Ethnic Ukrainians with Russian Birth Citizenship Facing Increasingly Serious Problems Inside Russia and Abroad, Belyayeva Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Ethnic Ukrainians born in the Russian Federation and who have Russian citizenship from birth face serious problems both in that country and in Western countries if they are able to flee abroad, according to Nina Belyayeva, a representative of the Eastern Slobodzhanshchyna national liberation.
    Inside the Russian Federation, she says, such people many of whom are rapidly recovering their ethnic roots face repressions of various kinds; and when they seek to flee, they face a lack of understanding in the West of their predicament (abn.org.ua/uk/vyzvolni-ruhy/nina-belyayeva-shidna-slobozhanshhyna-cze-ukrayinska-etnichna-zemlya-bilsha-chastyna-yakoyi-nyni-perebuvaye-v-mezhah-rosiyi/).
    Many of those who seek to flee Russian oppression don’t go to Ukraine because of the war and because they lack close relatives there, but when they go to other countries, they often can’t get residence permits or the path to citizenship because of charges that the Russian authorities have brought against them, Belyayeva says.
    Western governments seldom recognize the bind in which these Ukrainians find themselves and are reluctant to offer them permanent residence. Belyayeva says that her group is working to compile a list of Ukrainian activists with Russian citizenship who have been charged with various crimes by the Russian authorities.
    Such a list will help Western countries understand the nature of their predicament and thus become more willing to provide them with asylum of one kind or another. Otherwise there is a great risk that these Ukrainians will be sent back to the Russian Federation because the false conviction that they are Russian citizens first of all.
    There are several million people of Ukrainian heritage in the Russian Federation, most but far from all in regions that the Ukrainians refer to as klins or “wedges.” (On these groups, see see jamestown.org/program/kyiv-raises-stakes-by-expanding-appeals-to-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/ and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-real-wedge-issue-ukrainian-regions-in.html and the sources cited therein.)
    Relatively few of these people are actively identifying as Ukrainians, but enough are to have sparked real concern in Moscow (jamestown.org/program/kremlin-worried-about-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/). It would be a tragedy if Western ignorance about their history and current status meant that the West would become Moscow’s ally in repressing such people.  
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Because of Global Warming, 550 Square Kilometers in South of Russia Now Turning Into Desert Every Year, SFU Scholars Say

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Russians and others have long focused on the ways in which climate change is warming the Russian north and melting the permafrost there, but they have devoted less attention to the impact of global warming on the south of Russia where this trend is leading to desertification.
    Now, a group of scholars at Russia’s Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don are reporting that the desertification of the Russian south is occurring at the rate of 550 square kilometers each year, threatening not only the environment but the economy and forcing people to leave these areas (akcent.site/novosti/36577).
    Rising temperatures are the primary culprit, the scholars say; and they have already seriously changed the region’s biological diversity and are increasingly having an impact on human life in the region. Tragically, however, regional officials are doing little or nothing beyond denouncing it to counter this trend (astrakhanpost.ru/astraxanskuyu-oblast-atakuet-pustynya/).  
    If that continues and if Moscow does not intervene, the SFU experts suggest, then the negative impact of climate change in the southern portions of the Russian Federation will only have broader and more negative consequences for the country as a whole in the coming years and decades.  

It’s a Disaster for Everyone when, as in Putin’s Russia, Abusers Rise to Power, Nikulin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 14 – Among men, there is a certain share of men who unconsciously feel their own weakness seek to compensate by dominating women in their lives, a terrible crime in its own right but one that becomes even worse when as a result of crises in their societies, such men find themselves in positions of political power, Andrey Nikulin says.
    Then, unable to take on the stronger in society, they search out those who are weaker and do whatever they can to oppress them so as to feel themselves strong, even though what they are doing is of course a manifestation of their own weakness, the liberal Russian blogger says (t.me/HUhmuroeutro/36527 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6735AB34CB8FE).
    In healthy societies, abusers are disdained and punished, Nikulin continues, “but when crises arise in social institutions, it is precisely these people who “because of their cohesion as a group and enormous reserve of destructive energy and aggression periodically begin to dominate.”
    When that happens, he says, “then the time of a search for enemies, totalitarianism, repression, and demonstrative persecution and the limitation of rights of those whom they seek to put on their knees begins,” something such people are able to do either by “taking advantage the stunned apathy of society or by infecting a significant part of it with their destructive ideas.”
    Those given to abuse in small things feel weakness in others and take advantage of it, but there is a real problem: “a significant part of the energy that feeds such aggressors is involved in the banal sublimation of their own failures as men … and when choosing whether to develop and grow or to put pressure on and weaken others,” their choice is preordained.
    That is what is taking place in Russia and of course in some other countries as well; and it is proving a disaster wherever it happens.  

In Putin’s Russia, Unspoken but Very Real Ban on Displaying Ukrainian Colors of Yellow and Blue Together Takes Ever More Absurd Dimensions

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 10 – Since the start of Putin’s expanded invasion of Russia, residents of that country have been detained and then fined if they wear clothes or carry bags that feature both yellow and blue, the two colors of the Ukrainian flag. Now, officials in Moscow’s Kuzminky District have had to change their coat of arms because it had both colors on it.
    Officials in that district explained their action by saying that the two swans also featured on their coat of arms had been “drawn incorrectly” and that what had taken place was nothing more than an effort to correct that (lenta.ru/news/2024/11/05/v-moskovskom-rayone-reshili-smenit-sine-zheltyy-gerb/).
But as Moscow journalist Andrey Kalitin points out, it wasn’t the swans that needed changing  but the colors because the Kremlin can no longer tolerate any display of blue and yellow together lest it appear to be an act in support of Ukraine (t.me/akalitin/526 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=6730F86C5C8AE).
The investigative journalist suggests that this is a revival of a medieval practice of banning colors that symbolized the wrong thing as far as those in power were concerned. But he notes that such bans have happened more recently -- including in Hitler’s Germany where the Nazis banned the use of red unless it was shown in combination with white and black.

Moscow Using Increasingly Repressive and Deceptive Means to Fill Ranks of Russian Army in Ukraine

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – Many news outlets have featured stories about how the Russian government is using pardons of prisoners and ever larger bonuses to attract men to serve in the ever-depleting ranks of Putin’s invasion force in Ukraine. But the independent Holod news agency says that Moscow is increasingly using other repressive and deceptive means as well.  
    Among the most widespread of these other means, the agency says on the basis of conversations with those who have been subject to them and groups that seek to protect their rights (holod.media/2024/11/12/rossijskie-vlasti-ispolzuyut-novye-metody-verbovki-na-vojnu/) are the following:

•    Attracting men with false advertisements that promise one kind of work but that after the individuals sign up send them to the front;

•    Threatening former convicts with new charges and prison sentences unless they agree to join the military; and

•    Telling draftees that they will be sent into combat unless they sign up for longer terms of service – and then sending them to the frontlines anyway.

Holod isn’t in a position to say how widespread these practices are, let alone give statistics about them. But these reports do highlight something that many observers have pointed out in recent months: Despite the support of the Russian people for Putin’s war, that support doesn’t extend to volunteering to fight there.

Moscow Plans to Scrap 2003 Arctic Nuclear Clean Up Accord with EU and Norway

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – The Russian government has approved and sent to the Duma a draft law that will denounce the Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Program in the Russian Federation putting to an end Western-supported programs to clean up sites where Soviet officials had dumped nuclear waste in the Arctic.
    That accord, signed by the Russian Federation, the European Union and Norway in 2003, helped clean up nuclear waste in the Arctic and protected Europe from radiation leaks from aging Soviet-era storage containers (interfax-russia.ru/moscow/news/kabmin-podderzhal-denonsaciyu-ramochnogo-soglasheniya-o-mnogostoronney-yaderno-ekologicheskoy-programme).
    But it also had the effect of integrating Russia into international environmental principles and practices. Now, apparently, all progress in that direction has been ended and Russian practices shifted into reverse. As Aleksandr Nikitin of the Bellona Foundation put it, “it’s amazing how in two and a half years you can destroy everything achieved over decades.”
    For background on this problem and an indication of what will now be lost, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/flooding-in-russia-threatens-to-spread.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/05/moscows-immediate-goal-for-arctic.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/11/hundreds-of-abandoned-ships-rusting.html windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/08/moscow-finally-addressing-its-nuclear.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/delayed-action-mines-under-russia.html.

Tajikistan Follows Uzbekistan in Arranging to Send Migrant Workers to South Korea

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – Tajikistan has now followed Uzbekistan in arranging to send migrant workers to South Korea instead of the Russian Federation, a shift that may have even greater importance to geopolitics in the longer term than the arrival of North Korean troops in the Russian Federation to fight in Putin’s war in Ukraine.
    At the end of last month, Dushanbe and Seoul signed an agreement opening the way for Tajiks to go to South Korea to work and study beginning in 2025 (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2024-11-12--tadzhikistan-stremitsja-perenapravit-trudovyh-migrantov-v-vostochnuju-aziju-76774). Such a flow help compensate for the return of Tajiks from Russia.
    This decision follows several years of discussions between the two national governments, with each having compelling interests: Dushanbe because it needs the payments from migrant workers that have fallen given Russian hostility to such people and Seoul because its population is now set to decline with deaths now exceeding births.
    Both sides are working to develop programs to provide Korean-language training to Tajiks interested in working in South Korea, people who hope to earn as much as 2500 US dollars a month. In this, Tajikistan is following Uzbekistan which already has a similar and larger program for its 100,000 migrants in South Korea (gazeta.uz/ru/2024/02/05/south-korea/).
    If this Tajik program takes off, that could lead to even larger departures of Tajik migrant workers from Russia who will now have somewhere to go where they can earn as much or even more than they did in the Russian Federation. And if other Central Asian countries follow Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Moscow will face mounting labor shortages in key sectors.