Caspian’s Falling Water Level Hitting Kazakhstan Harder than Other Littoral Countries

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – Because of differences in the topography of the coastline and in the depth of coastal waters, the rapid fall in the water level of the Caspian is not hitting all five of the countries equally. Kazakhstan is suffering the most and thus has become the leader in efforts to prevent the shallowing of the sea from becoming a disaster.

            According to Kazakhstan journalist Viktor Dolgov, Kazakhstan must take unilateral steps to address its problems before it will be in a position to demand the cooperation of other littoral states, at least some of which don’t face the same problems and can avoid making changes (spik.kz/2407-obmelenie-kaspijskogo-morja-ugrozy-i-riski-dlja-kazahstana.html).

            The Kazakhstan authorities have also been prompted to be more sensitive to these issues because Astana has already been confronted with the demise of the Aral Sea and thus know more than the other four Caspian littoral states which have not just how serious falling water levels can be economically, socially and politically.

            And it is these two factors which mean that Kazakhstan has already taken more steps at home and in relations with its neighbors in this regard and is likely to do so in the future, steps that have put it at odds with Russia over water from the Volga which flows into the Caspian (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/08/russians-outraged-kazakhstan-wants.html).

 

Moscow Wants Women to have More Children but to Save Money Continues to Closer Obstetric Facilities, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – Putin and other central officials continue to declare that getting Russian women to have more children is a matter of national security; but despite that, an investigation by the Horizontal Russia portal finds, Moscow is closing down birthing homes and cutting back on other obstetric facilities.

            This disconnect has sparked anger among potential mothers, local and regional officials and the nurses and doctors who have lost their jobs or have been forced to work without the kind of support they need to ensure that women can deliver their babies safely and efficiently (semnasem.org/articles/2025/10/07/pochemu-zakryvayut-roddoma).

            Over the past five years, Moscow has closed a minimum of 150 birthing homes which had handled fewer than 100 births in the previous 12 months. As birthrates continue to fall over much of the country, the number of such facilities which have been shuttered is rising at an ever more rapid rate.

            The Russian health ministry says that pregnant women can get the services they need in hospitals, but according to doctors and mothers with whom Horizontal Russia spoke, that is not the case. Many obstetric departments are understaffed and poorly equipped or are located much further away from where people live than the birthing homes.

            The Russian government under Putin does not publish statistics on this phenomenon, but it is almost a certainty that the shuttering of birthing homes is leading some Russians to decide not to have children, exactly the opposite of what it’s declared policy is and yet another example of the increasingly internally inconsistent nature of the Kremlin leader’s policies.

Partisan Actions against Moscow Took Place Across Russia Almost Every Day Last Month, ‘Resistance’ Group Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – According to the Resistance telegram channel, leaders of the Activation movement inside the Russian Federation confirmed 24 partisan acts against the Putin regime across that country during September, the largest monthly total in 2025 and a harbinger of what the group calls “a partisan autumn.”

            It provides a listing of these actions, most of which have been confirmed by other sources (t.me/alresistance/340 reposted at rusmonitor.com/v-rossiyu-prishla-partizanskaya-osen.html); but it is likely that the Resistance list is incomplete rather than the exaggeration many might assume and that in fact partisan actions took place in Russia almost every day last month.

            While 24 actions against Russian facilities, businesses and government offices, including those handling the military draft is not an enormous number, it is an indication that resistance does exist and that it may even be growing, despite the deployment by the Kremlin of its enormous coercive resources.

            And that in turn may be one more reason why some close to the top of the Russian political pyramid would like to see an end to the war in Ukraine lest such actions increase in number and raise questions in the minds of the Russian population about the ability of the authorities to maintain order. 

 

Putin’s War in Ukraine Soon will Exceed Length of Stalin’s Great Patriotic War, Kolesnikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 3 – Given the centrality of Soviet participation in World War II for Putin and the Russian people today, it is disturbing to take note of the fact that the Kremlin leader’s war in Ukraine will soon have lasted longer than that earlier conflict, commentator Andrey Kolesnikov notes.

            Traditionally, Moscow has said that the Great Patriotic War began when German forces invaded the USSR on June 22, 1941, and ended when the Soviet government declared victory over the Nazis on May 9, 1945. Using that chronology, it lasted 1418 days, albeit a bit longer if one also counts Soviet involvement in the war with Japan after V-E Day.

            Putin’s war against Ukraine has now lasted more than 1300 days, Kolesnikov points out; and that means in less than three months, it will have lasted longer than did the Great Patriotic War (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/vremeni-net-budushego-net-obshestva-net-predvaritelnye-itogi-ampquotsvoampquot).

            While the Kremlin has not mobilized all of society the way Stalin did and even has played down both the conflict as a whole and the losses Russia has suffered from it lest it generate a greater backlash at home, the shear length of the current war means that it will almost certainly cast a far longer shadow over Russia, not to mention Ukraine, than many now think.

            And that is one more aspect of any post-war Russia that both Russians who either want to continue their country’s current course or radically change it and people of good will elsewhere need to take into consideration in their thinking, planning and actions lest they fail to recognize just how much of an impact on Russia Putin’s war in fact will continue to have.

New Buddhist Leader of Tyva Likely to Play Far Larger Role than His Predecessors

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 5 – Russia’s Buddhists seldom garner the attention followers of other faiths do; and when they do attract attention, most of it goes to the Buryats and Kalmyks who have long competed with each other for leadership (jamestown.org/program/moscow-reaches-out-to-buddhists-abroad-but-faces-problems-with-them-at-home/).

            But the election of a new spiritual leader of the Buddhists of Tyva may change that. Not only is Loden Sherab young – 39 – but he was trained in a Buddhist seminary in India and has been the organizer of the Russian Buddhist University which is set to formally open later this month (t.me/khovalyg_live/8733 and asiarussia.ru/news/47915/).

            Because he was trained abroad, the new kamby lama can be expected to become a major player in the complex diplomatic chessboard among the Dalai Lama, Russia and China; and because he is so involved in developing Buddhist education, he can be expected to have greater influence over Buddhists elsewhere in Russia than his predecessors.

            But it is within Tyva, a troubled republic (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/08/tyva-most-dangerous-place-to-live-in.html)  some have suggested will be the first to secede from Russia (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/06/tyva-will-be-first-republic-in-russia.html), that he likely will have the greatest impact.

            Loden Sherab naturally will be under intense pressure from Moscow to rein in his fellow Buddhist Tyvans, but he has resources with his Indian training and involvement in education which could  rapidly elevate him to a leading position among Tyvan nationalists (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/01/buddhist-community-in-russia-and-its.html).  

            In short, the new kamby lama merits close attention as he begins his five-year term in office.

Era of Moscow’s Non-Russian Schools Coming to an End with Threatened Closure of Only Tatar School There

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 3 – In the 1980s and 1990s, non-Russian communities in the Russian capital asked for and were allowed to form special schools in their native language, with the growth of such schools rising to 47 in 1996. Now, with the threatened closure of Moscow’s only Tatar school looming, the era of such schools in the capital is coming to an end.

            Most of these schools were numbered just as regular Russian schools were but they often acquired the name of a national hero and were known informally as the school of this or that nationality. The Tatar school, for example, is named for Musa Jamil, a Soviet hero during World War II (business-gazeta.ru/article/684356).

            Initially, all these schools conducted their classes in the language of the nationality they were known for; but beginning 15 years ago, such classes were limited and then almost entirely eliminated over the last five years. And in most cases, this destruction occurred by the amalgamation of these schools with neighboring Russian ones.

            The looming demise of Moscow’s Tatar school is especially important not only because it suggests that the era of non-Russian schools in Moscow is coming to an end but also because it eliminates a school that has been a haven not only for Tatars but for other non-Russians and thus an important conduit of Tatar influence to that larger group.

            As Business Gazeta points out, only 98 of the 632 pupils in the school are Tatars, outnumbered by far by Tajiks (179) and Kyrgyz (120), although 28 of the school’s 32 teachers are ethnic Tatars. If the school is closed as appears likely to happen before the end of this year, these ties will be at least disrupted if not completely destroyed. 

 

Ethnic Russians Can and Do Assimilate to Other Nations Both Inside Russia and Abroad

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – It remains an article of faith in the Kremlin and is widely accepted by many analysts in the West that assimilation in Putin’s Russia proceeds in only one direction, that non-Russians lose their languages and cultures and become Russianized while ethnic Russians never give up Russia or assimilate to non-Russian nations.

            But there are exceptions both inside the Russian Federation when Russians find themselves surrounded by or intermarry with representatives of non-Russian nations or when Russians move abroad and intermarry with representatives of other nations. At present, Moscow has good reason to worry about both possibilities.

            A year ago, the NeMoskva portal called attention to ethnic Russians whose ancestors moved to rural portions of Sakha (Yakutia) long ago, who are surrounded by ethnic Sakha, and who now know the language of the titular nationality better than they do Russian, the language their ancestors spoke when they first arrived (nemoskva.net/2024/04/18/russkie-yakuty/).

            The number of such people is relatively small and might be dismissed as anecdotal; but their existence is important for three reasons: First, it shows that ethnic Russians are not exempt from the rules that govern the behavior of other ethnic communities who find themselves in an overwhelmingly different ethnic and linguistic milieu.

            Second, the existence of such people helps to explain the passion with which many in the Moscow government pursue policies of Russification, a passion driven not only by a desire to spread the Russian nationality to others but also and by fears that Russian identity could be challenged if non-Russians grow in number and retain their languages.

            And third, “the ethnic Russian Yakuts” as NeMoskva translates “Sakhalar” should remind the non-Russians of the power of their own ethnicity and language when these are maintained, a power sufficiently great to overwhelm “the Great Russian nation” that the Kremlin and its propagandists typically insist upon without the kind of pushback some might expect.

            As the share of non-Russians in the population rises as a result of higher birthrates among non-Russians than among ethnic Russians and the influx of non-Russian migrants, the possibility that Russians will be assimilated by others is thereby increasing – and not surprisingly alarming the Putin regime and many Russian nationalists (jamestown.org/program/non-russians-increasing-their-share-of-russias-population/).

            Indeed, because such assimilation challenges one of Putin’s core beliefs, its appearance and spread helps to explain some of the passion of his push for assimilation in the opposite direction, a push intended to prevent the Russian nation from dying the way his actions are leading to the demise of other nations (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/putin-has-long-believed-ethnic-russians.html).

            But it is the other case of the assimilation of Russians by others that is alarming  ever more Russian politicians. Chinese men, who outnumber Chinese women because of Beijing’s former one-child policy, have long looked abroad to find wives; and among the places they have done so is the Russian Federation (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/02/50000-russians-have-moved-to-china-some.html).

            Some Russian politicians, including Svetlana Zhurova, the first deputy chairman of the Duma’s international affairs committee, are convinced that the number of such marriages and the possible loss of Russians to China by assimilation will skyrocket as a result of more travel by Chinese to Russia and more Russians to Chinese (versia.ru/kitajcy-vyvozyat-nevest-iz-rossii).

            According to the Russian Academy of Sciences, as many as half a million Russians now live in China, including many women from Russia who have married Chinese men (www.ng.ru/economics/2025-01-30/1_9182_china.html). That at least some of these women will assimilate and be lost to the Russian nation is a very real concern in Moscow.