Willingness of Teachers to Wear Foil Hats to Block NATO Rays Shows State of Russian Society under Putin, Sidorov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – For the last week, the Russian media hves been full of stories about a group of teachers who fell for a Belarusian prankster’s joke about how foil hats could bloc NATO rays from destroying their brains and not only made and worse such hats but taught their students how to do so.
    When the prankster presented himself as a United Russia deputy and called on teachers to fashion aluminum foil hats to block NATO, the results exceeded all his expectations, Vadim Sidorov, a Prague-based expert on regional relations in the Russian Federation (idelreal.org/a/shapochki-iz-folgi-kak-vybor-rossiyskogo-obschestva/33202868.html).
    While government media reacted with restraint and many Russians with laughter, those who reflect on what this incident says about Russian society under Putin can only be appalled. Teachers, who in most places are intended to raise a new generation capable of critical thinking, have shown themselves ready to engage in the most “insane and servile” activities.
    Those who do things like putting on foil hats are certainly going to be willing to falsify elections or attack groups of their fellow citizens if they believe that the powers that be want that, Sidorov says; and consequently, teachers who put on foil hats are only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger problem  in Russia: servility and insanity.

Russia Now has Two Million Homeless and Their Ranks are Growing because of War in Ukraine, ‘Shelter’ Group Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Although the Russian government does not release any statistics on homelessness, the Shelter (Nochlezhka) organization, the oldest group in Russia devoted to helping the homeless, says there are now approximately two million homeless in Russia and that their numbers are growing because of the war in Ukraine.
    According to Nochlezhka, the three primary causes of homelessness are low incomes, family problems and the search for work in new places (tochno.st/materials/iz-za-krizisov-v-rossii-vyroslo-cislo-bezdomnyx-no-oficialnoi-statistiki-o-nix-net-my-proanalizirovali-dannye-noclezki-o-tom-kto-i-pocemu-cashhe-vsego-popadaet-na-ulicu).
    Their numbers rose during the pandemic and have risen even more since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine which has left many Russians without sufficient money to pay rent, increased problems within some families, and led others to move from one place to another in hopes of finding better jobs.
    Approximately four out of five are men, some are second generation homeless, and one in ten grew up in an orphanage. But despite public views, fewer homeless are alcoholics or drug abusers than are members of the Russian population as a whole, according to the data collected by Nochlezhka.
    Most of Russia’s homeless survive on the basis of temporary work or help from families rather than from social services provided by the government. Indeed, the group says, the only government service such people, who now form one in every 70 Russians, can rely is the government’s ambulance service.  

For the Sixth Time, Completion of Repairs to Russia’s Most Powerful Submarine Delayed, ‘Izvestiya’ Reports

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Vladimir Putin and following him the Russian and Western media regularly announce the launch of some new ship in the Russian navy and point to it as evidence of Moscow’s growing naval power. But none of these sources focus on another aspect of the situation: the lengthy periods such vessels are not in service because of refitting.
    The case of the Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s only aircraft carrier which now may end its life as a casino or artificial reef, is of course well known. But the problem is far larger than that: many ships in Russia’s navy are sidelined for refitting and repair for extensive periods, often far larger than originally announced.
    That makes an Izvestiya account of the sixth delay in the return to service from refitting and repair of the Admiral Nakhimov, Russia’s largest and most powerful nuclear submarine, both indicative and instructive (iz.ru/1790913/iuliia-gavrilova-maksim-manaev/dobavili-srok-vykhod-admirala-nakhimova-v-more-otlozhen).
    Again and again, Russian officials have announced that the submarine was about to return to service and even announced precise dates, the Moscow newspaper says. But every time, these dates passed and officials had to announce new dates, as well as new cost overruns on this project.  
    To be sure, naval vessels require repair and refitting and are offline significant portions of time in the best of circumstances. But any evaluation of Russian naval power must take into consideration that some of its most ballyhooed ships are not really in service for very long periods and the authorities have no confidence as to when they will in fact return to duty.

Patrushev Calls for Strengthening Russia’s Position on the Caspian

Paul Goble    
    Staunton, Nov. 15 – Nikolay Patrushev, former secretary of Russia’s National Security Council and currently head of its Naval Collegium, has called for a significant strengthening of Russia’s defense capacity on the Caspian to counter what he says are threats coming from NATO and Western special services more generally.
    At a meeting in Dagestan, he called for strengthening the FSB’s forces in the region so as to guard Russia’s borders; but his real concerns almost certainly lie elsewhere and are focused on expanding the power of Russia’s Caspian Flotilla and its ability to determine which trade routes operate (casp-geo.ru/nikolaj-patrushev-prizval-usilit-ohranu-rossijskoj-granitsy-na-kaspii/).
    In Soviet times, Moscow treated the Caspian as a Russian lake; but since 1991, the other littoral states have developed their navies to the point that Russia’s position has been challenged (jamestown.org/program/russias-caspian-flotilla-no-longer-only-force-that-matters-there/, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/russia-not-keeping-up-with-naval-build.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/kazakhstan-navy-demonstrates-growing.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/12/iran-launches-new-flagship-for-its.html and  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/07/azerbaijani-naval-exercises-highlight.html).
    Two years ago, the Russian naval doctrine was updated to include a section calling for the expansion of the Caspian Flotilla (jamestown.org/program/new-russian-naval-doctrine-assigns-expanded-role-to-caspian-flotilla/). Patrushev’s words are a sign that Moscow has not achieved what it wants and that it will devote far more attention to this as funds become available.
    Any such Russian moves have the potential to trigger a new naval competition on the Caspian and complicate the flow of oil and gas as well as other goods in both the east-west and north-south axes.   

Looming Bankruptcies of Russian Regional Air Carriers will Isolate Many Parts of the Country

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 13 – Many cities in the Russian Federation, especially those in the north and east of the Urals are not served by reliable roads or rail connections and thus must depend on air links to tie them to the rest of the country. That makes the potential bankruptcy of some 30 regional carriers into something more serious than a first glance might suggest.
    In countries with a ramified transportation system, problems in one sector are generally solved by shifting to the use of another. But in many places in the Russian Federation, there is no such possibility. And so if one sector, in this case, air travel, suffers a major blow, neither these cities nor Moscow have good substitutes available.
    And what is especially noteworthy is that this problem is being exacerbated by Western sanctions because restrictions on the leasing by Russian carriers of planes from the West and the lack of spare parts because of restrictions on their sale to these carriers appear to be the primary causes of this situation.
    Moscow’s Izvestiya newspaper report that approximately 30 of Russia’s local and regional air carriers now face bankruptcy. These currently carry 26 percent of all domestic passengers in the Russian Federation (iz.ru/1789856/vladimir-gavrilov-stanislav-fedorov/cek-za-bortom-aviakompanii-zaavili-o-riskah-bankrotstv-iz-za-dolgov-za-lizing).
    The Russian government may shift planes from Aeroflot to these routes and even use this crisis to take over the regional carriers. But such a solution would be only a temporary one at best and would most likely impose new burdens on the ability of the national carrier to continue to operate at current levels.  

Russian Political System ‘Unstable’ and People May Turn Overnight on Their Leaders, Zyuganov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 12 – Gennady Zyuganov, longtime head of the KPRF, says that the Russian political system is “unstable” and that “those who are involved in the political system” in Russia are at risk of attack because the people in his country have demonstrated in the past that they can turn from supporters to opponents overnight.
    The KPRF’s fears are undoubtedly shared by many other political figures in the Russian Federation and help to explain why so many of them are afraid to rock the boat even a little lest in doing so they put themselves at risk (agents.media/zyuganov-nazval-politicheskuyu-sistemu-rossii-neustojchivoj-i-predupredil-chto-ona-mozhet-posypatsya/).
    And such fears, likely in most cases far more than the effectiveness of propaganda or repression, go a long way to help to explain why Putin is able to prevent them from acting individually or collectively against him, however much they may disagree with him on this or that policy.

In Disguising North Koreans Fighting in Ukraine as Buryats, Putin Repeating Stalin’s Approach in Korean War, Namsareva Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 14 – To obscure the participation of North Korean troops in his invasion force in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is having the Koreans dress and otherwise present themselves as ethnic Buryats, a nationality from the eastern part of the Russian Federation that has already many men in Ukraine.
    By doing so, Sayana Namsareva, a Buryat scholar at Cambridge says, Putin is repeating what Stalin did in the Korean War, when he ordered ethnic Buryats and other nationalities from Asian portions of the USSR to be dressed up as Chinese in order to conceal Soviet participation in that conflict (themoscowtimes.com/2024/11/14/putin-pulls-from-stalins-playbook-in-sending-north-koreans-disguised-as-buryats-to-ukraine-a86857).
    In reporting this, Mariya Vyushkova, a Buryat activist, argues that both Stalin’s actions in Korea and Putin’s in Ukraine are “two episodes of the same story,” that of “an indigenous minority being exploited in imperial wars by an imperial power. [And] not just using Buryat men as cannot fodder … but also exploiting our name and identity to cover up its true actions.”