Despite Current Defeat, Russian Liberals have a Future if They Seek a Parliamentary System in which Regions are the Most Important Actors, Sorkin Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 16 – Repressed by the Putin regime at home and no longer with allies in the West that they had earlier, Russian liberalism is suffering an existential crisis, with many of its leading lights now in emigration suffering from a deep pessimism about the future, Moscow Times columnist Yefim Sorkin says in a new book.
    In a 256-page volume entitled After the Exodus published in Russian in Germany, he argues there are compelling reasons for this pessimism but that what has happened in both Russia and the West in recent decades may give Russian liberals a chance to recover, albeit one for which there are no guarantees (moscowtimes.ru/2025/03/16/opit-porazheniya-liberalizma-v-rossii-a158074).
    Unlike many Russian liberals, Sorkin suggests that many of the reasons for the defeat of liberalism lie not in some external force but in the liberals themselves.  “In their quest to ‘catch up with the West,’ Russian reformers saw democratic institutions as tools for more effective governance” rather than as means to protect people a recovered state.
    Those who consider themselves Russian liberals failed to understand that, failed to take into account the attitudes of the Russian people, and failed to recognize that they themselves would have to do the heavy lifting, assuming instead that the West would create a democratic Russia and hand it to its liberal allies.
    Now, however, it is clear that “the West no longer views such Russian Westernizers as allies in the struggle to involve Russia in the Western world.” Putin’s war in Ukraine and changes in the West itself have put paid to that. Indeed, Russian liberals “can no longer point to the West as an ideal of development.”
    But precisely because they have been thrown back on themselves, Russian liberals may be able to create a future Russia that is far better than the one they know now by operating on themselves and seeking to promote “a state constructed on the representation of the regions on the basis of parliamentarianism.”
    That is far from the vision of a beautiful Russia of the future that many Russian liberals still hold fast to, but it is far more likely to prove achievable and even more sustainable than their notions given that such an arrangement would put in place arrangements that would make the emergence of a new Putinism at some point in the future more difficult.

Putin’s War Leading Directly to More Fires in Ukraine and Indirectly to More in Russia, Lanshina Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 17 – Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine is leading directly to more fires in Ukraine as the exchange of fire sets forests ablaze and prevents these conflagrations from being extinguished and indirectly to more in Russia itself because the Kremlin leader has cut back the country’s fire-fighting capability in order to fund his aggression, Tatyana Lanshina says.
    The independent Russian environmental activist says that global warming has increased the risks of fires in many countries; but while most of them have increased funding for firefighting, Russia has done just the reverse. As a result, this year is likely to set a new record as far as forest fires are concerned (theins.ru/obshestvo/279556).
    The problems Russia is facing have been growing with each year of Putin’s aggression, something his government has tried to obscure by suggesting that the Ukrainians are setting these fires, a claim for which there is no evidence (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/05/putins-optimization-program-means.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/05/regional-officials-reported-to-be.html).
    Much less attention has been given to forest fires in Ukraine for which Moscow, not Kyiv bears responsibility, given that its forces fire into forests and prevent Ukrainian fire fighters from putting the flames out (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/07/russian-armys-actions-in-ukraine.html).
    Lanshina’s article in The Insider represents a rare and extremely valuable attempt to bring together what is known about forest fires in both country and to document that in Ukraine as in Russia, it is Moscow’s actions rather than those of any other actor or development that is to blame for this growing tragedy.

Since Putin Began His Expanded War in Ukraine, Torture in Russia has Become More Widespread and Vicious, Rights Activist Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Mar. 16 – Since February 2022 when Putin began his expanded war in Ukraine, the use of torture by militiamen and jailors has increased at least 2.5 times and taken on ever more horrific forms, according to a Russian rights activist speaking on condition of anonymity lest he be subject to official attack.
    Russian officials have denied that this is happening and have usually refused to open investigations into allegations of such abuse, he says. But when they have, those guilty have escaped punishment by volunteering to serve in Ukraine (okno.group/vsya-spina-ves-zhivot-v-ozhogah-ot-shokera-za-gody-voyny-pytat-v-rossii-stali-bolshe-i-zhestche/).
    That means such people are more likely to commit crimes against humanity in Ukraine and, on their return to Russia where at least some have or will take up their old jobs, torture more Russians as well, a danger that will increase Russian fears about what any drawdown in that conflict will mean for them. 

Vologda Governor Makes His Region a Test Case for Radical Conservative Ideas

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Mar. 15 – Georgy Filimonov, the governor of Vologda Oblast, wants his region to be the testing ground for radical conservative ideas such as banning abortions, significantly limiting the sale of alcohol, and preventing immigrants from working in key areas of the economy there.

    He has attracted attention as perhaps the most “outrageous” governor in the Russian Federation not only for his promotion of such ideas but also for the frequency with which his proposals have been shot down either by business interests in his region or by Moscow (nakanune.ru/articles/123265/).
    The attention Filimonov has received highlights three aspects of Russian political life that are all too often ignored. First, the existence of a federal system with more than 80 subjects not only allows those governors who want to take the risk to push new ideas but almost compels them to take radical stands if they want to be heard at all.
    Second, both the attention the Vologda governor has received and the ways in which he has been shot down for his ideas highlights why the existence even of this limited federalism is useful to the Kremlin: the Putin regime can see what works and what doesn’t without putting itself at risk.
    And third, by both his successes and his failures, Filimonov is participating in real politics, putting out ideas that some may accept while others may reject, in ways that may change the direction of the country on key issues, even if much of what he proposes is dismissed by the authorities.
    Labelling him “outrageous” as many outlets do obscures all this and keeps analysts from paying attention to governors who may adopt similar strategies to advance their own ideas and careers and the ideas and careers of their patrons in Moscow.

Number of Compatriots Returning to Russia Falls to Lowest Level in 14 Years

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Mar. 15 – The number of compatriots returning to Russia fell to 31,700 in 2024, less than half of the figure in 2022 and the lowest level in the last 14 years, Kommersant reports. Officials say that the decline reflects both the situation and new rules requiring those claiming that status to speak Russian more or less fluently.

    Most were from Kazakhstan or Tajikistan, but 1800 were from countries Moscow classifies as “unfriendly” including Germany, Moldova and Latvia (kommersant.ru/doc/7566175 and novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/03/13/kommersant-v-2024-godu-po-programme-pereseleniia-sootechestvennikov-v-rossiiu-pereekhalo-rekordno-malenkoe-kolichestvo-liudei-news).

    While the paper did not say so, the introduction of more restrictive Russian language knowledge requirements will effectively keep non-Russians like the Circassians from returning to places within the current borders of the Russian Federation where Circassian is spoken as an official language – Adygeya, KBR and KChR.

Despite Law against Regional Parties, Komi’s Communists are Acting Like One, Showing Vitality of Forces They would Represent, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Mar. 15 – Before Vladimir Putin pushed through a law in 2001 banning regional parties, such organizations existed across the Russian Federation. But in the years since, even the possibility of their reemergence has generally been thought of as inconceivable, Vadim Shtepa says.

    Politicians in the federal subjects had to run either as members of all-Russian parties or independently, the editor of the Tallinn-based portal Region.Expert says; and only the case of Sergey Furgal in Krasnoyarsk seemed to be an exception to the ability of regional politicians to act on their own. 

    But Furgal has been ousted from office and imprisoned, and there have been no exactly analogous cases. However, the situation of the KPRF organization in the Komi Republic shows how a variant of regional parties might in fact return (moscowtimes.ru/2025/03/15/paradoks-kommunistov-komi-a158149 reposted at region.expert/paradoks-kommunistov-komi/).

    The story begins in 2014 when ecologist Oleg Mikhaylov, 27 and the head of the KPRF fraction in the Komi Republic parliament, took the lead in organizing the environmental protests at Shiyes, where the Kremlin planned to send Moscow trash to be buried in that northern republic.    

Mikhaylov denounced Moscow’s plans as “a colonial policy,” and his fraction organized protests from across the political system, putting him and itself at odds with the KPRF leaders in Moscow and with the Kremlin. But he became so popular that the KPRF was forced to nominate him as a candidate for the Duma – a position he then won in 2021. 

  When Mikhaylov was elected to the Duma, he was replaced as head of the KPRF fraction in the Komi Republic assembly by Viktor Vorobyov, 32, a lawyer and rights activist who wasn’t a member of the KPRF. He denounced the closure of Memorial and Putin’s war in Ukraine and backed more rights for the federal subjects and a new Scandinavian-style republic flag.

    For his outspokenness, Voroboyov was labeled a foreign agent by Moscow and then forced to resign from the Komi legislature after the Duma passed a law saying that no one identified as a foreign agent could serve.  He was then replaced by Nikolay Udoratin, 33, who had been part of the Shiyes protests and was equal in his radicalism to his predecessors

    In short, Shtepa suggests, what has happened with the KPRF fraction in Komi is the emergence of a kind of regionalist party without the name; and he suggests that such developments are possible elsewhere and would be a far better protection against a new round of neo-imperialism after Putin than the plans for Moscow Russian oppositionists now propose.

Trump Will Get Everything He Wants but Have to Pay in Rubles, Russians Now Joke

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Mar. 18 – Russian opposition leader in emigration Garry Kasparov has posted on social media a joke he says Russians are now telling about Donald Trump, and independent anthropologist Aleksandra Arkhipova says it revives a Soviet trope and reflects the feelings of many in Russia that the US president is acting in Putin’s interests.  

    In Kasparov’s telling, the joke goes as follows:

Trump, in the afterlife, is given permission to return to Earth for one hour. He walks into a bar in New York and asks the bartender how things are going in America. The amazed bartender replies:
-- Wow, sir, thanks to you, we now have a fantastic empire! Greenland, Panama and Canada are all ours!
-- Great! - Trump rejoices. - What about Europe?
-- Oh, Europe couldn't resist either! — says the bartender.
-- How wonderful, — sighs Trump. — Well, I have to go back. How much do I owe you?
The bartender replies:
-- A ruble fifty.

    As Arkhipova explains, this is an updated version of Soviet jokes such as one in which US President Jimmy Carter couldn’t tell Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev what an American super computer predicted for the future of Moscow because he couldn’t read Chinese or when Radio Armenia reported that in 2035, US media would report about collective farmers in Oklahoma (t.me/anthro_fun/3356 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/den-kogda-sovetskie-anekdoty-stali-vnov-populyarny).

    “This is how joke plots evolve,” she continues. “They surface when people feel that such succinct and witty stories are a great commentary on what is happening and not just about any situaitn but about an absurd one. The feeling that Trump is acting in Putin’s interests is so strong for some people that a joke becomes a great way to express these feelings.”

    As a result, jokes from the past “rise from the ashes as if they were new.”