Russia May Always Ready for Nuclear War but It is Never Prepared for Cold Weather, Muscovites Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 6 – Russia is always ready for nuclear war, the Putin regime says, but the country is never ready for the insidious coming of cold weather and the need to heat apartments so that people don’t freeze, become ill and die, according to the latest anecdote circulating in Moscow.

            Among the other anecdotes Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova offers this week (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/44850/-), the following are especially instructive:

·       As of January 1, the Putin regime is offering an 80 percent discount to Russians purchasing rose-colored glasses.

·       Defense Minister Shoygu says there won’t be a second wave of mobilization. Instead, he has announced, there will immediately be a ninth wave, referring of course to the wave that will destroy everything.

·       Telling the truth in Russia today is a great stupidity; but remaining silence is no less an act of cowardice.

·       Told that his opponents are spreading lies about him, a senior Russian official says that at least they aren’t spreading the truth.

·       The most popular brand in Moscow is the thief.

·       Germany’s success in weaning itself from Russian energy supplies is an even greater defeat for Russia than the one it is suffering on the field of battle in Ukraine.

·       The Russian space agency has announced that it is cooperating with Zimbabwe in the area of small satellites. Given Zimbabwe’s advanced position in that field, there can be little doubt that Russia will now rush ahead.

·       Putin has made it clear that the war in Ukraine can be ended quickly if Kyiv agrees to give Russia everything it wants.

·       Patriarch Kirill’s insistence that religions bring peace is challenged only by the long history of religious wars.

Those Russians who Fled Abroad to Avoid Serving in Ukraine Unlikely to Go Home if Moscow Requires Public Repentance

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 6 – One of the most offensive policies of Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov, the requirement that those who are offended by his rule make a public apology may about to be adopted by Moscow and applied to Russians who fled abroad to avoid serving in Ukraine but who now would like to return.

            Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president and now deputy head of the Russian Security Council has declared that those who left but now want to return must make a public act of repentance and then be granted amnesty (newizv.ru/news/2023-01-07/doroga-domoy-chto-zhdet-v-rossii-uehavshih-392714).

            Such a requirement would violate the Russian constitution but even more important, it would almost certainly guarantee that most of those Russians who went abroad in the course of 2022 to avoid service in Ukraine won’t return anytime soon. Indeed, this could make what some call “relocaters” true emigres who will not go back at all or at least until there is regime change.

Russian Orthodox Church More Isolated Internationally than Even in the Late 1930s, Malyutin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 6 – Even in the dark days of the late 1930s when Stalin had killed or executed most of its leaders has the Russian Orthodox Church been as isolated internationally as it is today, the result of its leadership’s uncritical support of Putin’s war in Ukraine, according to Aleksey Malyutin.

            The specialist on religious affairs says that conclusion reflects the exit of Orthodox churches in Ukraine and the Baltic countries from Moscow’s control but also the anger of other Orthodox church leaders and Christian leaders more generally about Moscow’s position (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/01/06/tserkov-zheleznogo-kresta).

            That international isolation is also making it easier for Orthodox priests and lay people within the current borders of the Russian Federation to distance themselves from Patriarch Kirill and his pro-war hierarchy. They are picking up the arguments of Christians abroad and deploying them against the Moscow hierarchy.

            To the extent that continues, the Moscow Patriarchate may soon be a hollow shell, with a leadership ready to support any crime by the Kremlin but without a flock that could make such support worth having.  In short, the isolation of the church internationally is leading to its isolation domestically as well.

Belarus Also Wrestling with Brain Drain Problem

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 6 – Especially since Vladimir Putin launched his expanded invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, an action that sparked a massive outflow of young Russians who do not want to serve in that war, there has been a great deal of attention to the risk that the Russian Federation faces because of a brain drain.

            But Russia is far from the only country in the former Soviet space which faces that problem. Belarus does as well; and a newly published article based on a survey conducted in 2019 suggests that Minsk may be able to hold scholars in the hard sciences but is unlikely to be willing to take the steps necessary to retain those in the humanities and social sciences.

            That is because, the study’s author, Olga Voroshel of the Minsk Institute of Sociology says, graduate students in the hard sciences say that higher pay and better financing of their fields will keep them in Belarus while students in the humanities and social sciences are more inclined to be affected by the isolation of that country internationally.

            The study, “The Migration Intentions of Graduate Students of the Academic Sector of Science: A Sociological Analysis,” appeared in the latest Belarusian sociological almanac (socio.bas-net.by/13-yj-vypusk-sotsiologicheskogo-almanaha-za-2022-g/). Its findings are discussed at thinktanks.by/publication/2023/01/06/chto-mozhet-reshit-problemu-utechki-mozgov-v-belarusi.html).

            Voroshel’s conclusions that students in the hard sciences are more likely to be swayed by more money than anything else while those in the humanities and social sciences are more likely to decide whether to emigrate depending on social and political conditions are obviously applicable to Russia as well.

            And they suggest that countries like Russia and Belarus are likely to be able to slow or stop outmigration of young people working in hard science far more easily than they will be able to achieve the same with regard to students in the humanities and social sciences, a finding that gives texture to discussions about brain drains from such countries.

 

Kazakhstan’s Ongoing Military Expansion May Ultimately Threaten Russia, Kramarenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 6 – Kazakhstan has been reforming, modernizing and expanding its military forces since the January 2022 events forced Astana to call in forces from the Organization of the Collective Security Treaty to put them down. It is thus directed primarily against internal threats rather than at neighboring countries, Maksim Kramarenko says.

            But the Moscow security analyst says that there is a foreign dimension to this build up because of the possibility that outside countries may exploit domestic problem as part of a hybrid war effort against Kazakhstan (ia-centr.ru/experts/maksim-kramarenko/kazakhstan-gotovitsya-k-voyne-s-kem-i-dlya-chego/).

            Among the signs pointing to that conclusion is Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s appointment of an interior ministry general to head the defense ministry and revisions Kazakhstan’s defense doctrine that stress the link between domestic and foreign threats (tengrinews.kz/kazakhstan_news/tokaev-vnes-izmeneniya-v-voennuyu-doktrinu-kazahstana-480536/).

            But other changes in that doctrine raise questions that must be of concern to Moscow, Kramarenko says. The Kazakhstan document now specifies that one of the tasks of the country’s military is to block any efforts to change the international order. That puts Kazakhstan on the side of the West given that both Russia and China are seeking a new and more just order.

            And because that is so, the analyst concludes, it is entirely possible that Kazakhstan’s expanded and modernized army will act in support of the West against Russian and Chinese moves, something Moscow must be ready to block or even prevent by taking action before Astana goes too far.

As War Drags On, Putin is Ever More Dependent on the Military and has Ever Less Control of Initiative, Stanovaya Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 6 – As the war in Ukraine drags on, Tatyana Stanovaya says, Vladimir Putin is becoming ever more dependent on the Russian military and the militarization of Russian society is becoming an ever more prominent feature of Russian life. Putin himself is uncomfortable with both trends, especially as he feels he has lost the initiative.

            The question thus arises, the Russian analyst suggests, whether Putin can break with either of these two trends and whether if he tries, the military will be in a position to block him from doing do. Clearly, if the war does not end, the Kremlin leader will have little chance to do so; but how it ends may affect Putin’s future moves (realtribune.ru/vozrosla-zavisimost-putina-ot-rossijskih-voennyh-politolog).

            If Russia wins, the military at least for a time will be difficult to expel from its current prominence and militarization will thus likely continue; but if Russia loses, the military will be discredited but so too will Putin who made the decision to go to war in the first place – and reducing the military’s influence may be possible only at the cost of a decline of his own.

            Putin is thus trapped in a situation he created but that has evolved in ways he did not anticipate; and all his goals for how he wants to cement his reputation in Russian history are not linked to the performance of people that he isn’t entirely comfortable with and whose success or failure may very well be beyond his ability to decide.

 

Russia Remains Heavily Reliant on Ice Roads to Tie the Country Together

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 6 – Russia, it has sometimes been suggested, came into existence as a country only because of the combination of two natural phenomena: its major rivers flow south to north and the water of these rivers freezes during much of the year making it possible for those in the south to extend their reach and rule into the north.

            But most people consider this a matter of historical interest and ignore the fact that the ice roads remain a major component of Russia’s geography, linking together cities and regions that otherwise are unconnected on the ground. (They are of course now linked by air, but planes can’t carry the amount of cargo that trucks, trains and ships can or do so at anything like the price.)

            A report by the Toboznoye Radio telegram channel that has been reposted by the YakutiaFuture portal serves as a reminder of just how important these ice roads are in much of Russia and how willing government and business there are to spend money to keep them operational (t.me/Torboznoe_radio/1421 and yakutiafuture.ru/2023/01/06/na-stroitelstvo-lenskogo-mosta-uzhe-ushlo-25-milliarda-rublej/).

            To ensure that the ice roads continue to operate, the telegram channel says, Russia has spend billions of rubles each year in recent times and plans to continue to do so well into the future.