Kazakhstan’s Marines Hold Exercise Underscoring Shift in Balance of Power in Caspian Region

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 15 – Kazakhstan’s navy, now the largest but not necessarily the most powerful naval force on the Caspian, staged a major exercise in the northern portion of that inland sea adjoining Russian territory and the sector of the sea Moscow claims (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/kazakhstan-conducts-major-naval.html).

Now, Astana has upped the ante by organizing an exercise of 800 Kazakh marines, a force that could give Kazakhstan the ability to engage an enemy on land as well as on the sea and thus a move certain to alarm some in Moscow (casp-geo.ru/na-poligone-ojmasha-morskie-pehotintsy-kazahstana-zakrepili-takticheskie-navyki/).

These two Kazakh developments do not necessarily presage a military conflict between the two countries, but they are a clear sign of the shifting balance of power in a region that many have long viewed as a place of uncontested Russia power (jamestown.org/program/russias-caspian-flotilla-dominant-at-sea-gains-new-shore-landing-capability/).

Civil War in Russia was ‘a War for the Return of Colonies that had Separated from Russia in 1917-1918,’ Yudanin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 15 – “Besides everything else,” US-based Russian historian Mikhail Yudanin says, “the civil war in Russia was a war for the recovery of colonies which had separated from Russia in 1917-1918” and the Bolshevik victory in it allowed the Kremlin to continue the imperial tradition of the past.

            Failure to recognize that continuity, one that lies behind what Putin is trying to do in Ukraine now, gets in the way of understanding that Russia remains an empire and is why, Yudanin says, he created the first academic online course about Russian decolonization (sibreal.org/a/filosof-mihail-yudanin-o-perspektivah-dekolonizatsii-rossii/32906492.html).

            (That course is described in detail at https://decolonisation-ru.com/ and features more than 20 lectures by academic specialists about colonialism and decolonialization as well as by avariety of ethnic and regional activists from the various parts of the Russian Federation is available on YouTube at youtube.com/@decolonisation-ru).

            Yudanin, a native of Siberia who now teaches in the US, shares some of the ideas that he and other speakers in the course presented in an interview he gave to SibReal’s Sergey Chernyshov. Among the most important are the following:

·       The Russian empire in all of its guises is “a completely typical empire” and not a unique one as many of its defenders try to suggest.

·       It is based on force by the metropolitan center over the periphery, but as in all empires, both the center and the periphery suffer although in different ways, with the center suffering because its residents come to believe in hierarchies of peoples and the periphery suffering from that as well as from direct oppression.

·       “One of the clearest signs” of the continuity of colonialism is when Moscow or Russians living abroad assume that they have the right to speak for the periphery. The latter must insist on the principle of “nothing about us without us.”

·       The decolonization of the Russian Federation like that of the USSR faces the problem of borders that were artificially created by Moscow to spark conflict and make it easier for the center to engage in divide-and-rule tactics.

·       But borders need not trigger wars in the course of decolonization because borders now are not what they were a century or more ago.

·       The number of variants of decolonization in Russia is extremely large and it is a mistake to assume that the future will be the product of only one of them or that anything is irreversible.

Russian Courts Last Month Convicted Record Number of Deserters from Putin’s Army in Ukraine

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 13 –Novaya Gazeta reported in February that ten times as many Russian soldiers are desertion now compared to a year ago (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/02/29/fight-or-flight-en); and now Mediazona says Russian courts handed down a record 34 verdicts in such cases every working day in March (zona.media/article/2024/04/12/AWOL).

            Mediazona investigators document that these cases are being held throughout the country including in regions where many observers assume patriotism is high and where many men had joined up earlier to escape poverty and enjoy high pay, yet another indication that support for Putin’s war in Ukraine is slipping on the front lines putting unit cohesion at risk.

            The investigative journalists point out that modifications in Russian law allow the courts to send back into the military those convicted of trying to escape, an arrangement that may allow the military to keep its manpower levels high at least in the formal sense but will do little to lessen anger both there and in the population.

            Many of those who have gone AWOL or deserted (the two crimes are separate but counted together in the Mediazona enumeration) have not yet been apprehended or have fled the country, often to Kazakhstan where crossing the border is easiest. However, many now in that Central Asian country are seeking to move on further from the Russian Federation.

 

Finland Restricts Movement of Russian Cruise Ships on Key Border Canal

Paul Goble

Staunton, Apr. 13 – In response to Moscow’s orchestration of the arrival at the Finnish border of refugees from Asia and Africa, Helsinki has not only closed border crossings with Russia indefinitely but expanded them by banning cruise ships from using the Saima Canal which passes along the southern border between the two countries as of April 15.

(On the introduction of this restriction, see t.me/customs_rf/4664, rosbalt.ru/news/2024-04-13/finlyandiya-ob-yavila-ob-ogranichenii-dvizheniya-sudov-na-granitse-s-rf-5054778 and .moscowtimes.ru/2024/04/13/finlyandiya-reshila-zakrit-morskie-punkti-propuska-nagranitse-srossiei-a127772.)

            This is the latest act in the drama which began after Finland joined NATO. At that time, some in Moscow called for the Russian Federation to cancel the 1963 bilateral agreement under the terms of which Finland has rented a canal passing through Russian territory between its lake system and the Gulf of Finland (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/05/some-in-moscow-want-to-cancel-saimaa.html).

            That accord, the only case in which Russia has rented its territory to a foreign state, ran out in 2013 but was renewed for another 50 years at that time is subject to review and potential cancellation every ten years. This year is one of those times, and some wanted Moscow to punish Finland for joining NATO by taking that step (svpressa.ru/politic/article/371042/).

            The canal has been operating in restricted fashion since Moscow began its expanded war in Ukraine, but it is now scheduled to reopen for regular shipping later this month. That brought the issue to a head in the Russian capital, although Finnish officials said at the time they didn’t expect Moscow to annul the accord.

            A major reason is that Finland, under the terms of the 1963 agreement, pays more than 1.2 million euros (1.5 million US dollars) every year, something Helsinki has done even while the canal appeared to have stopped working over the last two years. The Finns said then that they believe calls to abrogate the bilateral accord were intended for the Russian domestic audience.

            The Finns were likely right in their assessment, but Finland’s imposition of new controls on this waterway may now tempt Moscow to take the radical step of cancelling the accord. If that happens, the Saimaa Canal, a waterway few outside of Finland and Russia have heard of, could become a flashpoint in the growing east-west conflict. 

 

Nearly a Third of Pupils in Russian Schools Say They’ve Seen or Experienced Ethnic Bullying, Survey Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 14 – A new Nazaccent poll of 500 of the approximately 500,000 people who viewed a video about interethnic relations in Russian schools found that almost a third of the pupils – 31.8 percent --- said they had seen or experienced ethnic bullying there and almost half – 44.5 percent – said that bullying does take place in Russian schools.

            It is far from clear how representative a sample in fact this is based on, but it is a rare indication of just how widespread bullying by members of one nationality against members of another now is in Russian schools (nazaccent.ru/content/42103-bulling-po-nacionalnomu-priznaku/).

            And these results are also worrisome in that they suggest that members of the younger generation in the Russian Federation may be as much or more hostile than their elders to those who are members of ethnic groups other than their own and in that they indicate that claims of widespread tolerance and even affection are at a minimum wildly overstated.

            Those conclusions are reenforced by quotations from various participants in this survey that the Nazaccent portal chose to publish. 

Kremlin’s ‘Turn to the East’ Limiting Options of Tatarstan and Other Non-Russian Republics Now and Possibly Moscow's in the Future

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 13 – Like the other federal subjects, Tatarstan since the start of Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine has lost numerous Western trading partners and forced to cooperate ever more closely with China, where the central issue is not economic advancement but security in the event of attacks Moscow can’t block, Ruslan Aysin says.

            Until Putin’s expanded invasion of Ukraine, the Turkey-based Tatar commentator says, Kazan hoped to use such ties with the West to boost the economy and to act more independently of Moscow (idelreal.org/a/tatarstan-lishili-politicheskoy-subektnosti-no-ne-razuma-zhe-aysin-o-novoy-realnosti-posle-moskovskoy-agressii-protiv-ukrainy-/32903783.html).

            Other republics shared that vision albeit to a lesser extent; but now, they like Tatarstan have lost that option and are more at the mercy of the Kremlin or more precisely of the Kremlin’s ally China than ever before, a situation that has reduced them from aspiring applicants to join the modern world to subordinate figures in a world of the past, Aysin continues.

            Putin may be happy that his war against Ukraine has undermined the aspirations of the republics and their ability to pursue them, but he may be far less pleased if China succeeds in displacing Russia as the only serious trading partner they have and their only hope of providing genuine security.

Given Russian Response to Terrorist Attack, Central Asian Countries are ‘Moving Away' from Moscow, Gorevoy Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 13 – Moscow has always assumed that the Central Asian countries would remain in its corner because of their authoritarian leaderships and the lack of an obvious place to go, but following Moscow’s reaction to the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack, the five countries of that region are “moving away from Russia,” Ruslan Gorevoy says.

            Indeed, the Novaya Versiya commentator argues, it is now possible to say that Moscow has “lost” Central Asia in much the same way that it has lost the Baltic countries and Moldova and that, if the Kremlin doesn’t change course and do so quickly, the problems arising from that loss will be even greater (versia.ru/srednyaya-aziya-otxodit-ot-rossii).

            Moscow has no one to blame but itself, Gorevoy suggests. Its flaunting of its use of terror against Central Asian executors of the attack, the racist comments of senior officials like Aleksandr Bastrykhin about Central Asian migrants as enemies of Russia, and the Russian government's moves to expel those migrants have outraged both the governments and peoples of the region.

            Senior Tajikistan officials, for example,  denounced the Russian use of terror against their nationals publicly and to the face of their Russian counterparts (dialog.tj/news/glava-mid-tadzhikistana-podverg-kritike-pytki-v-otnoshenii-podozrevaemykh-v-terakte-v-krokuse https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/398973).

            But even more, Gorevoy continues, some are sending arms to Ukraine, refusing to honor Russian credit cards lest they run afoul of Western sanctions, and planning to hold joint military exercises in June “without Russian participation and not in an OCST format” (ru.krymr.com/a/azerbaydzhan-kazakhstan-kyrgyzstan-tadzhikistan-uzbekistan-rossiya/32904955.html).

            It is going to be extremely difficult for Moscow to reverse course, he says; but unless it does, the Central Asian countries are going to leave Russia’s orbit probably forever, something Central Asian analysts concur with (eurasiatoday.ru/terakt-v-moskve-i-dolgosrochnye-posledstviya-dlya-evrazii/) and that China, Turkey and the West are certain to exploit.

            Indeed, the Moscow commentator suggests that this may be the most important fallout from the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack, fallout of enormous geopolitical importance that happened because Moscow officials played to and played up the nationalist, even racist attitudes of many Russians about Central Asians.