Venäjä, Venäjä, Venäjä (yhdistetty)

[Lasse]

Nyt Syyria ampui alas venäläisten IL-20 koneen, jossa oli 15 miesta, kaikki kuolivat. Venäjä tietysti syyttää tapahtuneesta Israelia, miten näin pääsi tapahtumaan!

Oikeastaan mielenkiintoisinta tässä tapahtumassa on esilletullut särö Putinin ja Venäjän puolustusministeriön välillä.


PUTIN CORRECTS MISTAKES BY BITING HIS TONGUE ON TELEPHONE WITH ASSAD AND NETANYAHU
http://johnhelmer.net/putin-corrects-mistakes-by-biting-his-tongue-on-telephone-with-assad-and-netanyahu/

Last week President Vladimir Putin triggered the most serious crisis of his presidency, as the Defence Ministry and the Russian General Staff (Stavka) declared that Putin's explanation for the downing of the Ilyushin-20 electronic reconnaissance aircraft by Israeli fighters was false, and worse –capitulation to Israel.

Sources in Moscow report the military's  loss of confidence in the Commander-in-Chief has not been seen in public since President Boris Yeltsin countermanded orders for Russian military aid to Serbia under NATO bombing between March and June 1999, dismissing Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov on the US demand. 

"[Putin] has blundered with Erdogan, with Netanyahu," commented one Moscow source. "In making all his concessions, one after another, Putin has been watched very carefully. His civilian advisors – [Foreign Policy Advisor Yury] Ushakov in particular – are making mistakes. They expect[ed] the show of strength in Syria would have changed US and European attitudes, and they would listen. They didn't. So the Russian military have reminded Putin – we told you so."

On Monday morning, following an unprecedented Sunday briefing at the Defence Ministry, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced measures which Putin has repeatedly dismissed over many years. The  new Russian war policy puts a stop to Putin's assurances to the US, the European NATO powers and Israel that he was resisting the recommendations of his General Staff.  Putin's resistance ended on Monday morning. Shoigu and the Stavka ended it.

(jatkuu artikkelissa)

Ehkä Venäjällä on muitakin mörköjä, kuin Volodja...

[törö]

BBC kirjoittaa, että brittien kyberturvallisuudesta vastaava National Cyber Security Centre on laatinut listan, jonka nojalla hallitus esittää suoran syytöksen GRU:n osallisuudesta hyökkäyksiin.

NCSC sanoo GRU:n olevan lähes varmasti takana teoissa, joiden yhteydessä on puhuttu usein muun muassa Fancy Bear -nimellä tunnetusta hakkeriryhmästä.

Tunnetuin hyökkäyksistä on USA:n demokraattipuolueeseen kohdistunut tietomurto vuoden 2016 presidentinvaalien alla. Muiksi lähes varmoiksi tapauksiksi mainitaan tietomurrot, joiden kohteena ovat olleet maailman antidopingjärjestö Wada, nimeämätön brittiläinen tv-kanava sekä Ukrainassa Kiovan metro ja Odessan lentokenttä.

Yllättävää on, että hyökkäyskohteiksi nimetään myös Venäjän oma keskuspankki sekä kaksi venäläismediaa, Fontanka.ru ja uutistoimisto Interfax.

https://www.talouselama.fi/uutiset/te/d9ee15b8-d345-303d-a706-f78c81821903?ref=ampparit:08f1

Saattaisi olla sopiva aika vähän puhdistella kenraalikuntaa.

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

Russian 'Male State' leader faces criminal charges over extreme misogyny

A man in central Russia is facing up to five years in prison for launching and maintaining a group called 'Male State' on one of the country's social networks. The group's members used it to collectively degrade and bully women.
The Russian Investigative Committee reported on Friday that its branch, in the major industrial center of Nizhny Novgorod, had pressed charges of extremism against a 27-year old man from the nearby Saratov Region. In comments with Lenta.ru news site investigators revealed the suspect's name as Vladislav Pozdnyakov.
Investigators claim that the suspect had been the mastermind behind the 'Male State' group on Russia's most popular social network Vkontakte. They also claim that most of the texts and images posted by the suspect and other group members amounted to hate speech.

"He was posting texts in which he spoke of women from a negative viewpoint using obscene words," they said

Pozdnyakov was detained in late September and his apartment was searched but back then his name and the reasons behind his arrest were not disclosed to the press.

About a month before that, officials from the Investigative Committee of Russia detained two more suspected 'Male State' members in the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk - some 8,000 kilometers (4,970 miles) from Nizhny Novgorod. The pair were also charged with extremism as investigators suspected that they had planned arson attacks. However, unlike Pozdnyakov his comrades hated not only women (they claimed that all Russian women were prostitutes) but also people from the Caucasus republics - the regions with a predominantly Muslim population. Their reason for this was their belief that Caucasian Muslims were killing ethnic Russians as police turned a blind eye to the matter.

https://www.rt.com/politics/440447-russian-male-state-leader/

Meanwhile sananvapauden luvatussa maassa pääsee vankilaan jos kritisoi naisia ja muslimeita.

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

https://www.rt.com/politics/441295-nigerian-prince-dies-russia/

Lol, juttu rakkaustarinasta Venäjällä.

Russian police probe mysterious death of 32yo 'Nigerian prince' in night club

A Nigerian-born 'prince', who became a local celebrity in a small Russian steel-casting city after marrying a local woman and moving in, has died under murky circumstances, triggering a police investigation.

Gabriel Segun Ajayi, 32, was reported dead by the local authorities on Monday. His wife Natalia, 50, said her husband suffered a massive heart attack on Sunday night at a nightclub.

"He just dropped dead. He didn't take any medicine, simply had some tea," she was cited as saying. "He never complained about his heart."

The police said that while there were no signs of foul play in the case, an autopsy will be conducted to establish the cause of the death.

Gabriel, who has been living in Russia since 2015, is survived by twin boys, who were born last year.

The Nigerian-born man was well-known in Cherepovets, a city of some 300,000 residents located 200km north from Moscow, which best known as a center of mining and steel-casting industry. The local press wrote extensively about the jet-black guy with a claimed royal roots and the love story that made him move to Russia.

(...)

Älä ole klikkisutenööri. Laita lainaukset näkyville.

[P]

https://www.rt.com/politics/441295-nigerian-prince-dies-russia/

Lol, juttu rakkaustarinasta Venäjällä.

Tässä se clue: "He just dropped dead. He didn't take any medicine, simply had some tea," 

Se tee ei tainnut olla Earl Graytä.. Venäjällä klubeilla vetelevät usein "vankilateetä", jossa on vähän muutakin kuin teaniinia.

Ja tuosta kaupungista, kun mainitsin sen venäläiselle, reaktio oli: "se on Venäjän persereikä". Harmaa saastunut teollisuuskaupunki. Taitaa matami olla aika varakas, kun on varaa lennellä Nigeriaan hakemaan oma toyboy.. Venäjällä taikaseinä ei maksa keski-ikäisten naisten leluja. Ei maksa viisumia/oleskelulupaa/elatusta. Matamin on pitänyt sitoutua omilla varoillaan elättämään prinssi, että viisumi on irronnut.

Kunnioitettavampaa tuo on kuin veronmaksajien sponssaamat vastaavat rasmus/rhc-mammoille.

Mitähän matamin oma poika on ajatellut? On luultavasti hyvin samanikäinen kuin prinssi oli?

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

At present, the population of the Russian Federation is declining by approximately 400,000 a year, putting at risk not just villages but major cities, demographers say. They suggest that "no fewer than 300" Russian cities now face the threat of disappearing altogether, including seven especially prominent ones.

            In an article for the Russia-7 portal, journalist Taras Repin considers each of these in turn (russian7.ru/post/7-russkikh-gorodov-kotorye-mogut-ischezn/):

1.      Novokuznetsk. Despite having a population now of 500,000, this Siberian city has never been attractive for people. Its industries pollute the air and are causing health problems for all generations.  It also has one of the highest crime rates in Russia, with 11,000 crimes a year on average in recent times – more than ten times the number committed in the Chechen capital of Grozny.  Not surprisingly, those who can leave do.

2.      Artyom.  Since 2000 when the last mine closed near this city in the Russian Far East, the environment there has improved but the economy has collapsed.  It is a leading center of organized crime and the drug trade.  Most of its population has or will move to nearby Vladivostok or to European Russia. But even if they don't, Vladivostok is likely to expand and absorb it within a few decades.

3.      Verkhoyansk.  Long known as a city of prisoners and exiles, this city is now famed as the coldest in the world. It has only 1200 people even now.  One can reach it by road only in the winter; air connections even from Yakutsk are expensive.  This "God-forgotten place" will simply disappear in a few years.

4.      Ivanovo.  Long a center of the Russian textile industry, this city has seen its birth rates collapse and its death rates rise to the point that it will disappear before 2100 even if there is no outmigration. A major reason for the falling birthrate is that men have already left, leaving Ivanovo with one of the most gender-imbalanced populations in the country.

5.      Artemovsk.  Founded 300 years ago as a gold mining center, Artemovsk's gold has now run out as have its silver and copper reserves.  Over the last 50 years, its population has declined by 80 percent and now stands at 1970.

6.      Norilsk.  The second largest city in the Russian north, Norilsk is "at the same time one of the most polluted and depressed in the world."  Those who can leave are doing so: over the past decade its population fell from 213,000 to 177,000.  Most of those leaving are heading toward one of the two capitals, whose real estate firms advertise massively in Norilsk.

7.       Vorkuta. This is the most rapidly declining city in Russia, with the population having fallen from 79,000 in 2006 to 59,000 in 2016. "There is today no medical support for the population ... there are no stores ... and the mines in the area are all closing," residents say. At the current rate of decline, Vorkuta will cease to exist before 2050.         

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/10/seven-major-russian-cities-may-simply.html?m=1

Kommunistinen kaupunkisuunnittelu kantaa hedelmää vieläkin.

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

https://www.rferl.org/a/how-muslim-migrants-are-reshaping-russia-s-dying-countryside-one-village-at-a-time/29237540.html

.      , Russia -- Nazim Soliev is confident that he's good for Russia.

Or more specifically, the 35-year-old native of Tajikistan, the most impoverished of Central Asia's five former Soviet republics, says his presence here, 200 kilometers northwest of Moscow, is good for his adopted homeland.

"'Better you than the Chinese,' that's what my ex-boss told me," the small-framed Soliev says between double shifts as a stoker at the village school, earning him around $250 a month, nearly twice the average Tajik wage.

The "you" is a reference to Soliev, who speaks fluent Russian and also routinely quotes ancient Persian thinker Omar Khayyam's poems in Farsi, a linguistic sibling of his mother tongue, and 46 other families whose resettlement from Tajikistan over the past decade almost doubled Rozhdestveno's aging population of about 200.

Half of the students in Soliev's school are their raven-haired children, and their wives, in long skirts and head scarves, shop for groceries at a store next to the Orthodox church.

The arrival to urban centers and the countryside of Soliev and millions of other mostly Muslim labor migrants from Central Asia is at the center of what could emerge as Russia's most radical ethnic makeover in centuries.     

Pari kk vanha mutta hyvä, pitkä juttu Venäjän autioituvasta maaseudusta ja kuinka sinne rahdataan tilalle muslimeita.

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

The rapidly changing demographic situation in Kazakhstan—with a natural growth in the Kazakh-speaking population complemented by the continuing emigration of ethnic Russians—is creating an increasingly favorable social climate for extending the scope of the state language. Yet, on the other hand, this process is also likely to have a significantly negative impact on the economic growth of Kazakhstan for the foreseeable future due to the increased outflow of technically trained industrial workers, who tend to come from the Russian minority. The problem stems from the Soviet period, when an unwritten rule-set crystalized a division of labor among the republic's various ethnicities. Kazakhs traditionally lived in rural areas, and their main economic activities revolved around cattle breeding. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union and independence, they started moving from economically run-down villages to industrial cities, though largely without having ever acquired any technical background—heretofore the domain mainly of ethnic Russians.

Amidst this internal migration, Kazakhstan has continued to experience a serious outflow of its Russian minority, which numbered over 6.2 million (38 percent of the overall population) in 1989 (Demoscope.ru, accessed November 1), but had fallen to about 3.7 million (21 percent) by 2016 (see EDM, February 2, 2016). Two thirds of the remaining Russian community expressed wishes to leave, according to polling conducted in 2015. However, the actual emigration figures have been relatively steady, at about 20,000 per year. But of those who do say they wish to leave, approximately half attribute this to Kazakhstan's language policies—only 2 percent of Kazakhstani Russians speak Kazakh fluently, while 33 percent claim they do not know even one word of it. Another quarter of ethnic Russians looking to emigrate say they want to escape what they see as worsening inter-ethnic relations (see Commentaries, March 17, 2015). According to Russian journalist Irina Jorbanadze, ethnic-Russian emigration has been ramping up in recent years due to rising nationalism in Kazakhstan fueled by mistrust toward ethnic Russians after the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea by Moscow (Kursiv.kz, September 21).

Earlier this year, the Statistics Committee of Kazakhstan announced that in the first half of 2018, as compared to the same period of 2017, the number of emigrants from the country increased by 14 percent. And crucially, in 2017, qualified technical workers made up 54 percent of the outgoing population—a 17 percent increase over 2015 (Central Asia Monitor, February 20).

Mindful of potentially dangerous social and economic consequences of the ongoing depopulation of the predominantly Russian-populated northern parts of the country, in 2015 the government launched a resettlement program, encouraging inhabitants from southern Kazakhstan to move north. According to Madina Abylkassymova, the minister of labor and social protection, this year about 3,000 settlers from South Kazakhstan province will be provided housing in rural localities of North Kazakhstan province. However, only 1,424 of them have been offered jobs so far. The government plans to channel $40 million between 2019 and 2021 to implement this resettlement program (Sputniknews.kz, October 30).

https://jamestown.org/program/language-motivated-emigration-of-russians-causes-shortage-of-qualified-workers-in-kazakhstan/

[Faidros.]

Kremlissä olisi varmaan toivottu ennemmin Kuznetsovin uppoamista kuin ympärillä olevan telakan!
www.verkkouutiset.fi/venaja-myontaa-katastrofin-lentotukialus-on-mennytta-vuosiksi/

Venäjän katastrofi: lentotukialus on mennyttä vuosiksi

Venäjän laivastolla ei ole enää paikkaa, missä korjata ainoaa lentotukialustaan.

Venäjä vahvistaa, että sen suurimman kuivatelakan uppoamisella voi olla katastrofaaliset seuraukset Venäjän ainoan lentotukialuksen tulevaisuudelle.

PD-50-kuivatelakka upposi lokakuun lopussa kesken lentotukialus Amiraali Kuznetsovin mittavien korjausten. Lentotukialus saatiin pidettyä pinnalla, mutta telakka katosi aaltojen alle. Kuznetsov sai rytäkässä suuren reiän kylkeensä ja sen kannelle kaatui nosturi. Sota-aluksen vahinkojen lopullista laajuutta ei ole kerrottu julki.

Venäjän valtion omistama laivayhtiö USC on nyt vahvistanut onnettomuudenlla olleen vakavat seuraukset Venäjän laivaston huolto- ja korjauskyvyille.

Julkisuudessa on jo aiemmin arvioitu, ettei Venäjä kykene onnettomuuden takia huoltamaan suurimpia sota-aluksiaan.

– Meillä on itse asiassa vaihtoehtoja kaikille muille aluksille paitsi Amiraali Kuznetsoville, USC:n pääjohtaja Aleksei Rahmanov toteaa War Zonen mukaan.

(...)

Lainaus puuttui.

[HDRisto]

Ehkäpä yrittivätkin upottaa sen Kuznetsovin.. Mitähän telakan venttiili-vastaavalle nykyään kuulunee?. Tuskinpa pääsi ihan pelkällä kysymyksellä että "mites se meni, noin omasta mielestä?".

[L.N]

Kattelin Ruutu+ kanavalta neliosaisen dokkarin Putinista. Jäi aika jännät fiilikset päälle. En ole koskaan hänen touhujaan sen kummemmin seurannut / pohtinut, mitä nyt uutisissa ja medioissa on esillä ollut. Ja mihinkä mediaan sitä uskaltaa uskoa ja luottaa...

Kuka ja mikä Putin on? Kaikkien aikojen pokerinaama ja uhriutuja, vai viimeisen päälle järkimies?

Jos vertaa kahta maailman suurinta, Putinia ja Trumpia, niin ulosannissa, viisaudessa, kysymyksiin asiallisesti vastaamisessa, käytöstavoissa jne. Putin vie kyllä ihmetukkaa vastaan totaalisen voiton.

Uhriutuuko Putin, vai puhuuko se totta? Ite oon tähän saakka pitänyt molempia johtajia täysin hulluina, mutta kyllä tämä venäjän versio vaikuttaa huomattavasti tasapainoisemmalta ja yllättävän fiksulta tyypiltä. Vai onko kyseessä niin taitava näyttelijä ja manipuloija, että nyt Nortusen akan poikaa viedään 100-0?

En löytänyt hommalta Putinin ketjua, joten kyselen tässä.

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

Note that the NHS, the so-called "best healthcare system in the world", has some of the worst cancer survival rates in the developed world. So we can view the 30%-40% cancer mortality interval as the global medical technological frontier.

    60% cancer mortality rate in Russia – poorly funded, mostly socialized medicine.

Furthermore, as the Lancet article points out, there are issues with statistical quality in certain regions, which makes the 60% figure a lower bound. So true cancer mortality would be somewhere in the 60%-70% range.

Or to put it in simple figures: One third of American cancer sufferers die; two thirds of Russian cancer sufferers die.

Patrioottisella Venäjällä ei kannata saada syöpää.
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cancer/
Venäläiset välillä tekee ryssimisestä taidetta.

[törö]

Russia's space agency plans to send a mission to the moon to check whether the American moon landings were real.

In a video posted to Twitter on Saturday, Dmitry Rogozin, the Director General of Roscosmos, said: "We have set this objective to fly and verify whether they've been there or not."

Rogozin announced the project after he was asked whether he believed NASA landed on the moon in 1969. The agency head shrugged as he answered, making it unclear whether or not he was joking.

https://www.newsweek.com/was-moon-landing-real-russia-plans-new-flight-find-out-1229712?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=NewsweekFacebookSF&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR1GP77TBC3SOyEnGNTWiSZbtsAmFmZRtkWJLV8s2HoToZ-3vMuaDlkKsrs

[törö]

A Chechen Court Ruled To Forgive $100 Million Of Citizens' Gas Debts. Gazprom Isn't Happy.

A district court's ruling that Chechnya's $135 million gas debt should be written off because collecting it could lead to social unrest has left other Russian regions wondering why they shouldn't get the same deal, and has prompted the local Gazprom affiliate to fight back.

On January 22, the federal Prosecutor-General's Office weighed in on Mezhregiongaz's appeal, arguing that the Chechen court had overstepped its authority in the first place. This, in turn, prompted a regional minister to claim the North Caucasus republic was owed debt forgiveness because of the two wars Moscow had waged against Chechen separatists in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The back-and-forth continued, with an official from the Russian gas giant Gazprom noting that the debt in question was not accrued during either of the two conflicts, and slamming the Chechen district court for violating legal norms.

And as four Russian regions followed Chechnya's lead by seeking their own debt amnesties, the Kremlin officially straddled the fence on the issue as new polls revealed that public trust in Russian President Vladimir Putin is hovering at near-record lows.

Forgiving Mood...

The Chechen gas-debt debate was lit on January 18 when the Zavodskoy District Court in Grozny ruled in favor of Chechnya's Prosecutor-General's Office, which had filed a case arguing that the local Gazprom affiliate, Mezhregiongaz, should forgive some 9 billion rubles ($135 million) in gas debt.

The Chechen prosecutors cited two factors for their reasoning. One, they said the "statute of limitations" had run out for Gazprom to collect the debt, describing it as "nonrecoverable."

The second was that efforts to collect the money had "created social tensions in society, and could lead to protests by the population."

https://www.rferl.org/a/a-chechen-court-ruled-to-forgive-100-million-in-citizens-gas-debt-gazprom-isn-t-happy-/29726966.html

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

Almost 2,000 Nigerians among thousands of World Cup fans STILL IN RUSSIA, 6 months after tournament

Almost 2,000 Nigerian football fans who arrived in Russia for the FIFA 2018 World Cup are still in the country, making up the largest number of the more than 5,000 supporters who have remained illegally.

It was reported last week that more than 12,000 World Cup fans had still been in Russia as of December 31 – the date on which the FAN ID system formally ended.

Some fans may well have been looking to continue the World Cup party, although others may have hoped to enter Russia before moving on elsewhere – including to the EU – AP reported. Others are said to have planned to file for asylum in Russia.

https://www.rt.com/sport/450235-2000-nigerians-among-thousands-world-cup-fans-still-in-russia/

Afrikkalaisia ei kyllä pitäisi päästää Afrikan ulkopuolelle...

[törö]

Moskovassa ja sen lähialueilla on tehty tänään yli 200 pommiuhkausta puhelimitse, kertoo muun muassa uutistoimisto Interfax.

Soittojen ja uhkaussähköpostien vuoksi evakuoitiin yli 20 000 ihmistä noin 30 eri paikasta, joihin kuuluu muun muassa oppilaitoksia ja ostoskeskuksia.

Mistään uhkausten kohteena olleesta paikasta ei ole löydetty räjähteitä. Interfaxin lähteen mukaan uhkausviestit tulivat useista eri maista, mukaan lukien Ukrainasta.

https://www.is.fi/ulkomaat/art-2000005990680.html?ref=rss

Tää on paisunut viimeisen tunnin aikana suunilleen kaksinkertaiseksi, niin että tilanne voi vielä pahentua.

Somessa varmaan innostuttu ajatuksesta eikä jää viimeiseksi kerraksi.

[Faidros.]

Kattelin Ruutu+ kanavalta neliosaisen dokkarin Putinista. Jäi aika jännät fiilikset päälle. En ole koskaan hänen touhujaan sen kummemmin seurannut / pohtinut, mitä nyt uutisissa ja medioissa on esillä ollut. Ja mihinkä mediaan sitä uskaltaa uskoa ja luottaa...

Kuka ja mikä Putin on? Kaikkien aikojen pokerinaama ja uhriutuja, vai viimeisen päälle järkimies?

Jos vertaa kahta maailman suurinta, Putinia ja Trumpia, niin ulosannissa, viisaudessa, kysymyksiin asiallisesti vastaamisessa, käytöstavoissa jne. Putin vie kyllä ihmetukkaa vastaan totaalisen voiton.

Uhriutuuko Putin, vai puhuuko se totta? Ite oon tähän saakka pitänyt molempia johtajia täysin hulluina, mutta kyllä tämä venäjän versio vaikuttaa huomattavasti tasapainoisemmalta ja yllättävän fiksulta tyypiltä. Vai onko kyseessä niin taitava näyttelijä ja manipuloija, että nyt Nortusen akan poikaa viedään 100-0?

En löytänyt hommalta Putinin ketjua, joten kyselen tässä.

Myös Ronald Reagan oli aikoinaan itse saatanasta ja niin halveksittu presidentti Suomessakin, että virittelivät pilkkalauluja täällä ja Gorba oli taas täällä maailmanparantaja.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=u24xKT9sqkQ
Kuinkas kävi...

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

North Caucasians No Longer Compensating for Low Birthrates among Ethnic Russians

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 9 – Much attention has been devoted to the fact that immigrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus are no longer arriving in Russia numbers sufficient to cover the demographic shortfall among the indigenous population, but less has been focused on another development that may have even longer-term consequences.

            Birthrates among Muslim peoples of the North Caucasus are falling. As a result, this trend means that they will not cover a portion of the demographic decline of Russia's demographic decline.  But it also means that the demographic shift from Slavs to Muslims in Russia may not be as great as many expected.

            After several years of improvement, much celebrated by the Kremlin, Russia in 2018 again entered into a period of steep demographic decline, with more deaths than births because of an aging population, falling birthrates and declines in the size of the prime child-bearing cohort of women (echo.msk.ru/blog/serpompo2018/2367987-echo/).

            These trends were exacerbated by declines in the number of immigrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus, a development some Russians welcomed because of their attitudes toward these culturally and linguistically dissimilar groups but that has meant the total population of the Russian Federation has fallen even faster than most expected.

            All those developments had become commonplace in discussions of Russia's future. But the past week brought news of another that has the potential to drive down the size of the population of the Russian Federation further and faster and change the prospects for the growth of the Muslim population relative to the Slavic one.

            The labor ministry reports that in each of three federal subjects of the North Caucasus Federal District, Stavropol, Karachay-Cherkessia, and Kabardino-Balkaria, the birthrate in 2018 fell below the all-Russian average for perhaps the first time in modern history (capost.media/news/society/mintrud-rf-na-severnom-kavkaze-rozhdaemost-upala).

            Historically, these and other North Caucasus regions have had far higher birthrates than those of Slavic areas and, once much higher infant and child mortality rates were knocked down over the last two generations, they also had dramatically higher growth rates than other parts of the country.

            Now, that is not the case, at least for these three subjects, two of which are predominantly Muslim, although it is still true of others in the region. But birthrates are falling across the region as a result of urbanization, modernization, and in the last several years increasingly dire poverty and loss of hope in the future.

            As a result, Moscow officials like labor minister Maksim Topilin are now talking about the need to promote birthrates in the North Caucasus, something they had not done in the past and something many Russian nationalists are likely to be aghast at even now.  Vladimir Zhirinovsky has even called for officials to promote birth control in the North Caucasus (my.mail.ru/mail/shved.60/video/_myvideo/3865.html).
            "We are accustomed to saying that in the regions of the North Caucasus everything is fine [with regard to birthrates] but in other regions everything is bad. But I would like to turn attention to the fact that in the last two years, indicators connected with the birth of children here show a tendency to decline (vz.ru/news/2019/2/5/962710.html).
            Birthrates in Daghestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia are still above the all-Russian average, he acknowledged; but the notion that there are "extremely high birthrates in the North Caucasus is a stereotype" given recent developments.  In 2017, those rates fell in every region of the North Caucasus, except for predominantly ethnic Russian Stavropol.
            Falling birthrates in the North Caucasus is not only a sign that the region is changing but are a precondition for further and more radical changes, according to Konstantin Kazenin of the Russian Academy of Economics and State Service (caucasustimes.com/ru/demografija-na-severnom-kavkaze-bet-po-tradicionalizmu-konstantin-kazenin/).
                It is leading to a change in power relations between men and women in families and to shifts in attitudes about society more generally, he says. That will accelerate the decline of traditional elements in these societies, albeit at different rates, and that in turn may spark the kind of reaction that one sees in modernizing countries elsewhere in the Muslim world. 

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/north-caucasians-no-longer-compensating.html?m=1

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

Belarus Ready to 'Unite' With Russia, Lukashenko Says

Belarus is ready to merge with Russia, Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said on the third and last day of his bilateral talks with President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

Rumors resurfaced this year that Russia could annex Belarus as Putin's constitutional term limits bar him from running for the presidency in 2024.

"The two of us could unite tomorrow, no problem," Lukashenko said in a video shared by a Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid Kremlin reporter on Twitter Friday.

"But are you – Russians and Belarussians – ready for it?" Lukashenko said as quoted by Interfax. "We're ready to unite and consolidate our efforts, states and peoples as far as we're ready."

Putin, meanwhile, stressed that "fully independent states simply do not exist in the world," bringing the European Union as an example of interdependence.

The Russian president has voiced support for Russia to unite with Belarus as early as 2011.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/02/15/were-ready-unite-with-russia-belarus-leader-lukashenko-says
Mitäs ajatuksia tämä herättää?

[törö]

BRUSSELS -- The daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman works as an intern in the European Parliament in Brussels, and has unhindered access to various EU documents, RFE/RL has learned.

Yelizaveta Peskova, the 21-year-old daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, serves as a trainee with Aymeric Chauprade, a French member of the European Parliament (MEP) who has publicly supported Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

Peskova's name appears on Chauprade's official European Parliament (EP) webpage and Chauprade confirmed to RFE/RL that she is part of his team.

"Ms. Peskova is certainly the daughter of an important personality in the Russian Federation, but as a student, she does not have fewer rights than other young people to do an internship as part of her studies," Chauprade said in an e-mailed comment.

He added that Peskova is not currently working in Russia, either for a state or private entity.

https://www.rferl.org/a/daughter-of-putin-s-spokesman-working-in-european-parliament/29789851.html

[Punaniska]

Belarus Ready to 'Unite' With Russia, Lukashenko Says

Mitäs ajatuksia tämä herättää?

Sehän on jo valmiiksi valtioliitossa Venäjän kanssa, ja valtiona jonkinlainen Neukkulan jäänne. Henkistä itsenäisyyttä ei juurikaan ole, ja se on vapaaehtoisesti valittu asenne.

[l'uomo normale]

Belarus Ready to 'Unite' With Russia, Lukashenko Says

Mitäs ajatuksia tämä herättää?

Sehän on jo valmiiksi valtioliitossa Venäjän kanssa, ja valtiona jonkinlainen Neukkulan jäänne. Henkistä itsenäisyyttä ei juurikaan ole, ja se on vapaaehtoisesti valittu asenne.

Nehän on yrittäneet valtioliittoa jo 20 vuotta, mutta Lukashenka olisi nähnyt siinä itsellään enemmän vaikutusvaltaa kuin Venäjä olisi suostunut. Lukashenkan haluttomuus talousreformeihin on ollut myös tekijänä, kun valtioliittohankkeet on junnanneet paikallaan. Välillä Valko-Venäjä lähestyi jo EUtakin saadakseen neuvotteluvaraa Venäjän suuntaan. Lukashenka on lähinnä kiinnostunut oman Brežnevismin ulkomuseonsa ylläpidosta.

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

.   Muscovites More Negative about Minorities than are Other Russians, New Survey Finds

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 28 – It is commonly assumed that the larger the city, the more tolerant its residents are to representatives of other groups, but a new survey in Russia finds that is not the case. Instead, Muscovites have more negative views toward ethnic minorities than do people living in smaller cities, and both have more negative views than do residents of village.

            Leokadiya Drobizheva, a senior specialist on ethnic relations at the Moscow Institute of Sociology, says that a recent survey shows that 66 percent of Muscovites have a negative view of Roma, while the figure for other large cities is 45 percent; for mid-sized ones, 46 percent; for small cities, 41 percent; and for villages, 44 percent.

            A similar pattern holds for other groups. Fifty-two percent of Muscovites have negative attitudes toward Chechens, while in other cities, the figures are 24 to 29 percent. Regarding Uzbeks, 30 percent of residents of the capital have negative views; and as for all those with "dark skins," 40 percent of Muscovites and 13 to 19 percent of residents of other cities do.

            Drobizheva reported these figures during a discussion this week at the Moscow House of Nationalities under the chairmanship of Vladimir Zorin concerning the need for greater precision and standardization in the description of ethnic attitudes and conflicts (nazaccent.ru/content/29323-ekspert-slovo-konflikt-slishkom-proizvolno-ispolzuetsya.html).

            There are at least explanations for the figures the sociologist offered. First, the groups involved are nations whose representatives are more likely to come to Moscow and major cities than to smaller cities and especially to villages. Thus, Muscovites are more likely to have encountered them than are residents of the others.

            Second, Muscovites may feel freer to offer their real feelings to poll takers than are residents of other smaller population points.  People in the latter may be less willing to tell someone they don't know how they really feel than are residents of the capital who have more experience with pollsters.

            And third, far more media coverage has been given to ethnic problems in the Russian capital than to analogous problems elsewhere. Moscow journalists are far more ready to describe clashes as ethnic than are their counterparts in smaller centers where media outlets are more ready to accept official claims that the conflicts aren't ethnic but arise from other causes.

            Nonetheless the pattern is significant in two ways.  On the one hand, it calls into question the image of Muscovites as more enlightened and tolerant, an image residents of the capital cling to and that many elsewhere accept.  And on the other, it suggests that mixing people together won't make them more tolerant but rather the reverse at least in the short term.       

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/03/muscovites-more-negative-about.html?m=1

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

Staunton, March 2 – Russians concerned about the future of their country should be worried by the unbelievable rate at which schools are being closed, especially in rural areas, Andrey Nalgin says, a trend that is killing off villages, undermining chances for social mobility and reducing the number of young people ready for university.

            The number of middle schools in Russia, the analyst says, drifted downward from 69,700 in 1991 to 68,100 in 2000, the year Vladimir Putin came to power, before going into free fall, with only 41,800 still in operation in 2017, the last year for which he provides data (a-nalgin.livejournal.com/1659415.html).

            Part of this decline reflects the decline in the number of school age children, from 20.5 million in 2000 to 16.1 million in 2018, but the rate of school closers is almost twice as great as the fall off in the number of potential pupils. The situation, Nalgin continues, is especially bad in rural areas.

            Outside of the cities, the number of general educational schools fell from 48,600 in 1990 to 45,400 in 2000 before collapsing to 26,400 in 2013. In urban areas, the number of such schools actually rose between 1990 and 2000 from 21,200 to 22,700, before falling to 18,300 at the present time.

            He says that these figures are especially disturbing when compared to the growth of the number of Russian Orthodox Churches between 1990 and 2015, from 2500 to 34,500.  That means, he continues, that churches are being built at an explosive rate while schools are being closed at almost the same.

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/03/russian-schools-being-closed-at.html?m=1
Putler ei paljon tue kyliä vaikka siellä on kovin kannatus Putlerille.

[Lasse]

Kohta päitä saattaa pyöriä. Kuvaannollisesti tai muutoin.

VLADISLAV SURKOV ROLLS OUT THE RUSSIAN ANSWER TO THE AMERICAN STATE OF PERMANENT WAR
http://johnhelmer.net/vladislav-surkov-rolls-out-the-russian-answer-to-the-american-state-of-permanent-war/

In the programme for the special form of Russian governance which Vladislav Surkov (lead image, right*) calls Putinism for the next hundred years, there is no power-sharing with businessmen (oligarchs or merchants), social classes, intelligentsia, the Russian Orthodox Church, political parties, parliaments,  the Constitution or  the civil and criminal courts. Rule will be by the military, the security services, and the state corporations advising the supreme leader. He in turn will be trusted by Russian people to convey their wishes, settle disputes, balance rights from wrongs, and check the state from corruption. Mostly, he will be trusted to listen.

To those whom Surkov, a Kremlin adviser since 1999, removes from power,  in order to make Russia combat-ready against the US and the NATO alliance,  this is a revolutionary manifesto.

"In the new system," Surkov wrote in a Moscow newspaper  last week, "all institutions are subordinated to the main task – trusting communication and interaction of the Supreme ruler with citizens. The various branches of government converge on the identity of the leader, considering their value not in itself, but only to the extent that they provide a connection with him. Besides them, informal ways of communication work at bypassing formal structures and elite groups. But when stupidity, backwardness or corruption interfere in the lines of communication with people, energetic measures are taken to restore audibility."

(jatkuu artikkelissa)

Myöhemmässä Helmerin jutussa kerrottiin muun muassa pienestä opetuksesta patriarkka Kirillille.

PATRIARCH KIRILL LOSES HIS SEAT — REMOVED FROM RUSSIAN STATE LINE-UP AT THE FEDERAL ASSEMBLY
http://johnhelmer.net/patriarch-kirill-loses-his-chair-removed-from-russian-state-line-up-at-the-federal-assembly/

In this week's address to the Federal Assembly – Russia's equivalent of the State of the Union speech to the US Congress, and the Queens's Speech to the House of Lords  – President Vladimir Putin has removed the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill (Vladimir Gundyayev), from the seat and rank he has occupied for the past decade next to the Prime Minister.   

The political downgrading of the Church is unprecedented. In its compilation of the official photographs of the Assembly on February 20, the Kremlin website displays no picture of Kirill at all, nor of any other representative of a religious organization.

Last year, in the Assembly of March 3, 2018, Kirill was seated in the front row, before the podium from which Putin was speaking. Beside Kirill to his left were Valentina Matvienko, Speaker of the upper house of parliament, the Federation Council; Prime Minister Medvedev, and Vyacheslav Volodin, Speaker of the lower house, the State Duma.  Behind them in the second row were the senior ministers of state, Minister of Interior Vladimir Kolokoltsev,  Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

(jatkuu artikkelissa)

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

Angry residents held sporadic rallies and trashed migrant-operated shops in Siberia after a man from Central Asia allegedly raped a local woman. The high-profile case prompted authorities to vow crack down on illegal immigration.

Over the past few days, residents of Yakutsk in eastern Russia attacked and harassed migrants from Central Asia. They also targeted migrant-owned businesses.

Young men barged into food booths and demanded that foreigners leave, police said.

"They came here and threatened us with a gun. They said: 'Shut everything down and go home. You won't live here anymore,'" one man told RT.

There were rumors of some people being hospitalized and even killed but the police denied that such incidents happened. Officers were also deployed to safeguard a mosque after a fired-up crowd held a protest outside its entrance.

The wave of anti-migrant anger was sparked by a recent case of a local woman abducted and raped. Though a suspect was quickly caught and pleaded guilty, locals became outraged after the media learned that he was a migrant from Kyrgyzstan. This was later confirmed by the governor.

The news immediately led to sporadic unauthorized rallies by locals who accuse foreigners of "stealing" jobs and committing crimes in the city.

Authorities later held their own mass rally, where Governor Aysen Nikolayev promised a crackdown on illegal immigration. "We will identify illegals and deport them," he told the crowd.

The police meanwhile warned everyone against stoking "ethnic conflicts," and several people have been detained in connection with vigilante violence.

Many migrant-operated cafes and shops, nevertheless, remain closed and around 100 buses stayed in their depots because migrant drivers were afraid to show up for work.

https://www.rt.com/russia/454374-yakutsk-rallies-over-migrants/
Miksiköhän ne ryssät rahtaa muslimeita keskelle siperiaakin. Paikalliset mongolit ei sitten ilmeisesti tykännyt tulokkaista.

[Faidros.]

Ei mee Putinilla oikein putkeen. Kaikki nämä aseet on esitelty voittanattomina propagandassa, T14 "supertankki", häivehävittäjät, Mig-41 ja Suhoi-57, rajattoman kantaman ydinohjus "Skyfall". Kaikkien näiden kehitystyö on lopetettu.
Pahimmin kai floppasi tuo ohjus, "rajaton kantama" oli parhaimmillaan 35km.
www.verkkouutiset.fi/venajan-ydinohjus-floppasi-lentaa-vain-35-kilometria/

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

Entinen maajoukkuepelaaja Pavel Pogrebnjak, 35, aiheutti ison skandaalin Komsomolskaja Pravda -lehdelle laukomallaan kommentilla.

Pogrebnjakilta kysyttiin, mitä mieltä hän on siitä, että Venäjän maajoukkueessa pelaa maan kansalaisuuden saaneita ulkomaalaisia.

– Vastustan sitä. En koe, että siinä on järkeä, nykyään Venäjän liigaa Ural Jekaterinburgissa pelaava hyökkääjä sanoi.

Venäjän passin saavat ulkomaalaislahjakkuudet ovat tuttu ilmiö maan jalkapallossa. Kansalaisuuden vuonna 2016 saanut brasilialaispuolustaja Mario Fernandes kuului Venäjän avainpelaajiin kesän 2018 MM-kisoissa.

Kesällä 2018 kansalaisuus myönnettiin pääsarjaseura Krasnodarissa pelaavalle brasilialaishyökkääjä Arille. Pogrebnjakin mukaan se oli virhe.

– En ymmärrä ollenkaan, miksi Ari sai Venäjän passin. On naurettavaa, kun tummaihoinen pelaaja edustaa Venäjän maajoukkuetta. Mario Fernandes on huippuluokan pelaaja, mutta meillä olisi hänen pelipaikalleen Igor Smolnikov. Pärjäisimme ilman ulkomaalaisiakin.

Kommentti sai urheilupiireissä tyrmistyneen vastaanoton.

Yksi ällistyneistä oli presidentti Vladimir Putinin neuvonantajana ihmisoikeusasioissa toimiva Mihail Fedotov. Fedotov kommentoi televisiokanava 360:lle, että Pogrebnjakin avautuminen "haisee vahvasti rasismilta".

Venäjän jalkapalloliitto oli samaa mieltä ja mätkäisi Pogrebnjakille rangaistuksena yli 3 400 euron sakot. Lisäksi hyökkääjä määrättiin ehdolliseen kilpailukieltoon kuluvan kauden loppuun. Kielto astuu voimaan, jos Pogrebnjak syyllistyy jatkossa vastaavanlaiseen toimintaan.

Liiton eettisen komitean päätöstä paikalla kuunnellut Pogrebnjak hyväksyi rangaistuksensa. Pelaaja kielsi tarkoittaneensa kommenttiaan rasistiseksi, mutta pahoitteli tekoaan.

– En halunnut loukata ketään. Pyydän anteeksi, vaisun oloinen Pogrebnjak ilmoitti venäläismedialle.

https://www.is.fi/jalkapallo/art-2000006050782.html
Patrioottisessa Venäjällä ei saa kritisoida jos maan maajoukkue täytetään ulkomailla syntyneillä n"""""llä.

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

Nikolay Leonov, a KGB lieutenant general who headed that organization's analysis department from 1973 to 1991, says that he very much fears that Russia is at risk of losing not only Crimea, Kaliningrad and the Far East but even the Middle Volga as a result of ignorance, incautious actions and rapid demographic change.

            In the course of a long interview in which he discusses the KGB's role in the last two decades of Soviet power, the qualities of various Soviet leaders, and the failure of the country's political leadership to take seriously the warnings his agency issued, Leonov also talks about the situation now (eadaily.com/ru/news/2019/03/29/nikolay-leonov-ya-opasayus-za-sudbu-kryma-kaliningrada-i-primorya).

                He suggests that if anything the gulf between those who provide accurate information and analysis and those who make decisions may be even greater than it was at the end of Soviet times. As evidence of that he points to "the history with Crimea."  That action has produced a counter-reaction that should have been considered before the decision to annex the peninsula was taken.

            Unfortunately, that didn't happen, and the situation now is very much worrisome. "What price are we paying The real situation that exists now in the world about Russia and also the domestic conditions in the country when the temperature is gradually rising are causing me to become increasingly concerned," the former KGB analysis chief says.

            Leonov says that he is even "concerned about the fate of certain of our territories."

            "Kaliningrad, for example" where "time is working against us. "The population there never went to the Soviet Union and already doesn't remember it. The oblast is gradually being drawn into relations with the West." It already has "special relations" with Poland, Lithuania, and so on. Western leaders can see this and are getting ideas.

            "I am very much afraid as well for the territory of the Far East, the Primorsky kray. They are ever more being drawn into the orbit of China, Japan and South Korea. What ties them to Russia? The single Trans-Siberian railway? Rising prices for airline tickets are such that I don't know who flies except on business," Leonov continues.

            Moreover, he says, "when people tell me that in Vladivostok there is almost not a single car of Russian manufacture, I am not surprised." The region produces for Japan and buys from japan. "Russia for the people there is very far away ... what will the situation in that region be in 10 to 15 years?"

            Vladislav Surkov says that Russia can be held together by administrative means alone. But portions of the country are heading in different directions, and such "bindings" won't be enough.  A single explosion could trigger the falling of dominos in many places. "I very much fear such a scenario," the KGB analyst says.

            He suggests that he is also worried a bout Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Not long ago, we experienced plans about the creation of a 'Caucasus emirate.' There have also been ideas about establishing a "Urals Republic,' and the separation out of the south of Russia." These challenges must be recognized and be countered by becoming the basis of policy.

            People are kept together by "social and economic unity," Leonov says. "But with us in Russia the structure is becoming rickety. Therefore, I have more concerns than optimism" about the future." Demography is working against us as well, and "when I hear that Moscow soon will be the largest Muslim city in the world, I can hardly stand it."

            Given that people in power in Russia today experienced the end of the USSR, they should be aware of how quickly things can turn against the center, Leonov says.  But it is clear that many decisions are being made without adequate information not only about Russia's regions but also about Russia's neighbors.

            Trends there are also working against Moscow, but there seems to be "an information vacuum" in which decisions are being made without an adequate appreciation of realities.

            Some of Leonov's comments may be dismissed as no more than an example of a former senior official who not unreasonably believes he and his generation did a better job of things than the current one; but the fact that he made these (and other) comments shows both just how nervous some in Moscow are and how upset they are about the way the Putin regime is acting.

            The former KGB analyst's argument rests on the almost universally recognized principle that good analysis doesn't guarantee good policy because that those who make policy can ignore it but that good policy in the absence of good information is almost always a random act – and not something that any leader or country can count on for long. 

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/04/russia-now-at-risk-of-losing-crimea.html?m=1

[kriittinen_ajattelija]

.     BEYOND RACISM
Is Putin's Fascination With Genetics Just Eugenics in Disguise?

MOSCOW—Russian President Vladimir Putin's domestic propaganda campaign has been telling people to hunker down, that they need to find ways to wall off the country from the West.

They need to protect their internet by cutting it off from the global web, the Kremlin suggests, otherwise Russia's enemies might exploit social media to undermine the state. (The irony of such proclamations will not be lost on American readers.) And now Putin is talking about a really ominous sounding threat—to the very DNA of the Russian people.

The new buzzword among Russian authorities is "biodefense," which at its most benign may mean taking a lead in the highly lucrative development of genetic editing techniques to cure diseases, grow better crops, and the like. But at its most sinister it takes on the coloration of eugenics, the discredited "science" of the 19th and early 20th centuries that promised to create superior humans based on racial and ethnic stereotypes.

The emerging notion that genetic security is part of national security is still unclear to most Russian citizens, but already it receives lavish funding. In late April, Russian authorities approved a budget of 220 billion rubles ($3.3 billion) in order to develop new genetic technologies over the next eight years. The document published on the government's website says that the main purpose of the program is "to decrease critical dependence of Russian science on foreign genetic and biological databases" and on foreign specialized software and other technologies.

But some see in the program the possibility to define Russian identity based on genetics.

"I have never heard Putin or anybody else in the Kremlin mention the word 'race,'" Svetlana Gannushkina, a senior human rights defender helping migrants told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. "But once Putin said to me: 'I agree we need migrants, but preferably well-educated Slavs of a fertile age.'"
"Putin wants to control Russian genes, genetic studies, just as much as he wants to control cyberspace."
— Dmitry Gudkov, former member of the Russian parliament

Others go much further. There is even a group suggesting the Constitution of the Russian Federation be edited to help build a new ideology around the nation's genes.

A member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Taliya Khabriyeva, suggested that a new ideology should embrace "values genetically typical of Russians," constitutionally defined. Khabriyeva's idea provoked a wide discussion in academic circles. Sulashkin's Center, a Moscow-based think tank working on the New Constitution project, doubted that "the identity of Russian civilization" could be called "genetic."

Vedomosti, a respected Russian business newspaper, meanwhile reported that Maria Vorontsova, who is believed to be the eldest daughter of President Putin, is one of the new state program's key managers. According to another report by the Russian magazine New Times, Russia's "first daughter" Vorontsova will oversee policies for gene editing in medicine in Russia, a potentially lucrative field but also full of ethical landmines.

The state program aims to prevent and treat human diseases, although some Russian scientists still question whether gene editing is safe for people.

"What is clear as daylight," one of the participants in the program said privately, "is that gene editing is a gold mine, a very profitable business."

"There is a huge hype about genetic editing in Russia, mostly among billionaires," pro-Kremlin political analyst  Yuriy Krupnov told The Daily Beast earlier this month. "One procedure costs around $1 million abroad, so it sounds like a good business, but even if Russia develops its own technology, biological big data would require much bigger investments."

And speaking of big data, Russian policy makers now fret publicly about Russians handing over genetic data to foreign companies, such as commercial genealogy sites, to check out their ancestors. "There is a concern that Western secret services develop biological weapons, focusing on studying our DNA tests," says Krupnov.

The Kremlin has been worried about DNA studies of the Russian population for several years. "Putin wants to control Russian genes, genetic studies, just as much as he wants to control cyberspace," a former member of the Russian parliament, Dmitry Gudkov, told The Daily Beast.

In 2017, President Putin spoke about foreigners' evil plans for Russia at a routine meeting of Council for Civil Society and Human Rights: "They collect biological material all over our country, of various ethnic groups, people living in different geographical points of Russian Federation, they do it purposefully and professionally."

The nationalist tone of this talk about "Russian genes" is raising alarms. Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA Center, monitoring Russian far-right groups and hate crimes, was stunned to hear Putin's statement in 2017. "Putin's words came out of the blue, without any introductions or explanations, as if there was a moment of insanity," Verkhovsky, who was present at the meeting, told The Daily Beast. From Putin, he said, "We often hear conspiracy ideas but until recently his nationalist political statements have mostly focused on empowerment and reconstruction of the Russian empire rather than white supremacists' ideas about the biology of ethnicity or race." 

It was not Putin's only remarkable comment about biology. Last October, he spoke at the Valdai Discussion Club about "very dangerous" biological weapons targeting "certain ethnic groups selectively," without elaborating. Earlier, Putin said at a meeting with Russian youth in Sochi that scientific technology capable of changing a human genome "is scarier than a nuclear bomb," and that modern scientists could now interfere with the human genetic code. "It is quiet imaginable now: people will be able to create a new human with programmed characteristics, soon."

In fact, this preoccupation with genetic conspiracies goes way back to Soviet times. As the American author Alvin Toffler wrote almost 50 years ago in his 1970 bestseller Future Shock, the then-chief of the research laboratory of the Institute of Development Biology of the Soviet Academy of Sciences predicted that the world would "soon witness a genetic equivalent of the arms race," and implied that the Soviet Union ought to act first.
"This preoccupation with genetic conspiracies goes way back to Soviet times."

More recently, architects of the well-funded Russian biodefense program have been reading a book called The Genetic Bomb that openly discusses eugenics and what the author, Yuriy Bobylov, calls the risks to the white race, according to one of those involved. "The creation of a 'super-human,' a 'hero,' is possible, in principle," Bobylov wrote, "but that is a very difficult social task."

Last year, the government ordered Russian scientists and bureaucrats to develop a large-scale study of the so-called "Russian genome." But Russia is not little Iceland, where the homogeneity of society opened the way for decades of groundbreaking genetic research. Russia covers the greatest land mass of any nation in the world and it is home to hundreds of ethnic and racial groups from a wide variety of European and Asian backgrounds. Not to mention more recent immigrants.

Russian newspapers reported vaguely on genetic discoveries find that "Russian genes" reflect the historic migratory patterns of  Indo-European and Uralic and Turkic peoples.

"We hear too much nonsense about 'Russian genes' in our multi-ethnic country," Pavel Lobkov, a biologist who is currently a presenter on independent Rain TV, told The Daily Beast.

Nevertheless, Putin has ordered the government to provide Russians with passports by 2025 that include their genetic identification.   

https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-putins-fascination-with-genetics-just-eugenics-in-disguise?ref=scroll