Non-Russians will Protest if Moscow Adopts Law Declaring Russian Their Native Language, Sakha Leaders Say

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 21 – Ivan Shamayev, head of the Sakha Congress, says that “no matter how much I love the Russian language,” he can’t “consider it to be his native one” and that if the Duma passes a law saying that he must recognize Russian as being that, there will be protests in Sakha and in other non-Russian areas.

    He is far from the only one making such a declaration. Even senior regional officials are doing the same: Aleksandr Zhirkov, the Sakha Republic’s deputy prime minister, has said the same on numerous occasions (t.me/s/Govorit_NeMoskva/43968 reposted at indigenous-russia.com/archives/43404).

    Moscow officials, including most prominently Putin advisor Elena Yampolskaya, have demanded that the new law specify that Russian is the native language of all the peoples of the Russian Federation; and the current draft of the legislation contains a provision which does precisely that.

    The situation is about to come to a head. A revised draft law is to be presented for the Duma’s consideration by May 1. If there are no changes, then it is likely that the warnings from the two Sakha leaders will soon come true and that there will be clashes between non-Russian activists and officials, on the one hand, and Muscovite and Russian ones, on the other.

Insurrection of Russian Deserters Held in Krasnodar Highlights Large and Growing Problem for Moscow, Rights Activists Say

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 23 – Leaked Russian defense ministry documents say that more than 50,000 Russian soldiers had deserted during Putin’s war in Ukraine by the end of 2024, a figure several orders of magnitude larger than before that conflict and one that activists say represents about 10 percent of all Russian troops in Ukraine.

    Calling attention to this development was the rising of approximately 100 Russian soldiers being held in a military facility in Krasnodar Kray on suspicion of desertion. Seven managed to escape but four of those were quickly recaptured (kavkazr.com/a/vzbesivshayasya-myasorubka-bunt-voennyh-v-krasnodarskoy-komendature/33392553.html).

    But because the numbers taking part in the rising were so large, activists interested in the fate of Russian soldiers, including those arrested for desertion or going AWOL, have paid more attention to the problem with their reports showing that the Russian military doesn’t know what to do with the growing numbers of those who seek to leave its ranks.

    Many of those have been kept in the Krasnodar facility in horrific conditions for more than six months; and Ivan Chuvilayev of Get Lost, an organization which helps Russian deserters, says that these conditions and the recent rebellion aren’t “an isolated incident but part of a larger systemic problem,” although most such protests rarely get much attention.

    The Russian military doesn’t admit this problem and so “in formal legal terms,” facilities to hold deserters don’t exist, he continues; and as a result, they exist outside of any legal norms with all the horrors that such a placement opens the way to. Those in term are given the choice of returning to the frontlines or remaining in these camps indefinitely.

Death Spiral of Russia’s Coal Industry Brought Forward a Decade by Kremlin Miscalculations and Putin’s War in Ukraine, Economist Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 24 – The role that strikes by coal miners played in the collapse of the Soviet Union is one of the most important but largely unrecognized factors in the collapse of that country (newleftreview.org/issues/i181/articles/theodore-friedgut-lewis-siegelbaum-perestroika-from-below-the-soviet-miners-strike-and-its-aftermath.pdf ).

    Consequently, the fate of Russian coal mines has long played a much larger part of the thinking of post-Soviet Russian leaders than many in the West are inclined to think. But now a Russian economist is warning that the death spiral of that industry is not only close but has been brought forward by perhaps a decade by Kremlin miscalculations and Putin’s war in Ukraine.

    Tatyana Lanushina, an independent expert on energy issues, draws that conclusion on the basis of a close analysis of what has been happening to Russia’s coal industry over the last several decades and what has taken place in particular during the last three years (theins.ru/ekonomika/280751).
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    She says that more than half of all Russian coal companies were unprofitable last year, the result of Moscow’s failure to recognize changes in the world’s energy industry, a failure exacerbated by the Kremlin’s push to get funds from existing sources to finance its war in Ukraine.

    Had the Kremlin begun to shift away from goal to renewable energy, she suggests, it would be in a far better position, an argument others have made as well (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/02/a-well-executed-closure-of-russias.html). But because it failed to do that, the branch faces collapse and massive strikes are possible.

    Such strikes, her analysis suggests, could shake the government and the country in ways equally profound to those which helped to undermine the Soviet government and led to the disintegration of the USSR in 1991.

Russia has Its Own Form of Gerrymandering with Moscow Redrawing Electoral Districts to Weaken Urban Voters Inclined to Support Opposition, ‘Horizontal Russia’ Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 23 – Moscow has now drawn new electoral districts for the 2026 Duma vote, a process that is required by law to take place every ten years to ensure that these districts remain roughly equal in size. But in fact, experts with whom Horizontal Russia spoke say, the lines have been drawn to weaken urban voters who are less likely to support the party of power.

    Each electoral district has approximately 500,000 residents, but there are a variety of ways that officials can draw the lines to achieve that. One step they have taken this time more than in the past is to combine portions of urban centers with larger rural ones to boost the chances United Russia will win (semnasem.org/articles/2025/04/23/rossijskaya-vlast-25-let-ubivala-izbiratelnyj-process-pochemu-ona-vse-eshe-boitsya-vyborov).

    This has happened, Russian political scientist Dmitry Loboyko says, because the Kremlin knows that rural voters are reliably in the corner of the party of power while urban ones are more likely to vote for opposition parties and reduce the chances that the elections will turn out as the Putin regime wants.

    To be sure, Loboyko and other experts say, this redrawing of electoral district boundaries is only one of the many ways the Kremlin manipulates elections and ensures that its candidates win. Using spoilers and outright falsification are likely more important. But Russian gerrymandering matters and should be factored into any analysis of what is going on.  

Russia Least Religious in Practice among Predominantly Orthodox Christian Countries Despite Relatively High Levels of Declared Orthodox Identity, Surveys Show

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 23 – In terms of practice and respect for the church, Russia is the least religious among all predominantly Orthodox Christian countries, the World Values Survey finds, despite Kremlin efforts it as the leader of the Orthodox world. Instead, its people treat Orthodox as a norm to be acknowledged but not necessarily follow, just as they did Soviet values earlier.

    That conclusion – see worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWV7.jsp as discussed at re-russia.net/analytics/0283/ -- is supported by Russian polling which shows young Russians far more irreligious and even hostile to the ROC MP than their elders, people born in Soviet times and who view Orthodoxy like they viewed Soviet ideological positions.

    Compared to other predominantly Orthodox countries, these surveys show that far more Russians are atheist, far fewer attend church or church rules, see religiosity as important for themselves or as a quality they seek in their children.   In short, Putin has made Russia a country of “declarative” Orthodox but not a religious one.

Another Sign – This Time in Altai Republic – Moscow May be About to Restart Regional Amalgamation

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 24 – The clearest indications that Putin plans to restart his regional amalgamation effort have come in the Russian north, where new moves to unify the Nenets AD with Arkahngelsk Oblast are underway (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/kremlin-to-unite-nenets-ad-with.html).

    But now there is another, this time in the Altai Republic, a small federal subject – it covers 92,000 square kilometers, and has a population of 210,000, just over half of which are ethnic Russians while 37 percent are members of the composite Altai nationality – which borders China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan.

    There, the federal subject head, Andrey Turchak, is pressing for changes in the Russian constitution which he says will bring it into line with all-Russian rules but which some Altai fear opens the door to changes including the dropping of its defense of the republic’s territorial integrity (mariuver.com/2025/04/24/v-rossii-gotovjatsja-k-likvidacii-nacionalnyh-regionov/).

    Such changes have already happened elsewhere, and Altai residents fear the same thing may be about to happen to their republic. Such fears have been triggered by Turchak’s failure to publish a complete list of the changes he wants and that could lead to the amalgamation of the republic with neighboring Altai Kray, whose population is 95 percent ethnic Russian.

    Such a combination would be consistent with what Putin has done in the past, although his efforts at combining smaller non-Russian regions with larger and predominantly ethnic Russian ones have been slowed by protests and by both the impact of the covid pandemic and of his military campaign in Ukraine.  

    The Altai Republic seldom gets much attention, but it has the potential for protests and thus causing the Kremlin problems if it pushes for its amalgamation with the Altai Kray. (On that possibility, see https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-mountainous-altai-where-russians.html, https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/not-everyone-from-altai-republic.html and https://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/05/moscow-alarmed-by-talk-in-kazakhstan.html.)

Russian State Authority is ‘Sacred’ and the Duty of Russians is to Obey, Kremlin Aide Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 18 – A senior Kremlin aide has now openly declared what it is obvious Putin believes. According to Aleksandr Kharichev, Russian state authority is “sacred” and the duty of Russians is to obey up to and including the sacrifice of their lives in order to support its existence.

    Kharichev, head of the Presidential Administration team responsible for monitoring social trends but someone who has written frequently about ideological questions in support of Kremlin candidates in election, makes this declaration in a special policy essay for the government’s Civil Enlightenment Bulletin.

    His words have been picked up by various Moscow outlets where they have been described as the basis for the development of a full-blown Putinist ideology and even as “a blueprint for the construction of Putinism” (meduza.io/feature/2025/04/18/sotrudnik-ap-aleksandr-harichev-napisal-statyu-kotoraya-vyglyadit-kak-instruktsiya-dlya-stroitelya-putinizma).

    On the one hand, Kharichev’s words are no surprise. They represent a pastiche of arguments drawn from Putin himself and writers like Lev Gumilyev and only make explicit what these have implied. But on the other, his saying them now suggests that the Kremlin has decided that it is time to create an explicit ideological foundation for Putin’s system.

    In his essay, Kharichev “pits rationalism against faith, legal formalism against truth, and individualism against the family” to argue that “Russians should rely on faith, truth and family values rather than rationality, law, and individual rights, values that set Russia at odds with the West, a Meduza commentator says.

    “Living by these principles,” this commentator says, “Russia finds itself threatened by ‘the transhumanist and post-humanist ideologies’ that Western countries seek to impose on it,” with the aim of “sowing divisions and fracturing society.” Only by promoting traditional values and duty-bound patriotism can those efforts be countered.