promote the sale of Russian vaccines abroad than at getting the shots into Russian arms. The reason, they suggest, is “banal.” It brings in money to Putin and his entourage (gordonua.com/blogs/eydman/vlasti-rf-s-maniakalnym-uporstvom-prodvigayut-sputnik-v-na-mirovye-rynki-na-etom-hochet-podzarabotat-dochka-putina-i-ee-druzhki-1555259.html).

            Russian officials reported registering 9252 new cases of infection and 404 new deaths over the last 24 hours, with Moscow and St. Petersburg and the regions surrounding them the most significant hotspots as the pandemic continued to ebb and flow across the country (t.me/COVID2019_official/2987 and regnum.ru/news/society/3277253.html).

            On the vaccine front, the health ministry says that it is continuing preparations to test Russian medications on children but that it has already determined that Sputnik-5 and the others are safe for pregnant women (regnum.ru/news/3282638.html and regnum.ru/news/3282632.html).

            The health ministry has also refused tog rant approval for phase two and three trials of a new coronavirus vaccine combining elements of Sputnik-5 and AstraZeneca. It says it is waiting for additional information before making a decision (pharmvestnik.ru/content/news/Eticheskii-komitet-Minzdrava-otklonil-issledovanie-kombinacii-vakcin-AstraZeneca-i-Sputnik-V.html and rbc.ru/society/28/05/2021/60b121be9a79475dd7a29f8a).

            Meanwhile, in a comment underscoring just how important vaccines can be, Academician Nikolay Briko, an epidemiologist, says that vaccines have increased human life spans by 25 years over the last century (regnum.ru/news/3282183.html).

Moscow Using Western Sanctions to Justify Classifying Ever More Information, Tkachev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 27 – Although a decade ago, the Russian government declared it favored openness and transparency in the handling of official information, since the Crimean Anschluss and especially since the imposition of Western sanctions, it has classified ever more materials in the name of national security, Ivan Tkachev says.

            The economics editor of RBC says that in doing so, the Russian authorities have faced real problems because the Internet which allows them to watch the Russian people also allows the Russian people to watch the authorities. But Moscow has classified ever more information (ridl.io/ru/sekretnye-materialy-kak-rossijskoe-gosudarstvo-stremitelno-uhodit-v-ten/).

            Moreover, it has done so in ways and involving businesses not ostensibly part of the regime but closely linked to it and subjected to sanctions that opens the way to ever more draconian restrictions in the free flow of information not only in areas that might be connected with national security but across the board.

            According to the economics journalist, Moscow has invoked the West’s sanctions on Russia as justification for its actions; but the authorities have taken actions that increasingly have little or no clear relationship to these issues. Poorly written laws and decrees have allowed for this mission creep, something quite likely intentional.

            For example, Tkachev continues, because the limitations on information involving individuals and groups who fall under sanctions “formally do not fall under the category of state secrets,” the established rules for handling such security-related information do not apply and the government has moved to extend the application of sanctions rules to unsanctioned companies.

            And this has created dangerous precedents which the powers that be are applying ever more often. Thus, when officials began talking about further reform of the Russian pension system, Moscow classified information about those discussions lest it spark public outrage even before any changes are announced.

            At present, he continues, the Russian government is also seeking to create an intermediate category between state secret and publicly available information. This would be something like an “official use only” restriction and would if the Duma approves it allow a large amount of information to be withheld from the public without formally classifying it.

            But perhaps the most disturbing use of this new drive for restricting information involves efforts by the authorities to prevent defenders of journalists like Ivan Safronov or political activists like Aleksey Navalny from having access to the information the powers have and are using against them.

            That not only limits their ability to mount a defense but also ensures that the government can decide that any hearings about their cases must be behind closed doors because newly classified information is involved, Tkachev continues. He says that this move to restrict information has reached the point that one can divide it up into three categories.

            First of all, the journalist says, there is “politically motivated secrecy: the authorities limit access to public and high-profile cases connected with the opposition or dissidents;” second, it may be used to limit the spread of information the population is likely to be angry about; and third, it gives the regime more opportunities to engage in corruption without exposure.

            Tkachev says that as a journalist he has often experienced the following: information he needs and wants is publicly available until he or another journalist seeks it out. Then it disappears with officials saying that it has been classified. That happens more and more, sparking a race between researchers and classifiers.

            According to the Russian law on state secrets, the authorities may not classify data on “the state of health care, sanitation and demography.” But during the pandemic, they have restricted information on all three, creating uncertainty and even leading various officials to contradict one another because there is no one reliable source.

            Tkachev says that all indications are that the situation with regard to classification will only get worse given “the stagnation of economic growth, the demographic crisis brought on by the pandemic, the growing ‘spy mania’ of the force structures and the toxic atmosphere for the media and civic activists.”

More Evidence Given that March 2019 Ingush Event was Not a Meeting and Thus That Charges Someone Organized It are Absurd

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 27 – In a Kislovodsk courtroom yesterday, Barakh Chemurziyev, an Ingush activist who has been charged with extremism for his role in the protests in that republic in 2018-2019, testified that the March 2019 gathering did not qualify as a meeting because there were no speakers and no banners.

            Instead, he told the court, people were simply milling around waiting to see what the authorities might do with respect to requests for official approval of a demonstration, thus confirming the video shown in the case against the Ingush Seven. The next session of his case will be on June 1 (fortanga.org/2021/05/barah-chemurziev-dal-pokazaniya-v-sude/).

            Meanwhile, in another high-profile case, Akhmed Pogorov, vice president of the World Congress of the Ingush People, was rearrested in a hospital room after being released from the detention center to home confinement when officials decided to charge him with being an organizer of an extremist community (ovdinfo.org/express-news/2021/05/27/lidera-ingushskogo-protesta-vernuli-v-sizo-zasedanie-suda-proshlo-nochyu-bez, fortanga.org/2021/05/ahmedu-pogorovu-vmenili-statyu-ob-uchastii-v-ekstremistskom-soobshhestve/ and kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/364344/).

            Pogorov’s attorney suggested that the siloviki had put pressure on the courts to rearrest the longtime activist and that the courts had complied possibly because Pogorov himself earlier had avoided arrest for so long. The lawyer said that he will appeal the decision against his client who remains ill (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/364368/, kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/364319/ and fortanga.org/2021/05/zashhita-pogorova-namerena-privlech-sudyu-k-otvetstvennosti/).

            Such back-and-forth among the siloviki, the courts, and lawyers for defendants has become the norm in Ingushetia, leading to a situation in which the media sometimes reports only the softening and at other times only the hardening of the official position. But the overall trend is clear: Magas backed by Moscow is becoming ever more repressive of Ingush activists.

Russia Now Critically Dependent on Imports of Strategic Metals including from Ukraine, Audit Chamber Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 27 – Russia relies on imports for more than a third of strategically important minerals, including from Ukraine and Kazakhstan, and has no effective plan to develop alternatives, the Audit Chamber says. As a result, the Russian economy is falling ever further behind the economies of the advanced countries of the West.

            At present, the auditors say, Russia relies on imports for 100 percent of the titanium, chrome, manganese and lithium it uses and more than 87 percent of the zirconium (ach.gov.ru/upload/iblock/64f/86t1xajzpwu5blnw66q0rieuy094t8oj.pdf, discussed at finanz.ru/novosti/birzhevyye-tovary/schetnaya-plata-soobshchila-o-kriticheskoy-zavisimosti-rossii-ot-importa-strategicheskikh-metallov-1030475881).

            The importance of these imports is reflected in how they are used, the Audit Chamber says. Titanium is used mostly in civil and military aviation and chrome for building submarines and rocket motors. Lithium is used in nuclear energy, and manganese for a variety of specialty steels.

            In addition to these materials on which Russia is almost completely dependent on foreign countries, it also imports “almost 50 percent” of the copper it needs, two-thirds of the bauxite, 100 percent of iodine, and significant portions of other natural resources it either doesn’t have or hasn’t developed.

            The key suppliers are Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Chili, China, Mongolia and the South African Republic. Ukraine, for example, in 2018-2020, supplied 82.9 percent of the titanium Russia imported, 51.2 percent of the zirconium, and 73.2 percent of the copper Moscow purchased from abroad.

            According to the Accounting Chamber, “the government de facto lacks any plan for import substitution of such deficit materials in this area. More than that, one can see a lag [in Russia] behind the world level for the development and use of technologies of enrichment and processing such raw materials.”

            As a result, “the centers of competence which were left to the country from the USSR have been lost, and the production of rare earth minerals has either been reduced or completely shut down.” That is already casting a dark shadow on many branches of the Russian economy and will harm it even more in the future, the Accounting Chamber says.

Enthusiasm of Senior Officials for Using Prison Labor Raises Serious Questions, Shelin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 27 – Since Penal System head Aleksandr Kalashnikov proposed using 188,000 inmates as workers in the economy, senior officials have lined up almost on a daily basis to express their support for the idea, an enthusiasm that by itself raises some serious questions, Sergey Shelin says.

            Perhaps, these officials “above know something,” the Rosbalt commentator says. “Perhaps, there soon will be many more candidates for such forced worker contingents? The current circumstances by themselves give rise to such suspicions” (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2021/05/27/1903756.html).

            On the one hand, Kalashnikov has gone out of his way to say that such use of prison labor won’t make the system into a GULAG  and other officials have stressed that prison labor alone won’t solve the country’s labor shortages (sroportal.ru/news/vyacheslav-volodin-trud-osuzhdyonnyx-ne-izbavit-ot-deficita-trudovyx-resursov).

            But on the other, a Novosti commentator has portrayed the GULAG as something positive reflecting not only the further whitewashing of Stalinism but also possible thinking about using such a system in the future (ria.ru/20210523/gulag-1733466440.html; discussed in windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/05/moscow-moves-from-justifying-gulag-to.html).

            Shelin recalls that in March 1953, three weeks after the death of Stalin, Lavrenty Beria called for releasing “almost half of the 2.5 million prisoners of the GULAG” and the Soviet government unanimously approved the amnesty. It is worth comparing what Beria said with what the Novosti commentator now says, he suggests.

            Beria in 1953 said that confining so many people in camps and prisons did not serve any state interest and that conditions in many of these places were awful. Novosti today says that “in spite of the myths imposed on us,” the GULAG was quite varied and many parts of it provided a better life than poor peasants and lumpen urban groups had at the time.

            Further, Beria in 1953 said that confining people to camps cut them off from their families and from society and had “an extremely negative” impact on their futures. Novosti now says that “this was a more or less normal life in comparison with the most difficult conditions in which the poor then lived.”

            Everyone can judge for himself “who is right,” Shelin says. “For me, it is obvious that Lavrenty Beria knew incomparably better what he was talking about. And that makes the appearance of the Novosti article and the enthusiasm of senior officials for using prison labor extremely worrisome.

            One can of course console oneself with the notion that this is just a typical example of propaganda and that life itself moves along in a separate “channel.” But, the Rosbalt commentator concludes, “it is becoming more and more difficult to believe” that is the case in Russia today.

Russian Regionalists Want Regions, Not Some New Man in the Kremlin, to Decide Country’s Future after Putin, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 27 – The Kremlin’s decision to disperse the Zemstvo Congress along with its other repressive steps shows that “the Putin regime is in principle unreformable,” Vadim Shtepa says. And because that is so, those who oppose it should be discussing “only projects for the post-Putin future.”

            Many of those taking part in the Tenth Free Russia Forum this weekend believe that Russia will remain a centralized state with only one difference. It will have “’a good tsar’” from thewir ranks rather than “’the bad one’” it has now, the editor of the Tallinn-based Region.Expert portal says. Regionalists have a more radical vision (region.expert/contours/).

            In his theses for the regionalist roundtable to be held at the Forum, Shtepa begins by stressing that regionalists do not start from the assumption the Russia will be a single highly centralized state. At the very least, its component parts will gain real autonomy, and some of them may elect not to remain in the Russian state itself.

            Any changes, he continues, will have to begin with the acquisition by the regions of the authority to make their own decisions about themselves and their relations with the center. That will require the democratization of the entire country and the recovery by the regions and republics of the power to elect their own leaders and collect taxes for themselves.

            If those things are achieved rapidly, many of them will want to work together because they will only benefit by doing so, Shtepa says. But if the center tries to slow or stop such a development, then at least some of them may decide that they should try to make their way as independent countries.

            The Putin regime often suggests in is propaganda that federalism in Russia existsly solely because of the existence of non-Russian republics. But that is a survival of the past when the union and autonomous republics formed half of the population of the USSR at the end. Now, the republics within the Russian Federation have only 18 percent of its total.

            The predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays form a much larger portion of  the population, and they too must gain the same expanded rights that the republics should get if the country is to be both democratic and federal. As such, regionalists are demanding a more radical reordering of the country for Russians as well as non-Russians.

            Russian regionalists also have their own view about ideas pushed by Aleksey Navalny and others about centering Russia around cities rather than regions so as to avoid separatism (svoboda.org/a/31244512.html). Bur such megalopolises in countries where they exist do not provide a counterbalance to centralism; they may even be used to promote it.

            Indeed, Shtepa says, “if Russian millionaire cities are transformed into ‘cities for themselves,’ they will become analogues to the megalopolises of ‘the third world’ – Lagos, Karachi, Dacca, Cairo and so on. They will not be political subjects and they will be ‘enlarged’ in every possible way on orders from Moscow.”

            Such cities in Russia can play a valuable role if but only if they become “sovereign centers of regional development” for the areas around them rather than operating only for themselves. To that end, they will need Institutes for Regional Development such as existed in some Siberian cities in the 1990s.

 

Moscow Closes 44 More Airports in North Effectively Cutting Off Large Swaths of Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 27 – Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has ordered the closure of services at 44 airports in the Russian North, further reducing the number of airports in Russia and effectively cutting off many parts of the north more dramatically than one might assume because there are no roads or railways connecting these places with the rest of the country.

            According to his order (publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202105260007), all services at 19 airports in Arkhangelsk Oblast, 17 in the Nenets Autonomous District, five in Krasnoyarsk Kray, and one each in the Komi Republic, Irkutsk Oblast, Sakha and Komsomolsk-na-Amure will no longer be serviced.

            According to officials in the region, this action was taken without warning and means some cities will no longer have regular air service, limiting health care, pressuring more people there to leave, and undermining shore support for the Northern Sea Route (znak.com/2021-05-27/mishustin_podpisal_rasporyazhenie_o_zakrytii_44_aerodromov_dlya_obsluzhivaniya_samoletov_v_rf).

            Since 1991, Moscow has been reducing the number of operational airports. At the end of Soviet times, it had 1450 of them. Now after this action, it has only 184 for the country as a whole, less than half as many as Papua New Guinea and less than two percent of the more than 13,500 airports in the US (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/06/putins-renaming-airports-attracts.html).

            The situation in the North and Far East with respect to airports has deteriorated especially sharply. In 1991, there were 470 operational airports across that enormous and largely roadless part of the Russian Federation. Now there are only 38 left out of the 470 airports which existed in the north and east thirty years ago (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/06/window-on-eurasia-russia-needs-domestic.html).

            Russian officials note that the runways will survive, something that in principle will allow for emergency flights in and out. But without permanent staffing, it is likely that many of them will not be maintained at all – and consequently, using them will be dangerous or even impossible.

            What makes this little-ballyhooed announcement so remarkable is that it calls into question Vladimir Putin’s bold talk about developing the Russian North and making Russia an Arctic power. With transportation access to this area now significantly reduced, the chances of achieving his goals are cut as well.