Russian Regions Offering Ever Higher Bonuses to Those who Sign Up for Military, Causing Some to Travel to Those who Offer More and Others who Took Lesser Amounts Earlier to Regret They Did, ‘SibReal’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – Rarely a day goes by when one or another region increases the bonuses it is prepared to pay for those who sign up on their territories to serve in the Russian military, a situation that is prompting some men to travel enormous distances to get more money and others, who took lesser amounts earlier, to suffer buyer’s remorse.

            The Kremlin has stimulated this by signaling that it will evaluate governors and lower-ranking officials in terms of how many men they sign up, regardless of whether they are registered as residents of the place where they do (sibreal.org/a/kak-glavy-regionov-sorevnuyutsya-v-verbovke-kontraktnikov-na-voynu/33153191.html).

            This gives some better-off federal subjects real advantages not only in terms of the number of men they will be able to sign up but also in terms of the future prospects of the officials in them who at a minimum can expect to remain at the same level they now are and more likely can expect preferment, while those in poorer regions will have poorer prospects

            But the amounts now being offered are so large that they are having a negative impact on regional budgets; and the rapid rise in such bonuses is having another consequence already that may prove more serious in the future and even make it more difficult for the regions at Moscow’s urging to sign more men up for military service.

            According to several people the SibReal portal spoke with, some men who signed up earlier when bonuses were lower now regret that they did not wait and get still more money. If such attitudes are widespread, that suggests that some men who might be willing to serve will now delay in the hopes that the authorities will offer them even more money to do so.

            That could mean that in the short term at least many regions will face ever greater difficulties in meeting the quotas the Kremlin has assigned them – and that could both harm the recruitment levels Moscow is counting on and the prospects of regional leaders who fall short on this measure. 

Many Russian Schools with Support from Teachers and Parents Already Excluding Immigrant Children, Ghettoizing the Country, ‘Bumaga’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – Last month, the LDPR proposed stripping the children of immigrants without Russian citizenship of the right to free public education, an action that many observers said would create more problems than it would solve and suggested was only a PR move by a party known from them (tass.ru/obschestvo/21787701).

            But an investigation carried out by the independent Bumaga news agency finds that many Russian schools are already refusing to take in such children, leading to their concentration in schools that do accept them and to numerous cases where older immigrant children don’t go to school at all (paperpaper.ru/shkoly-getto-vmesto-socialnyh-liftov/).

            Both of these consequences are leading to the ghettoization of immigrants, to slower adaptation of migrant children to Russian life and to a sometimes violent youth culture that already means that while there are fewer immigrants now than in the past, the problems they pose are growing.

            And while there are no statistics available on how large either of these trends has become, the Bumaga study of the situation in St. Petersburg suggests that both are large and growing and will have a negative impact first on both migrant and non-migrant children in the schools and then on Russian society more generally.

            According to Bumaga, schools, teachers and the parents of non-immigrant children support excluding immigrant children because their presence means that teachers hthe goave to devote more attention to those who do not know Russian well and that attention means that all the students get less training in the subjects the government will test them on.

            If the children do less well, school directors and teachers will not receive higher pay and the parents of all children will do less well on the tests and thus have fewer opportunities to go on to higher education.  Consequently, there is a large group of people who oppose admitting children of non-citizenship immigrants to the schools.

            The solution, Bumaga says, activists and experts say, is to establish special schools for immigrants so as to provide them with the training in the Russian language they need if they are to remain in Russia. But some acknowledge that there is a danger that setting up such schools could also lead to ghettoization as well.

Under Putin, Russia’s Constitutional Court Now ‘a Potemkin Village of a Dictatorial Regime,’ Lukyanova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – Under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s Constitutional Court has become “a Potemkin village of a dictatorial regime,” an organ prepared to rubber stamp anything the Kremlin wants and whose decisions are typically ignored by the Duma and treated as a joke by other Russian courts, Elena Lukayanova says.

            The author of a detailed history of the Court between 1992 and 2015 (hse.ru/data/2015/12/14/1134491815/Блохин П.Д. диссертация. 09.12.2015.pdf) tells the Vyorstka news agency that the court tries to appear active by taking up issues not properly its own (https://verstka.media/pochemu-konstitucionniy-sud-nachal-zanimatsia-ne-svoim-delom).

            She says that in the 1990s the situation was very different, and the court’s actions were worthy of study. But now, no one can take it seriously or should devote time to considering what it is doing.  Other experts the independent news agency surveyed seconded Lukyanova’s judgment. 

Any Large-Scale Return of Kyrgyz Workers Now in Russia to Their Homeland will Destabilize It, Kyrgyzstan Deputies Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – Russia’s intensifying anti-immigrant policies and attitudes are leading to the flight of many Central Asian migrant workers to their homelands. There has been a great deal of discussion about the impact of their departure on Russia but far less about what their return to Central Asia will mean for the countries of that region.

            But increasingly Central Asian elites are focusing on the problems that the return of migrant workers who have been in the Russian Federation will create, with ever more suggesting that the return of such people will send incomes plummeting and undermine stability in the region.

            The latest example of such expression of concerns came yesterday from Kyrgyzstan where parliamentarians denounced the mistreatment of Kyrgyz migrants in Russia and expressed fears many of them will now return to their homeland (stanradar.com/news/full/56043-migratsija-mozhet-poshatnut-politicheskuju-stabilnost-kirgizii.html).

            Their return, the deputies said, will seriously reduce incomes in those portions of Kyrgyzstan from which most migrants come, exacerbating social and economic tensions, and even threatening the stability of the country. In fact, the parliamentarians said, there was evidence that this is already happening.

            Officials and commentators in other Central Asian states from which migrant workers to Russia come have said much the same and even begun to think about how they can counter those consequences especially if Moscow does not end but rather intensifies its anti-migrant policies (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/dushanbe-prepares-for-massive-return.html).

As Putin’s War in Ukraine Grinds On, Moscow Cuts Funds for Fighting Cancer for Third Year in a Row

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – The Russian government has slashed spending on fighting cancer each year since the start of Vladimir Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine. It plans to reduce spending in 2025 to 140 billion rubles (1.4 billion US dollars), down from 153.7 billion rubles (1.53 billion US dollars) in 2023 and 189.6 billion rubles (1.89 billion US dollars) in 2022.

            That will release more money for the war, but these cuts will have the effect of further depressing Russia’s already dire demographic crisis, one that up to now the Kremlin and the Duma have talked a lot about but have taken measures that won’t compensate for the additional deaths these cuts will lead to (rosbalt.ru/news/2024-10-16/pavel-pryanikov-nado-vnesti-yasnost-v-kampaneyschinu-po-demografii-5223501).

            In addition to cuts in spending on treating cancer, Moscow also has announced even deeper cuts in spending on medical care for those suffering from circulatory illnesses and other major diseases as well on the construction and reconstruction of medical facilities in which such people might be treated (rbc.ru/society/16/10/2024/670d28b69a7947654366da44).

            Such cuts will lead to more deaths from these serious illnesses, reducing life expectancies among older people on which Russia increasingly relies for boosting that figure (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/10/despite-increased-deaths-among-young.html) and worsen Russia’s demographic crisis, yet another consequence of the war in Ukraine for Russians.

Patrushev Using New Position to Promote Changes in Russian Naval Policies that Threaten the West

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 17 – When Putin transferred Nikolay Patrushev from his position as secretary of the Russian Security Council and appointed him as a presidential assistant in charge of the restored Naval Collegium, many saw that as a clear demotion and even suggested it might cause Putin to challenge Putin.

            Those suggestions (cf. windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/06/putins-recent-personnel-moves-threaten.html and https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/newly-elevated-naval-collegium-to.html) have overshadowed and distracted attention from a more important development.

            As Vzglyad commentator Aleksandr Timokhin argues, Patrushev has used his new position to promote the rebuilding of Russian naval and merchant marine capacity and to lead Putin to adopt a far more aggressive stance against the West on the world’s oceans (vz.ru/society/2024/10/17/1292275.html).

            Indeed, he implies, Patrushev may have emerged from his supposed demotion in an even stronger position and one with more immediate and troubling consequences to the West than even his sometimes paranoid denunciations of what he sees the West as doing inside Russia (e.g., jamestown.org/program/kremlin-worried-about-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/ and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/newly-elevated-naval-collegium-to.html).

            In his new position, Patrushev has been working to overcome three major obstacles to Russia’s becoming a major naval power: the longstanding Russian focus on the army rather than the navy as the basis of its strength, serious problems in Russian shipbuilding, and the paucity of exercises that can serve to intimidate others by highlighting Russia’s strength in this area.

            As Timokhin notes, these three problems have combined to lead to the decline of the Russian fleet since Soviet times, leaving the country’s navy with only approximately a quarter of the ships in the American navy and meaning that there is not a single book in recent times on the uses of the Russian fleet in non-nuclear conflicts with the West.

            Putin has put Patrushev in this position to overcome these problems, the commentator continues; and Patrushev has the knowledge and energy to achieve far more in this regard than the Russian naval leadership has achieved in recent decades, putting it on course to be far better able to respond to and challenge the navies of the West. 

Estonian Parliament Says Stalin’s Deportation of Crimean Tatars was a Genocide and that Moscow is Continuing that Crime Against Humanity in Russian Occupied Crimea

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 16 – On the occasion of the 80^th anniversary of Stalin’s deportation of 200,000 Crimean Tatars from their homeland, the Estonian parliament voted overwhelmingly to denounce that action and point out to the world that Putin is continuing that policy in Russian-occupied Crimea.

            The Riigikogu condemned the 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars during which many of them died and from which they were able to return only in November 1989 (rus.err.ee/1609492547/rijgikogu-priznal-massovuju-deportaciju-krymskih-tatar-genocidom and riigikogu.ee/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Zayavlenie-Rijgikogu-Priznanie-massovoj-deportatsii-krymskih-tatar-1944-goda-aktom-genotsida-RU.pdf).

            But it went further and declared that the Russian Federation is continuing this act of genocide since it occupied Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, demanded that this criminal policy be ended and said that the territorial integrity of Ukraine must be restored there and elsewhere as well.

            The Estonian deputies called on the international community to show solidarity with the Crimean Tatars and continue to denounce the annexation of Crimea that has been carried out by the Russian Federation, the continuing genocide of the Crimean Tatar nation, and the restoration of their land.

            This is the ninth Riigikogu declaration about Ukraine since Putin began his expanded war there in February 2022. In these others, the Estonian parliament condemned Russia for its genocide against the Ukrainian people and declared that Moscow under Putin is a terrorist regime.

            The Estonian parliament also has spoken out in favor of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO and the bringing before an international tribunal all those Russian officials responsible for crimes against humanity in Ukraine.

            The Estonian deputies have thus shown more courage than their counterparts in other Western countries even though Estonia shares a common border with the Russian Federation and many observers say that it could be Putin’s next target for invasion if he succeeds in defeating Ukraine.