The Communist Menace

6 July 2017, St. Petersburg, Russia. Photo by the Russian Reader

[…]

And so, on Friday night, the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Trump flew to South Dakota to deliver a speech at Mt. Rushmore in which he claimed he and his supporters are at war against an enemy here at home: communists.

Before his trip to the state, Trump posted a video showing his own likeness on a golden sculpture of Mt. Rushmore, alongside the images of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, with the voiceover saying: “I will be the greatest president for many, many years to come.” The video opens with the text “Art of the vision” spelled out over an American flag, an encapsulation—although perhaps an unintentional one—of how Trump has maintained political power by selling a false image to his followers.

Trump began his speech with a series of feel-good platitudes: “These are very, very special times. And this is a very special place. You live in a very special place. Congratulations, everybody…. We are a nation of dreamers and believers, warriors and explorers, doers and fighters…. There has never been anything like us anywhere on earth.” And then he tied together MAGA’s white nationalism with the claim that Trump’s political opponents want to destroy the economy.

Trump clearly thinks there is political gain in convincing his followers that his political opponents are communists, although this is a lie made up out of whole cloth after the victory of Democratic Socialists in Democratic primaries and the popularity of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. Communists call for the end of private ownership of the means of production, giving the state control of private enterprises. In today’s America, it is actually Trump, himself, who is taking government stakes in private enterprises.

Democratic Socialists are not communists or socialists, who want to see the end of private property. Democratic Socialists call for a robust system of private enterprise, alongside government control of the aspects of society required for people to participate in the economy on a level playing field. While Democratic Socialists embrace a wide range of policies, they generally don’t think schools, or medical care, or roads, should be profit-making industries.

In that, they echo Americans from the 1860s, when the Republicans established public colleges, or the 1900s, when Theodore Roosevelt called for public health insurance. Indeed, what today’s Democratic Socialists call for is much more limited than what the Republicans under President Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted in 1956, when the top income tax bracket in the United States was 91%.

Nonetheless, on Friday Trump tried to convince Americans that “there is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.” “These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations,” he said. “Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11.”

He went on to say: “They don’t want good. They don’t love God and they don’t want God. They don’t love religion and they don’t want religion and they won’t have it.… They have no respect for law, justice, principle, tradition, or your God-given rights. It’s an ideology of mass theft, mass control, mass lies, and mass murder…. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”

His false vision of the U.S. is aimed at the midterm elections. “America will never be a communist country,” he said. “We can only lose the midterms if we allow ourselves to lose the midterms, if we are foolish, stupid, and unwise.” He went on to demand that the Senate end the filibuster and Congress pass the voter-suppression SAVE America Act. If they do, he said, “we will not lose an election for a hundred years.”

On July 4, hundreds of masked white supremacists in khakis and blue shirts, carrying Confederate flags and flags with the logo of the neofascist white supremacist group Patriot Front, marched in Washington, D.C., chanting “Reclaim America.” The White House did not respond to a query from Gloria Oladipo of The Guardian about whether Trump condemns the march.

Trump continued his attacks on “communists” in a late-night speech on the National Mall after thunderstorms temporarily shut down his planned rally. “[A]ll these talks from the communists, they haven’t got a chance,” he told the drenched audience members, “not even a chance. We don’t want communists in our country.”

Trump’s drop into an anticommunism that exaggerates even the excesses of the McCarthy era seems to indicate panic rather than confidence. Today, July 5, he began posting on social media at 1:21 AM and over the course of the day posted more than 100 times, attacking Democrats and boasting extravagantly of what he says are his own successes while demanding Congress pass the SAVE Act or lose the presidency forever.

Trump’s people appear to be trying to push Trump’s vision, but it doesn’t seem to be sticking.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows today, insisting that the problems with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool were the work of vandals who have gashed its surface in multiple cuts that equal the 350 feet Trump claims and that there is video evidence, although the administration, which is famous for spinning everything to its own advantage, is choosing not to show it.

When CNN’s Dana Bash asked whether they actually had photographs of people cutting a gash in the liner, Burgum danced away from the question after commenting, “I’m not sure why you and others in the media think that you want to keep trying to question whether or not…”

And so the 251st year of American democracy begins with reality reasserting itself.

Source: Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 5 July 2026

Russia has prepared a new edition of its official history textbook for 11th graders. The Russian business news outlet RBC reviewed the new version and found that the section dealing with the United States had been significantly revised. Among the changes: the textbook now credits the Trump administration with playing a “positive role” in settling the war in Ukraine. Meduza summarizes what else has changed.

Russia’s unified history textbook for 11th graders has been updated and published on the “Moya Shkola” (“My School”) digital platform. The textbook, co-authored by Vladimir Medinsky — an aide to the Russian president and chairman of the Russian Military Historical Society — and Anatoly Torkunov, rector of Moscow State Institute of International Relations, has now reached its third edition.

The Russian business news outlet RBC compared the new edition with last year’s and found that the most heavily rewritten section is the one titled “Russia Today. Special Military Operation (SVO)).”

The passages dealing with the United States were substantially altered. The subsection formerly titled “U.S. Pressure on Russia” has been renamed simply “Pressure on Russia.”

The previous edition stated that Europe’s energy independence “did not suit the United States” — in the new version, the authors replaced “the United States” with “the collective West.” Also cut is the claim that “in the name of their corporations’ profits, the United States constantly resorted to military and terrorist methods — as it did in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, and in many other parts of the world.” Similar edits were made to the section on the war in South Ossetia.

The new edition also drops a line about the United States’ determination to “fight to the last Ukrainian.” In its place, the textbook now credits President Donald Trump’s administration with playing a “positive role” in peace negotiations, and notes that Trump has repeatedly stated the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would not have happened had he been president in 2022. A reference to the meeting between the U.S. and Russian presidents in Anchorage in August 2025 has also been added.

The section on the war in Syria has been revised as well. The previous edition stated that the Western coalition had tried to “overthrow the legitimate government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.” The new version says the United States and NATO, using opposition forces and Islamic State terrorists, launched military operations against the government of Bashar al-Assad. The line “hundreds of thousands of civilians fell victim to the Islamists, and millions of refugees fled Syria” has been removed.

Assad’s government was toppled in December 2024, and Islamists led by Ahmed al-Sharaa came to power in Syria. Assad and many of his associates fled to Russia.

Other additions include a mention of the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation, headed by Anna Tsivileva, Putin’s cousin’s daughter, and information about a personnel program for combat veterans called “Time of Heroes.”

The new edition also references the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue and “the breakthrough of elite Ukrainian Armed Forces units toward the Kursk nuclear power plant.” Added as well are accounts of the killing of Alexander Dugin’s daughter Darya Dugina and the “war correspondent” Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, and the assassination attempt on writer Zakhar Prilepin.

RBC also noted that Apti Alaudinov, commander of the Akhmat battalion, has been dropped from the textbook’s list of “heroes of the SVO,” along with the line “fighters of the celebrated Chechen special unit ‘Akhmat’ strike terror into the Nazis.”

Vladislav Kononov, a staff member of the presidential administration’s department for state policy in the humanitarian sphere, described the new edition as “routine editing during a reprint — so-called topical revision,” in which the text is updated to reflect events that occurred after the previous edition was released. “There are no hidden meanings here,” he said.

The history textbook for 11th graders by Medinsky and Torkunov was first presented in 2023. In 2026, its third edition was released.

Source: “Russia rewrites its history textbook again — this time adding Trump’s ‘positive role’ in peace talks and a reference to Anchorage,” Meduza, 3 July 2026. Thanks to News from Ukraine Bulletin for the heads-up.

In recent years, “ideological diversity” has become one of the principal demands made upon American academia, not only by the yahoo right but also by many moderate conservatives and centrists. The former rarely manages to rise above crude insults of the “all professors are communists” variety, as it applauds the Trump administration’s brutal assaults on academic institutions. Unfortunately, while the latter are much more thoughtful, they often make a very misguided case. There is an argument to be made for ideological diversity—a surprisingly simple, and also limited one. But it involves giving more credence to the academic left than most critics are prepared to do.

A classic example of the case wrongly made is the report recently released by the chancellors of Vanderbilt and Washington Universities and written by a distinguished group of academics (including two Princeton colleagues). It is nuanced and careful, takes a mostly moderate tone, and certainly doesn’t deserve the label “diabolical” that some have attached to it. But it also falls into some predictable traps.

Its basic arguments are as follows. Positions in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences today are held overwhelmingly by academics on the left. These academics, especially those who define themselves as “scholar activists,” too often let political goals drive their work, thereby betraying the core mission of academia, which is disinterested inquiry. They discriminate against people who do not share these political goals. And this politicization is both inspired and justified by “relativist” post-structuralist theories that deny the very idea of objective truth.

Let’s take these points one by one. First, yes, the report is obviously correct to state that academics lean very strongly to the left. But this fact by itself says nothing about how left-leaning scholars actually function in the academy or the work they produce.

The second point is much more complicated. What does it mean for scholarship itself to be “political,” or “politicized”? You don’t have to be a dyed-in-the-wool Foucauldian to acknowledge that the production of knowledge is always, in some senses, implicitly political. Scholars, like everyone, exist within structures of power whose operations influence their conduct in ways seen and unseen. Feminist scholars did more than simply expand the scope of scholarly inquiry by bringing new attention to women, gender and sexuality. They showed how earlier generations of scholars, by not treating these subjects as even worthy of attention, participated in largely unspoken practices of exclusion. This point should not be terribly controversial. Nor should it be controversial that many past schools of scholarship that presented themselves as disinterested and objective were clearly driven by strong political motives. Just think of the “Dunning School” of American history that celebrated the southern “Lost Cause” and sought to discredit Reconstruction.

Acknowledging these points in no way means erasing the distinction between scholarship and propaganda—and contrary to widespread views on the right, this erasure has not taken place. One can accept that scholarship is implicitly political while also insisting that its production properly requires adhering to rules of evidence, and to making logical and well-supported arguments. I have been a professor for thirty-five years and have taken part in a very (!) large number of hiring decisions, promotion and tenure decisions, editorial decisions for journals and presses, personnel decisions for scholarly societies, and the like. I have occasionally seen these decisions made badly, because of personal animus, or incompetence. For what it is worth, I have never seen them made on an explicitly political basis, and very rarely even on an implicitly political one. In almost all cases, the principal criteria invoked have been classic scholarly ones: the strength of evidence, the strength of argument, the innovative and engaging qualities of the work as a whole.

Do academic fields discriminate against conservatives? It is certainly true that conservatives will not feel welcome in many fields of the humanities and social sciences. This is particularly the case for fields born out of the liberation movements of the 1960’s, such as Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, or African-American Studies, where many scholars still define themselves in relation to the goals of these movements and proudly call themselves “scholar activists.” An opponent of abortion or affirmative action will not find these fields congenial places. But in my experience, at least, the absence of conservatives in them is almost entirely the result of self-selection, not discrimination. That element of self-selection may itself be problematic, but it does not call for the same sort of response that active discrimination would.

And it is simply a mistake to attribute the “politicization” to poststructuralist philosophy and relativism. To the extent that the alleged politicization began in the 1960’s, it began well before the heyday of poststructuralism in American humanities departments, and it has continued long afterwards. Whole generations of literary scholars have now gone through the PhD to jobs and tenure without ever reading Jacques Derrida, let alone becoming his adepts (for that matter, Derrida’s work can in no way be described as a simple denial of the idea of truth). The overwhelming majority of works derided as “woke”—at least the ones I have read—do not say that one group’s claims on truth is as good as another’s. To the contrary, they say that the claims made by a “subaltern” group are stronger and more convincing than ones generated from within an oppressive structure of power. That argument might be wrong, but it is not relativist. Jonathan Kramnick made some of these points at length in an excellent rebuttal to the Vanderbilt Report in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In sum, whatever the massive overrepresentation of the left in academia, and despite some undoubted excesses, this overrepresentation has not resulted in an illegitimate distortion of the academic enterprise, the suppression of free inquiry, or large-scale violations of academic freedom. It would be a violation of academic freedom, on the other hand, to censor or dismiss academics for such alleged infractions. The Vanderbilt report does not call for any such disciplinary actions, although one could imagine unscrupulous university overseers citing it as justification for them.

But there is one set of academic decisions where politics does often dictate the outcome in a much more straightforward sense than in the cases just discussed: decisions on which fields to hire in. Professors do not normally make these decisions. Deans and other high-level administrators do. They do so in consultation with professors and normally take into consideration academic judgments as to which fields of inquiry look strongest and most promising. But, of necessity, they also take into consideration finances, student interest, the likely availability of expertise—and politics. To take the most prominent recent example, after the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests in 2020, more than half of the jobs advertised in North American history the next year were specifically for specialists in African-American history and related fields such as the history of slavery. A very high proportion of jobs advertised in French were for specialists in “Francophone” literature—i.e. literature produced outside of France, mostly in colonies and former colonies. These decisions were justifiable on academic grounds, for the fields in question are vibrant ones. But they were obviously made for political reasons, above all to address concerns about the underrepresentation of people of color in university faculties. Were these concerns themselves valid? Absolutely. It can also be argued that addressing this underrepresentation brings previously neglected points of view into academic conversations. But this doesn’t change the fact that the decisions were political ones—a response to an immediate political crisis, and to political pressure.

Again, to be clear: there was nothing illegitimate about university administrators bringing political considerations to bear. Decisions on what fields to hire in are central to a university’s identity, to the sort of community it is. Politics is inescapably part of this picture.

But if there was an argument for using hiring decisions to address racial inequalities, there is an argument for using them to address ideological imbalance as well. Even if there is nothing illegitimate about the strong leftward tilt of the humanities and humanistic social sciences, it does create a large gulf between the professors and much of the American population whom they are serving. Even if there is nothing illegitimate about certain fields being dominated by self-proclaimed “scholar activists,” it discourages students who don’t share the activists’ agendas from studying those fields. A heavy concentration of academic resources in certain areas of research leaves other areas neglected, including ones that university leaders may see as central to undergraduate education. And the heavier the emphasis on shared political goals, the easier it is to generate groupthink and stifle the sort of originality universities should be placing a premium on.

Actual hiring decisions should always be made by the specialists themselves. They are the ones with the requisite expertise. Dictating whom to hire would be a violation of their academic freedom. But that freedom does not extend to faculty themselves dictating which areas to hire in.

It would not be such a bad idea if humanities and social science departments themselves took more initiatives in this direction. In recent years, much of the hiring done for reasons of ideological diversity has taken place in new academic units such as Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education. Attempts to create positions within existing departments, going back to the Bass Family’s attempt to endow a “Western Civilization” program at Yale in the 1990s, have sometimes ended in messy failure. But placing the new faculty in separate units leaves the original fields dangerously exposed to damaging cuts, either for brute ideological reasons, or because they do not have enough of a constituency to protest when the budget axe swings for financial ones. It should be obvious to anyone who knows anything about the “Western tradition” that neither the thinkers in question, nor current specialists on them, are anything like homogenously conservative—hiring in the field does not mean hiring the next Harvey Mansfield. But would it be such a bad thing to hire a few more scholars who dissent from the prevailing politics of their fields? Robust political debate is generally preferable to groupthink, after all.

Source: David A. Bell, “On ‘Ideological Diversity,'” French Reflections, 6 July 2026

Pride (and Prejudice)

A Pride flag near the Russian coat of arms during a protest outside the Russian Embassy in London, 16 March 2023. Krisztian Elek/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Russian authorities have banned nine groups that provide support to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people as “extremist,” Human Rights Watch said today. The apparent aim is to further suppress, stigmatize, and criminalize those who document abuses, share information, and provide legal, medical, and other assistance to Russia’s LGBT population.

Following the 2023 Russian Supreme Court decision to outlaw as “extremist” the “International LGBT Movement”—a legal and factual mischaracterization of a diverse, decentralized global human rights cause—the authorities have targeted numerous civil society organizations. Between March and May 2026, courts banned nine LGBT groups in seven Russian regions as “extremist,” namely Coming Out, LGBT Resource Centre, Parni Plus, Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives, Irida, Russian LGBT Network, Kallisto movement, T9 NSK, and Centre T. A lawsuit against Alliance of Straights and LGBT for Equality is pending.

“Russian authorities are intensifying their criminalization of those who provide critical support to the very LGBT people they have systematically persecuted,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Authorities should vacate all court decisions and criminal convictions based on these spurious ‘extremism’ charges.”

On April 22, a court in Orel banned Parni Plus, an LGBT media outlet. The court based its decision largely on an “expert assessment” by the Nizhny Novgorod Academy of the Internal Affairs Ministry, effectively a law enforcement university. It found that Parni Plus “belittled Russian spiritual values and showed contempt for Russian President Vladimir Putin,” criticized Russian laws, and attempted to create “an alternative, anti-state hierarchy of values.” Parni Plus said the authorities were “trying to label the visibility, voice and experiences of the LGBTQ community as ‘extremism’” and said it would continue its work.

A similar report formed the basis for the Moscow city court ruling banning the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives on April 23. The center said it “cannot ignore the fact that queer people have not ceased to exist and require support.” The group also said it would continue its advocacy and providing psychological, legal, and other support.

Centre T called the May 4 decision by the Moscow city court to ban the organization “unfounded and repressive.” The group pledged to continue its work to provide support and information for transgender and nonbinary people.

On March 3, the Saint Petersburg city court banned Coming Out, a prominent LGBT support group, as “extremist.” The group said the authorities have been expanding the definition of extremism to criminalize “virtually any independent activity, any dissent, or any act of solidarity to isolate, intimidate, and silence those who speak about issues and support vulnerable people.” Coming Out said it would continue its work to resist the state’s efforts “to make LGBT+ people unseen and unheard.”

Russian LGBT Network, which the Saint Petersburg city court on April 27 also banned as “extremist,” said the court’s judgment had “nothing to do with justice,” and that its activities essentially consisted of supporting the LGBT community, documenting discrimination, protecting rights, and discussing the situation of queer people in Russia. It also said it would continue its work.

On April 7, the Sverdlovsk Region court outlawed the LGBT Resource Centre. The court said the center engaged in “propaganda” and that its activities contradicted Russia’s state policy. On April 29, the Yaroslavl Region court banned Kallisto as “extremist,” claiming the movement aimed to “reshape and effectively destroy Russia’s fundamental spiritual and moral values, in particular traditional family values.”

On May 19, a court in Novosibirsk used the same reasoning to ban T9 NSK, an initiative that supported transgender people and their friends and family. The group shut down its website and social media accounts. In May, the Saint Petersburg city court registered the Justice Ministry’s lawsuit to ban the Alliance of Straights and LGBT for Equality as “extremist.” The group said it would continue working to provide support, security, overcome isolation and censorship, and focus on education and outreach. This was the last known case to be tried, in closed proceedings.

Under article 282.2 of Russia’s criminal code, participation in organizations banned as “extremist” carries penalties of up to 6 years in prison, while leading such an organization carries up to 12 years. Donations to such organizations are punishable with up to 8 years in prison under article 282.3, and repeated displays of “extremist” symbols, such as the rainbow flag or banned organizations’ logos, up to 4 years under article 282.4.

On March 6, a court in Samara convicted Artyom Fokin, the leader of Irida, a local LGBT community organization, on charges of leading an “extremist” organization and repeated violation of the country’s repressive “foreign agents” legislation and fined him 450,000 rubles (US$6,000). A Samara court subsequently banned the group on April 24.

Human Rights Watch monitoring has found that at least nine people had been convicted on criminal charges based on the “extremist” designation of the “International LGBT Movement,” including for allegedly leading organizations supposedly belonging to this movement, sharing content, organizing drag shows, conducting activism, or supporting same-sex dating. At least 25 others are facing criminal charges.

In 2023, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, condemned the Russian Supreme Court’s “LGBT-extremism” ruling. Independent UN human rights experts warned that the designation enables arbitrary and abusive application of the law and jeopardizes a wide range of activities protected under international human rights law.

“The Russian government’s banning of LGBT rights organizations is absurd, harmful, and discriminatory,” Williamson said. “Rights-respecting governments should support Russian LGBT groups and activists, including by enabling them to continue their work from abroad.”

Source: “Russia: LGBT Rights Groups Further Criminalized,” Human Rights Watch, 28 May 2026

Evgeny Pisemsky, founder and editor of Parni Plus, at the 2024 Pride parade in Bristol. Photo: Evgeny Pisemsky/DW

It has been nearly three years since the nonexistent “International LGBT Movement” was declared an “extremist” organization by the Russian Supreme Court, per its 30 November 2023 ruling. The decision unleashed a crackdown resulting in over one hundred convictions on charges of “LGBT propaganda.” Russian police have detained people at clubs and private parties, and queers have been remanded in custody and fined several thousands of rubles. Numerous LGBTQ+ organizations have been targeted, and many of them have been declared “extremist” as well, although they provided medical and legal assistance, hosted cultural events, and reported on the queer community via social media. Deutsche Welle spoke with members of these organizations about how they continue to operate in Russia and render assistance to people despite all the obstacles.

“The greater the pressure has been, the more attention we’ve paid to the LGBT movement”

Parni Plus, which has been around for eighteen years, is the principal Russian-language queer news website, and it has been closely linked to Phoenix Plus, an NGO that was founded two years earlier. Phoenix Plus focused on raising awareness, promoting free testing, and supporting HIV-positive people. Phoenix Plus’s chair, the cisgender male Evgeny Pisemsky, had also worked as a volunteer at the public awareness center Info Plus. Since Info Plus provided little specific information for HIV-positive gays, the idea arose to launch the site Parni Plus.

“Originally, running the site was my hobby, but at one point I realized it was a great way of reaching a bigger audience,” Pisemky, who became the website’s editor-in-chief, told DW.

Parni Plus has transformed along with the changing political climate in Russia. After the Russian State Duma passed a law banning “promoting LGBT to minors,” the site started publishing articles about the LGBTQ+ movement’s fight for its rights.

“The greater the pressure has been, the more attention we’ve paid to the LGBT movement,” Pisemsky explained to DW.

At one time, the media project tried to “navigate” the legal obstacles while also publishing articles criticizing the authorities for ignoring HIV prevention. This resulted in numerous instances when the authorities blocked the website.

“Our lawyer and I would send off complaints to Roskomnadzor [the Russian media watchdog] along the lines of ‘Where did you find that?’ and they would unblock us every time,” said Pisemsky.

When Phoenix Plus was declared a “foreign agent,” in 2020, Pisemsky had to shut it down in order to safeguard Parni Plus. But its consciousness-raising and activism continued, as Pisemsky consistently helped people get online HIV consultations from anywhere in Russia. The covid-19 lockdowns and Russia’s subsequent full-scale invasion of Ukraine did not put a stop to the organization’s work either: its team was ready to assist anyone and everyone remotely.

The team made the decision to reject the “18+” warning label it had been obliged to post on the website. In June 2023, they wrote that information about sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases were particularly vital to children and adolescents.

“[W]e are sick and tired of turning our back on queer children and teenagers. They are the most vulnerable segment of our communities, which are in particular need of support nowadays. We are not only freeing them from the need to lie when accessing the site. We [also] plan to publish many more articles just for minors,” they wrote.

After the LGBTQ movement was declared “extremist” in Russia, the Parni Plus team was forced to flee the country.

“We became ‘foreign agents’ twice: first as Phoenix Plus, and then as Parni Plus. Practically all our reporters were also declared ‘foreign agents’, and we racked up over twenty fines, totaling two million rubles,” Pisemsky recounted.

He argues that remaining open matters most of all.

“The ‘extremist’ label makes you worry about family members, and the authorities have been trying to erase us, but we have been surviving against the odds. It is vital to LGBTQ+ people that [our] organizations remain visible,” said Pisemsky.

80% of transgender people in Russia want to leave

Centre T is an organization specializing in assistance to trans people. It emerged in 2020 from a therapy group run by Yan Dvorkin, who is non-binary, and his colleague.

“We didn’t plan on founding a special organization. We were just psychologists who did sessions for trans people. But we quickly realized that our clients had a huge number of unmet needs in different areas, and that there was nowhere in Moscow for them to turn. There was nowhere to refer people for medical care or for meeting people and relaxing,” Yan explained.

That was how Centre T came into being. Its first project was called “Plush Toy Cat”—monthly tea parties featuring board games and dancing. These events took place for several years and, according to Dvorkin, would draw as many as 150 people.

“People from the regions would even come to hang out with other transgender people. It was an unbelievably positive experience: the participants found friends, partners, and future roommates at the get-togethers.”

Centre T gradually expanded. Its staff began providing consultations on emigration and means of obtaining medical care. They engaged in public education and community building, opened a shelter in Moscow, and set up regional associations.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Centre T team immediately sensed that negative changes were afoot in Russian society. According to Dvorkin, the active persecution of trans people in Russia kicked off precisely after February 2022, culminating in the 2023 law banning “sex change” (the correct term is “gender transition”).

“We worked with a medical board based at a clinic, and its physicians treated transgender people with respect. They issued diagnoses of ‘transsexualism’—a classification that enabled individuals to start redoing their identification papers and getting ready for surgeries. The passage of the law banning gender transition changed everything. We had fought against its adoption, and it was largely for this reason that our organization was designated a ‘foreign agent’ in 2023,” he said.

Dvorkin has no regrets that Centre T put up such a fierce fight. The team received many words of support in return.

Centre T staff members attended court hearings of cases involving LGBT individuals. Members of ultra-right gangs would occasionally attack them at the entrance to the courthouse.

Dvorkin described how the Centre T team coped with tough times.

“One time they attacked us with pepper spray and a child passing by got caught in the crossfire. His mother came to our defense and went with us to the police station. But our arguments about dangerous radicalization or the literal example of who was actually harming children fell on deaf ears in court. After losing such cases we would go to my place to ‘celebrate’ by eating a cake baked in advance and singing along to a guitar,” he recounted.

After the “LGBT movement” was ruled “extremist,” it became much harder for Centre T to operate, as many organizations voided their cooperation agreements with them, and they had to cancel in-person events. The situation in Russia changed drastically, and Centre T began moving its staff members abroad; many of them had been charged with violating the anti-LGBT “propaganda” law. Centre T also made the decision to close its Moscow shelter, which had attracted unwanted attention.

“This dude tried to kick down the door. We called the police. Our people saw through the window that he went outside, shook the policeman’s hand, and they went their separate ways,” recounted Dvorkin.

Currently, Centre T continues to operate online: it helps people access medical care and responds to crisis calls, providing support not only to trans people and their families but also to professionals at various levels. Centre T has also been providing more robust counseling on emigration matters.

“It has become clear that transgender people can no longer live a normal life in Russia. Eighty percent of transgender people in Russia want to leave and are looking for a way to do so,” concluded Dvorkin.

Although he sees Centre T’s new status as an “extremist organization” as dangerous, he has no plans to go into hiding.

“If I’m detained and extradited, then that’s life,” he said.

The MCC has gone underground

Unlike the majority of LGBTQ+ organizations, the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives (MCC) is still engaged in offline work in Russia and make it their emphasis. The MCC was formed in 2015 and conceived as a place where people could drop in, feel safe, and have a good time by reading books, drinking coffee, attending themed events, and meeting new eople. In 2019 it was transformed into a co-working café.

“We wanted casual passersby to be able to walk into our café, see the special ‘signs,’ and immediately realize they were in an LGBT space,” notes Olga Baranova, the MCC’s non-binary president.

Another of the MCC’s big projects is the queer festival OpenArt. Launched in 2017, it still takes place, under wraps, in Russia. Although it is hard to imagine now, the festival’s first edition was even guarded by police officers.

“An FSB officer arrived and asked what was going on. I told him to come in and have a look. He was afraid of possible riots and that skinheads would go after the festival attendees on the dark streets and beat them up. So we were assigned a police patrol. The provocateurs showed up at the doors, of course, but our guards kept everyone safe. No one inside noticed a thing,” Baranova recounts.

Despite the law against “gay propaganda” among children, the MCC managed to navigate the obstacles and and engage with a young audience: in 2022, for example, the festival was held in a two-story venue, with a 16+ area on the first floor. Nevertheless, it wasn’t without its challenges.

“Center ‘E’ officers [the Russian Interior Ministry’s anti-“extremism” police] came and talked with me. They asked me to shut everything down. Ultimately, though, the festival was a huge success,” Baranova recalls.

When the “International LGBT Movement” was declared “extremist” by the Russian authorities, the MCC went underground. The organization is now focused on emergency assistance, whether that means moving people abroad or getting them into a shelter.

“It’s important to remember that we cannot help everyone because we simply don’t have the resources,” Baranova points out. “If the police are pounding on your door, if you’re up against a tough situation in life, then you definitely should write to us and submit a request.”

Otherwise, the MCC continues to hold events on important topics, and their goal is to ensure that people do not end up being isolated.

“We see what are our beneficiaries need and every three to six months we change the focus of our meetings,” notes Baranova. “For example, right now many of them are looking for jobs.”

The community center wanders among various venues, and Baranova regrets the constant need to move from place to place. “In your own home you can put your favorite pillow on the bed and your favorite glass on the table. These are the things that create a sense of home, not bare walls,” she complains.

Members of the Russian LGBTQ community are persecuted for their identity

Eighteen years ago, a small community center called Coming Out opened in St. Petersburg. Since then, it has grown into one of Russia’s leading LGBTQ+ rights organizations. Coming Out also provided free psychological counseling and ran in-person solidarity groups, but its primary activities were legal support and consultations.

Thanks to Coming Out, there is an archive of accounts of discrimination against queer people in Russia.

“Long before 2022, we gatherd accounts of discrimination against queer people by law enforcement, of workplace and domestic discrimination, and of discrimination at medical and educational institutions. We analyzed the messages transmitted by the state propaganda machine and corroborated the existence of worrying trends with the numbers. We annually presented the outcomes of our work to Russian and international officials,” Denis Oleinik, a cisgender man and Coming Out’s executive director, explained to DW.

Coming Out was designated a “foreign agent” by the Russian authorities in December 2021. A few months later, realizing they could no longer work in Russia because they could not guarantee their own safety, the organization’s staff gradually fled Russia and moved its entire operations online. When Coming Out was declared an “extremist” organization, in March 2026, all of its staff members were ready for this turn of events, according to Oleinik.

“Over the past four years, we’ve learned to do everything remotely, put together a secure volunteer system, and set up systems for gathering and storing information that are as anonymous as possible. It’s really important to us that the beneficiaries of our assistance are safe and that the help we provide doesn’t harm them. To date, there have been no cases of people being persecuted for receiving support or assistance,” he explained.

Oleinik wants anti-queer discrimination to disappear in the future, but Coming Out’s research paints a completely different picture.

“In 2025, members of Russia’s LGBTQ community were subjected to persecution and discrimination not only for things they said or wrote but also for their very identity. Thus, in 2025, posting personal photos featuring kissing, publishing a blog about the lives of a same-sex couple, and organizing meetings in one’s own home were classified as ‘propaganda’ and ‘extremism,'” its report says.

This means that Oleinik and his colleagues have their work cut out for them.

Source: Dima Yelagin, “How ‘the boys’ became a threat to Russia,” Deutsche Welle Russian Service, 16 June 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader

Kolya* says they would not dare to go to a state health-care facility for the therapy they are receiving for a mental health condition. The 19-year-old from a city in Russia’s far-east, who identifies as non-binary and gay, tells The Lancet they fear that information about their sexuality could be passed on to other state institutions and used against them in some way. “I wouldn’t have told the mental health specialist treating me about my sexuality if they weren’t a private doctor. I wouldn’t tell the municipal clinic, I wouldn’t want them to have that kind of information about me in case they passed it on somewhere”, they say.

Kolya chose a private clinic because, like many in the LGBTQ+ community, they perceive them to be less likely to divulge their gender identity or sexuality to others, and less likely to be discriminatory. Kolya’s distrust of the Russian health-care system, and their avoidance of it, is becoming increasingly common among the heavily marginalised LGBTQ+ community, according to one of the largest surveys of how LGBTQ+ people are living in Russia, released in May.

The survey of more than 6000 people in Russia by the Coming Out and Sphere Foundation organisations showed a significant rise in the number of LGBTQ+ people avoiding seeing a doctor for fear of discrimination or biased treatment last year, reaching 35%.

Many of the respondents who reported discrimination said they had faced inappropriate comments, jokes, or offensive remarks from medical professionals, as well as experiencing reproductive coercion. Others specifically mentioned issues that arose when seeking help from psychologists and psychotherapists. In such cases, respondents reported instances of outing and breaches of confidentiality, including the disclosure of information about sexuality or gender identity without their consent.

The report’s authors say LGBTQ+ people, and especially transgender people, are losing access to medical services due to this distrust. “In our latest survey we saw a 6 percentage point year-on-year rise in people avoiding seeing a doctor. Historically, annual increases for this indicator have been in the range of 1–2 percentage points. A 6-point rise represents a marked departure from that trend—that’s why it is significant”, Denis Oleinik, Executive Director of Coming Out, told The Lancet.

“If this rate of increase were to continue at the same pace annually, within 5 years a substantially larger proportion of LGBTQ+ people would be avoiding medical care, with serious consequences for both individual health outcomes and broader public health. The 6-point rise may not sound dramatic in isolation, but viewed against the historical baseline and the potential trajectory it represents a genuinely concerning shift”, he added.

Over the past decade, a series of repressive anti-LGBTQ+ laws have been passed in Russia, including bans on any public information or activities supporting LGBTQ+ rights or displaying non-heterosexual orientation, on same-sex marriage, and on transgender people officially or medically changing their gender. A 2023 ruling by the Supreme Court also banned the international LGBT movement, declaring it extremist, allowing people to be fined or prosecuted for anything that could be construed as promoting “non-traditional sexual relations”.

In previous years, authorities have used these tools to crack down on groups and activists taking action to support LGBTQ+ rights, but now they are increasingly being used against individuals, with prosecutions even for displaying or wearing rainbow-coloured materials. “The persecution has moved to people being targeted not for something they have done, but just for being LGBTQ+,” said Oleinik. This in turn has made many in the community concerned about going anywhere, including health-care facilities, where their gender identity or sexual orientation could be identified and possibly disclosed.

Vitaly Djuma, Executive Director at the Eurasian Coalition on Health, Rights, Gender and Sexual Diversity told The Lancet that, in many cases, an LGBTQ+ person with a particular complaint that could be linked to non-heterosexual sexual behaviour would “not give up that kind of intimate information unless they really trusted the doctor, especially if they thought it could lead to disclosure [of their sexual orientation]”. Instead, he said, they would be forced to go to a private clinic, if they could afford it, or risk seeking treatment within state health care. “They would have to just try and deny the complaint is any indication of their sexuality”, he added.

Groups providing harm reduction services in Russia say that LGBTQ+ people are accessing their services, which they can legally provide to other key populations, to resolve health issues. “The LGBTQ+ community is increasingly reaching out to us in a more discreet way, sometimes through third parties. People are afraid to disclose that they are LGBTQ+”, a worker at a non-governmental organisation in a major Russian city, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Lancet.

The situation is especially difficult for transgender people, who, the survey shows, are more likely to face discrimination in health care, and more likely to avoid going to a doctor, than other members of the LGBTQ+ community. Oleinik said there were “few cases where doctors or clinics outright rejected providing services to someone just because they were gay or lesbian, but for trans people, it’s much worse”.

He added that there had also been cases of transgender people who, with medical changing of gender banned, turned to the black market to get the medicines they needed to transition, administered them unsupervised, and subsequently became ill.

Lucy Shtein of the North Caucasus SOS crisis group, which evacuates persecuted LGBTQ+ people from Russia, pointed out that following the ban, transgender people had become even more vulnerable as a group. “After the ban on gender transition, access to medical care became even more restricted for them”, she told The Lancet.

Furthermore, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation has forced groups which provided health services for members of the community, such as harm reduction, prevention of sexually transmitted infections, or psychosocial help, to either close down or leave the country, cutting off another line of access to health care for people who do not trust state medical services. Experts say it is difficult to determine what effect this avoidance of, and inability to access, health care, is having on health among the LGBTQ+ community in Russia.

Data for some common health indicators in the community, such as numbers of HIV/AIDS cases and other sexually transmitted infections, as well as depression and other mental health conditions, are not always available or lack relevant detail. Although there are official figures for the number of people currently living with HIV and new infections, specific data on epidemiological trends among key populations is either not publicly available or, according to experts, not reliable.

Routes of transmission—according to some reports most new infections are now transmitted through heterosexual contact—are determined through self-reporting, while historical data have shown the proportion of overall HIV testing carried out among key populations is decreasing year on year.

This makes it very difficult to get an accurate picture of the epidemiological situation for the disease among the community, which could indicate potential wider consequences of individuals avoiding health care.

“Data for transmission routes is unreliable with the use of self-reporting and a large amount of unidentified transmissions. The HIV epidemic is absolutely still ongoing among men who have sex with men and other members of the LGBTQ+ community, especially in big cities where the practice of chemsex is burgeoning”, Djuma said.

Oleinik added that systematic research on LGBTQ+ people has become essentially impossible as researchers, non-governmental organisations, and public health professionals cannot gather such data without risking being associated with extremist activity. “If anything does exist in official sources, it tends to appear exclusively in negative framing—for example, linking same-sex behaviour to HIV transmission in ways that stigmatize the community rather than support it. Such studies or statistics cannot be trusted as objective public health data”, he said.

Additionally, apart from physical health, there are serious concerns of a deterioration of mental wellbeing among the community, with studies having previously established links between discrimination and mental health among LGBTQ+ people.

There are no specific data available on mental health in the community— statistics for relevant indicators, such as suicide, are not up to date—but there is some anecdotal evidence of worsening mental health in the general population, and all those who spoke to The Lancet said mental health among the community was inevitably being impacted by the government’s repressive legislation and an increasing normalisation of homophobic discourse among politicians and society.

Kolya says that “aggressive government anti-LGBTQ+ narratives” were one of the key reasons they were in psychotherapy and taking anti-depressants. “It’s stressful as hell sometimes. Every queer person I know feels that same stress [caused by these narratives]”.

Groups working with LGBTQ+ people in Russia said they had seen a rise in demand for their mental health services. “We have received significantly more requests for psychological support, especially from young LGBTQ+ people. Many have become more willing to seek support, are less afraid of psychotherapy, and are more open to working with psychologists and psychiatrists. This is likely connected both to the deterioration of mental health due to repression and to a broader understanding of the importance of mental health in general”, said Shtein.

“The number of people who come to us seeking psychological support is higher than last year and it’s growing every month”, added Oleinik. “The number of people thinking about suicide or who [harmed] themselves is also growing every year”, he said.

Kolya, and others who spoke to The Lancet, said that suicidal ideation and attempts were common among the community, again especially among transgender people. However, Oleinik said that despite the grim situation facing the community, groups like his would continue to help LGBTQ+ people access health care. “Our role in the current situation is increasingly important. We understand that people in the community need us—a lot of organisations have closed, stopped offering some programmes, but we can still reach the community. It might look like there is little hope at the moment, but we won’t stop”, he said.

Source: Ed Holt, “LGBTQ+ Russians increasingly avoiding doctors,” The Lancet, 25 June 2026

Olga Baranova

A magistrate in Moscow has been delivered a complaint of “LGBT propaganda” (as defined by Article 6.21.3 of the Russian Federal Code of Administrative Offenses) filed against Olga Baranova, program director of the Moscow Community Center for LGBT+ Initiatives. Apparently, this is her first fine—coming after the MCC was designated an “extremist” organization.

The hearing will take place on July 8, according to the court’s website. The court has not disclosed which agency drafted the report. Cases involving “LGBT propaganda” can be launched by various agencies: the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor’s Office, or Roskomnadzor. However, in politically motivated cases, the instigator is most often Center “E”—the Interior Ministry’s department for “combating extremism.”

In late April, a court ruled in favor of the Justice Ministry and designated the MCC an “extremist” organization. It is one of ten LGBT groups that were given this designation in 2026. The Center is currently appealing the decision, so it is not yet listed in the registry of extremist organizations.

Source: “MCC director Olga Baranova gets her first ‘propaganda’ citation,” Parni Plus, 27 June 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader

Alexander Klimov, art director of the Orenburg bar Pose. Source: Social media/Moscow Times

A court in the Orenburg region on Monday handed down prison sentences to a bar owner and two of his employees in Russia’s first criminal case targeting people accused of belonging to what authorities call the “International LGBT Movement.”

The trio was arrested on LGBTQ+ “extremism” charges in March 2024, representing the first instance of criminal charges being pressed in connection with the Russian Supreme Court’s designation of the non-existent “LGBT movement” as “extremist” the year before.

Bar owner Vyacheslav Khasanov received a seven-year sentence, according to Ostorozhno Novosti. Manager Diana Kamilyanova was sentenced to six years and three months, while art director Alexander Klimov received two years and three months.

All three were accused of organizing events that demonstrated “affiliation with individuals of unconventional sexual orientation under the guise of running a nightlife venue.” According to the exiled news outlet Mediazona, the bar hosted drag shows.

The trio denied the charges during the court proceedings, which were held behind closed doors.

While the case represents the first instance of criminal charges being brought under the LGBTQ+ “extremism” designation, Russia’s first actual prison sentence under the ban was issued separately in January 2025 in the Kemerovo region.

The Orenburg court said Monday that its verdict has not yet taken effect and remains subject to appeal.

In addition to the prison terms, the court seized 1 million rubles ($12,800) in revenue from Khasanov. It also barred all three defendants from working in the entertainment and hospitality industries for two to three years following their release.

Source: “Orenburg Court Jails 3 Bar Employees for LGBTQ+ ‘Extremism,’” Moscow Times, 29 June 2026

The Bulwark Stands in Solidarity with Haitian Refugees

A crowd gathers outside city hall in Springfield, Ohio, to react to the Supreme Court’s decision in Mullin v. Doe. Photo: Jim Swift/The Bulwark

Forward Together, Backward by Order

by Jim Swift

SPRINGFIELD, OHIO—What organizers had hoped would be an evening of celebration was instead an interfaith prayer service. Ministers, immigration lawyers, community organizers, Haitian families, and hundreds of their neighbors gathered in front of Springfield City Hall beneath the city’s motto, “Forward Together,” alternating between English and Creole as they decried the Supreme Court’s decision and prepared for what many fear could become mass deportations.

Thursday morning, after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end temporary protected status for Haitians, the people who helped revive Springfield, Ohio, were trying to figure out how long they could keep their jobs and their driver’s licenses, and whether they should start preparing for deportation. Pastor Carl Ruby captured the mood: “We had hoped this would become a time of celebration . . . but it has become a time of lament.”

Fleeing gang violence and what has become a de facto civil war, thousands of Haitians have helped reverse decades of decline in Springfield since 2010. They filled factory jobs, opened businesses, started churches, and helped stabilize the city’s population after years of shrinkage. But that growth stopped after JD Vance amplified a pernicious lie about Haitians in Springfield eating dogs and cats.

Now the Trump administration is set on removing many of the very people who helped bring Springfield back.

Yesterday’s 6–3 ruling by the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end TPS, meaning that although litigation may continue, many Haitians here in Ohio and all across America under TPS are subject to deportation immediately.

On a live zoom press conference earlier yesterday held by Springfield G92, a volunteer-led group of churches and faith advocates that focus on immigrant rights and mutual aid, Geoff Pipoly, a lead attorney on the TPS case, Mullin v. Doe, explained that while they’re reviewing what’s left of the case to determine whether any further legal appeals from his plaintiffs were tenable, the situation for Haitians here varies by their status.

Haitians here under TPS could consider filing asylum claims—if they can find an immigration lawyer to help them. The immigration court system is, to put it mildly, a shitshow right now. Donald Trump is purging judges who don’t deport a lot of people, the New York Times reported this week.

The data say the purge is having its desired effect: In Fiscal Year 2025, the denial rate for asylum claims more than doubled—from 14.3 percent to 30.8 percent—while the grant rate fell from 12.0 percent to 9.9 percent, its lowest level since 2017.

Those here under TPS alone are facing a lot: Their state-issued driver’s licenses are set to expire on July 6, as Ohio provided them with temporary extensions due to the uncertainty of their TPS status. Before the stay, Haitians were unable to renew their driver’s licenses because DHS made it clear that Trump wanted to end their protected status. Their expiry in ten days will make driving illegal, not that many are going to be venturing out due to the chance that ICE could stop them and deport them. And, unless they have another legal basis to remain, they won’t have jobs to drive to: the end of TPS will mean the end of their work authorization.

Biassou Pierre, a community organizer from Haiti, told the crowd: assembled in front of city hall, “Today many people call me asking, ‘How will I feed my children if I lose my job? What will happen to my family if I get detained by ICE?’ Unfortunately, we don’t have a good answer.”

But even if one had the money and could find an immigration lawyer with availability to take up their case, that doesn’t mean a quick return to work. “People who have pending asylum applications may be eligible to apply for a work permit after their application has been pending for 180 days,” Katie Kersh, a senior attorney with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality in Dayton, told reporters. “But the administration is trying to extend the required waiting period to one year.”

At the rally last night, Kersh put this avoidable tragedy in these terms: “These individuals followed the law. They followed the law and applied for TPS, and often asylum. The law abandoned them.”

There is some hope in Congress in the form of H.R. 1689, which would extend TPS until the end of the Trump administration. By some small miracle, it passed the House in April on a bipartisan basis, with ten Republicans, including Ohio’s Mike Carey and Mike Turner (who represents Springfield), supporting it. But Haitians here now have to depend on the Senate, and Ohio’s senators are notably silent.

Sens. Moreno, an immigrant himself, and Jon Husted, who is up for election this fall, having been appointed to fill Vance’s seat, do not have a position on the bill. Outgoing Gov. Mike DeWine, who grew up in the area and has done charitable work in Haiti with his wife, has supported extending TPS and called Thursday’s ruling a mistake that was “not in the best interest of the United States nor Ohio.”

This has the potential to become a big campaign issue for both Husted and Vivek Ramaswamy, the controversial Republican candidate for governor. As Jonathan Cohn reported in these pages earlier this week, Haitian immigrants are a bedrock in multiple industries around the country, most notably healthcare.

Former Sen. Sherrod Brown, running against Husted, has been vocal in his support for the Haitian community, calling on both Husted and Moreno to support an extension of TPS for Haiti. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor, has been more careful in her wording, saying: “Law enforcement should be keeping people safe by going after dangerous criminals, not terrorizing communities.”

Viles Dorsainvil is a Haitian pastor and co-founder of the Haitian Support Center, which has been helping with utility bills, rent assistance, legal services, and transportation for Haitians who have been looking over their shoulder since Trump and Vance propagated heinous lies about them.

“Everything has changed in the community” Dorsainvil told reporters early Thursday, “And the worst thing now is that the employers will terminate workers immediately. . . . It was predictable that our community will be in trouble and that the decision will amplify the humanitarian crisis that we’ve already had here. That’s the reality. So as a center, we’ll continue to do our best, but we don’t know how long we’ll be able to survive.”

What awaits these Haitians in Springfield? Pastor Ruby, who welcomed me into Springfield Central Christian in February to talk and show me the preparations they had made to provide this community sanctuary, said, “We have had to think about issues of civil disobedience. We’ve had to think about the issue of providing sanctuary, and when there’s a conflict between man’s laws and God’s laws, we have an obligation to side with God’s laws.”

The situation in Haiti remains bleak. The State Department doesn’t advise Americans to travel there, as it’s one of the “most dangerous places on earth right now” Ruby says. He recounts a conversation with a young boy, about his life before coming to America: “I was talking with a 12-year-old boy . . . we were talking about farm animals. And he started talking about seeing huge pigs. . . . I said, ‘What were the huge pigs doing?’ And he said, “The huge hog was eating bodies.”

He added: “So that’s what Haitian children have observed. They’ve all been traumatized. This is gonna re-traumatize them. I can’t imagine the fear that they’re experiencing right now.  There’s another person in our church . . . the decapitated body of a friend was left in front of his house. That’s what Haiti is like right now, and our justices knew that.”

Dorsainvil, for his part, is appreciative of the support his center has gotten from around the country. “We are grateful for people who’ve been standing in solidarity with us . . . because you understand our struggle . . . We will continue to count on you to stand in solidarity with our community here in Springfield.”

“I am no different from other folks.” he told reporters, “I just have a pending asylum. . . . Everything is in limbo now. I don’t know how that will be.”

Pierre, speaking to an audience beyond those assembled in front of him, pleaded: “We are not just immigration cases or statistics. We are your neighbors, your coworkers, and members of your church.”

“Please don’t forget us.”

You can donate to the Haitian Support Center here and other local charities here.

Source: “After SCOTUS Ruling, Haitians Prepare for Disaster,” The Bulwark, 26 June 2024

Adding Ingratitude to Injury

by William Kristol

America today has lots of hard-working immigrants, and plenty of native-born citizens who accept and respect them. But there are also plenty of Americans these days who were born on third base and think they hit a triple.

I hasten to say there’s no fault in being born on third base. Indeed, all of us, whether rich or poor, who were born in today’s America might be said, in the grand historical scheme of things, to have been born on third base. A healthy American patriotism begins with acknowledgment of our good fortune, and with gratitude for what our forebears—most of whom were not born on third base—did to make our privileged lives today possible.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with also taking pride in what we and our contemporaries have accomplished. And if we sometimes overestimate our own achievements and underrate those of our predecessors—and therefore underrate our simple good fortune in being born here—well, that’s human nature, and it’s probably not worth getting all worked up about.

But what is worth getting worked up about is those who have no sympathy for others who didn’t happen to enjoy good fortune. What’s worth getting worked up about is those who have contempt for and who revel in cruelty toward the less fortunate.

There are lots of those people in America today. They include our president. They include many in his administration. They include many in the world of MAGA.

And they include Megyn Kelly, who was so proud of what she said on her show yesterday after the Supreme Court’s TPS decision that she then posted the clip on X:

Megyn sends a message to the Haitians who lost their TPS today:

“Go home! Get out! We know our country is better than yours. That’s because we filled it with our work ethic, culture, and values. You being here only dilutes it for us . . . GO BACK TO FUCKING HAITI!”

Kelly thinks that “we” made America great with “our work ethic, culture, and values.” But most Americans of Kelly’s generation—and, to be clear, of mine—have had to do little in the way of heavy lifting to make America great. And is it clear that today’s culture and values are so exceptionally wonderful?

It was our forebears who made America great. Many of them were immigrants and refugees, whom earlier generations of nativists treated with hostility, bigotry, and cruelty.

The rhetoric of yesterday’s Court ruling is not itself bigoted or cruel. But the policies it permits are bigoted and cruel. They are the policies of people who found themselves, mostly by good fortune, standing on third base. Many of them aren’t particularly good hitters or fast runners. But they’ve decided to protect their status by making sure no one else—especially no one else of a different skin color or background—will have a chance to get up to bat.

Source: “After SCOTUS Ruling, Haitians Prepare for Disaster,” The Bulwark, 26 June 2024. Despite (or maybe even because of) my own leftist sympathies, I’m a proud subscriber and reader of The Bulwark, an online publication anchored by “recanted” (?) neocons like Bill Kristol. The younger me would have wondered how such an unbelievable thing could have come to pass, but I would explain to him that we need a united front against fascism right now, and the Bulwarkers, Kristol included, are quite explicitly, vocally, and usefully part of that front. ||||| trr

The Dyatlov Pass Incident Down Under with a Bullet

Mia Wasikowska and Xavier Samuel, with Di Adams and Sam Parsonson (lying on the ground) in The Killings at Parrish Station.

For a murder mystery with its beginnings in the red dirt of Broken Hill, you would think The Killings at Parrish Station had its origins in similar real-life scenario. After all, there’s plenty of open space out there in which to hide a body or three.

Instead, the drama’s origins come from somewhere quite different: a frozen Russian mountain and a baffling cold case in which nine experienced hikers mysteriously died in the Ural Mountains in 1959. Was it an avalanche? Misadventure? Or something more sinister? UFOs, missile testing or a government cover-up?

Fast-forward 60 years or so and comedy writer Ben Jenkins is sitting at home in Sydney – during the depths of COVID-19 – digger deeper and deeper into the rabbit holes of the internet when he stumbles across the case known as the Dyatlov Pass incident.

“It’s just a really creepy horrible story,” says Jenkins. “But basically a big search party was launched from them. They found their bodies in really bizarre and kind of inexplicable circumstances. The tent that they were staying in had been cut open, but from the inside, as if somebody was fleeing in terror.

“One of the bodies had injuries that were so traumatic in terms of impact, that it was in line with, like, a car accident. And then there were mutilations and all that sort of stuff.”

But what really interested him was the reaction of his Russian mother-in-law when he told her the story.

“My mother-in-law was like, ‘Dyatlov? But why are you talking about Dyatlov Pass?’” recalls Jenkins. “And she knew all about it, and she’d grown up with this story, and she was telling me how as she got older in the USSR, the story just kept coming back.

“There were like parliamentary hearings, and every now and again, a journalist would go digging, and careers were made or ruined on the back of this thing that happened so long ago. And that was really the seed for this. It was like, ‘How do you tell a story about something that refuses to go away?’”

And so begins The Killings at Parrish Station – not with the deaths of Russian hikers, but with four scientists found murdered in 1987 at an outback research station. The only survivor is delirious and keeps muttering cryptic phrases. Also taking an interest in the deaths is the son of a wealthy mining family, whose uranium mine seems to have links to the station’s radio telescope and a 15th century book called The Bone Gospel.

It’s cosmic and creepy and really gives the crime genre a decent nudge in a very different direction.

“Audiences aren’t stupid,” says Jenkins, who has worked on The Chaser’s election specials and the ABC’s consumer affairs series The Checkout. “And even if they don’t articulate this stuff out loud, they know the shape of a crime realm. They know, ‘OK, we’ve gone from A to B, now we’ve got to go to see [this bit]’, and there’s a point at which that stops becoming comfortable and starts just becoming annoying.

“One of the joys of making this show was we were operating in a really established genre space, in terms of crime investigation, and we were able to use that comfort to surprise people in a way because you use that expectation, you go, ‘No, no, we’re not doing that, you are not watching the show you thought you were watching.’”

Investigating the case is Detective Georgie Cooke and her partner, Michael Thorne. City detectives, they arrive in Broken Hill hot and out of sorts, collars stuck to sweaty necks and confronted with a grisly crime scene. We meet them across two timelines – in 1987, played by Mia Wasikowska and Xavier Samuels – and then in the present, played by Heather Mitchell and Robert Taylor, which is when a copycat killer appears to surface.

“She’s a detective who’s battling her own traumas from the job,” says Wasikowska of her character, Georgia. “And then also from her own life, and so she’s coming into this case with her own baggage.”

The show marks Wasikowska’s first TV role in 18 years after she got her start as a teenager in the splashy HBO drama In Treatment and then followed that with films, such as the indie hit The Kids Are All Right and Tim Burton’s kaleidoscopic live-action version of Alice in Wonderland.

The Killings at Parrish Station is a homecoming for her in more ways than one, as it meant she was able to live and film in the same city for the first time in years.

“As you get older, the idea of going to a film set for two months and being completely removed from your own life here is sort of less appealing,” Wasikowska, 36, says. “So it’s nice to be seeing same people again and working with people again, and the crew as well. Those are the things that I’m interested in, that’s a really nice feeling.”

Parrish Station also marked another screen milestone for Wasikowska: her first time playing a detective.

“I was like, as long as I can put my sunglasses on my head and have a cigarette moment, then I’ll be happy,” she says, laughing. “As long as you can crouch down next to a body with a dictaphone, then I feel like I’ve like ticked off some detective moves.”

And the gory stuff? Parrish Station is filled with bodies in several states of disrepair. “It’s … very effectively disturbing,” she confirms.

Keeping it the appropriate level of disturbing was something Jenkins was keen to do. He didn’t want the murders at the centre of the story treated as pure entertainment, which is why the present-day storyline includes a pointed poke at true-crime podcasts.

“There’s something about treating murder in a very twee way,” says Jenkins. “It’s treating the worst thing that ever happened to people as entertainment, and that was a big starting point for me in this story.

“These true crime podcasters, [in the show are a] case in point. I want to show there is this dreadful traumatic thing that happens, and you’re at the centre of it, and you think, ‘I’ve got to muddle through this, and I’ve got to work out how to keep living after this’, but what you don’t control is 20 years later, people are selling tote bags off the back of it, and turn it into this like fun, almost fictionalised puzzle box.”

Jenkins’ background is in writing sketch comedy for stage and screen. And while that is not an obvious pathway to drama, Jenkins says comedy is what sharpened his drama instincts. After all, it worked for Katie Dippold, a comedy writer who worked on Parks and Recreation before creating the hit show Widow’s Bay, and for Zach Cregger, who wrote and directed the horror films Barbarian and Weapons after getting his start in a sketch comedy troupe.

“You write so much and so much gets thrown away,” says Jenkins. “And you just get really good at living with that. Sketch teaches you to be really economical, because every line has to do about six different things. It also teaches you, I think, a very healthy terror of boring people, especially if you’ve done live sketch. I did that for years, and I think every writer would benefit from doing that.

“Because there is a moment when you’re doing a show, and you know it’s not going very well, and you can see the audience, and you can see somebody in the audience, and their face unmistakably says, ‘I can’t believe we hired a babysitter for this’ and it gives you so much respect for people’s time.”

Source: Louise Rugendyke, “The cult Russian cold case that inspired an outback murder mystery,” Sydney Morning Herald, 25 June 2026

Hypercorrection has such a firm grip on today’s Anglophone creatives that they can’t even remember (or don’t even know) that no one spoke English like this in 1987. Still from The Killings at Parrish Station, S01 E02: “The Signal and the Noise”

Ben Jenkins’s Russian mother-in-law wasn’t consulted, apparently, on the pronunciation of the cryptically significant Russian word muzjik, which the present-day Detective Georgia Cooke inexplicably pronounces muhz-DJEEK. Stills from The Killings at Parrish Station, S01E01: “Muzjiks”

Sasha Razor: Who Burns the Lavra?

Smoke and flames rise from the roof of the Dormition Cathedral at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in the early hours of Monday, 15 June 2026, after a Russian strike on Kyiv. Image: Bishop Avraamij/Facebook)

On June 15, a Russian strike set Kyiv’s thousand-year-old monastery ablaze. The act was charged to a country, Russia, and to no one in particular. This is an attempt to reconstruct how such a decision gets made, and by whom.

My feed is on fire, and for once the metaphor is indecent, because the fire is literal. On the night of June 15, the roof of the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra burned against the dark while rescuers climbed toward it. The monastery was founded in 1051, at the dawn of monasticism in Kievan Rus’. The cathedral that burned is a reconstruction; the original was blown up in November 1941, after German troops took Kyiv, and whether the Nazis or the retreating Soviets set the charge has never been settled.

The human cost first. In a barrage of seventy missiles and more than six hundred drones, at least eleven people were killed across Ukraine and more than fifty wounded, Ukrainian officials said. In Kyiv, the dead numbered five and the wounded thirty-five, among them a pregnant woman and two children. In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s emergency service said, a second missile struck a rescue site still crowded with the crews working the first, killing four of them for the crime of arriving. The evening before, a one-month-old girl had been among five people wounded when a drone hit the Kharkiv Art Museum.

And the buildings are their own kind of casualty list. The reposts come faster than anyone can read them. The Lavra. The Mystetsky Arsenal, the vaulted hall where the Book Arsenal festival had closed two weeks before. The Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio, where a single strike destroyed what the culture minister called Ukraine’s oldest and largest costume archive: a hundred thousand costumes, three million items of clothing, the wardrobe of a national cinema turned to ash before morning. The House of Organ and Chamber Music in Dnipro. Karpenko-Kary, where Ukraine trains its filmmakers and its actors. A single day reached all of it.

The films made on those lots are what I study, so let me say plainly what burned. A studio’s wardrobe is the material memory of a national cinema, the actual cloth worn in the films through which a country learned to see itself: the embroidered shirts, the uniforms it had to wear on screen and then subvert, the furs and the partisan coats. A costume archive is the primary source by which a culture studies itself. You cannot reshoot the twentieth century. Some of the garments that burned were older than the younger states now debating how to respond.

Russia says none of this happened, or that something else did. The Defense Ministry called the night a strike with high-precision weapons against the defense-industrial complex, and denied hitting the Lavra at all: the cathedral, it claimed without evidence, was struck by a Ukrainian-operated Patriot interceptor. The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the reports “fakes”. By that account, the cathedral fire was a Ukrainian misfire, the dead rescuers were the fog of war, and the second strike on the Arsenal, launched while firefighters stood exposed at the Lavra, was a coincidence of timing.

Two things are happening at once, and they do not quite match. The grief is public and signed: thousands of people, in a dozen languages, share the same photograph and the same verdict. A Russian strike. Russian barbarism. The attribution is loud, and it is also the easiest one available. It names a culprit and, somehow, no person at all.

What is more, the argument about Russia usually collapses into sentiment. We have learned, rightly, to separate Vladimir Putin from the people we call “ordinary Russians,” many of whom, it is said, do not want this war. But this separation dissolves into the same anonymity that lets a cathedral burn with no hand on the match.

Drone studies calls the drone less a weapon than a chain, an act of violence dispersed across factories, suppliers, programmers, and launch crews until no single hand can be said to hold it, by design. The Shahed, the Iranian-designed drone behind most of that overnight barrage, pushes that logic to its industrial extreme. The burning of the Lavra happened in many places at once, and over many months. In July of last year, a Swiss plant made the microcontroller that would steer the drone. American and German firms, Texas Instruments and Infineon, made the chips that investigators keep pulling from the wreckage. Ukraine’s sanctions commissioner counts more than two million imported components in a single year. Trading offices in Hong Kong and free ports in the Emirates rerouted those parts around the sanctions meant to stop them. In Tatarstan, the Alabuga plant assembled the drone with schoolchildren recruited out of the ninth grade and women brought from Africa through a foreign outreach scheme. And before it ever left the ground, a crew set its route.

And there the trail goes cold. The closest anyone has come to naming the drone operators was for a different weapon entirely. In 2022, Bellingcat, The Insider, and Der Spiegel identified a unit of military engineers inside the General Staff’s Main Computation Centre who program the flight paths of Russia’s cruise missiles, the Kalibrs and the Kh-101s, plotting each trajectory by hand, far from any front. Most are young, many of them former software or game developers. Their commander was an avid coin collector; his phone records show him trading online about an hour before one such salvo hit Kyiv and killed dozens. When reporters reached the engineers, they denied everything, even when shown photographs of themselves in uniform. One said he was a plumber. One said she was a florist. One offered to explain how to butcher a pig. The metadata says these are the people who aim the missiles.

It is worth sitting with how little even that gave us. The Bellingcat investigation is now nearly four years old, and it named the people behind Russia’s cruise missiles, not its drones. The revelation was that a missile had not simply appeared over a city, the way weather appears. It had passed through offices, phones, maps, databases, commanders, and people who could be found, called, photographed, embarrassed, and named. But the war that followed, the Shahed war at industrial scale, has been harder to personify. As the drones multiplied into hundreds a night, the crews who prepare them, program them, and release them into the dark have remained mostly faceless.

The Russian drone operator has become one of the defining figures of the war. He is a technician of distance, converting coordinates, batteries, antennas, video feeds, maps, and orders into impact. Some work near the front, guiding FPV drones and reconnaissance quadcopters by hand. Others belong to more formal formations, including the elite Rubicon drone center, described by Radio Svoboda’s Russian-language investigation as a drone special-forces structure based in the Patriot Park complex, and by the Kyiv Independent as a central feature of Russia’s scaling drone war. But the long-range Shahed crews who send drones toward Ukrainian cities remain almost entirely unnamed. We can follow a microcontroller across three continents and still not put a name to the person who helped send it toward Kyiv. Component-tracing survives because it can be done at a distance. Naming people requires sources, time, physical danger, and the expensive human labor that has been gutted on both sides of the line: criminalized inside Russia, where reporters are exiled or imprisoned, and starved in the West, where the foreign desks that once did this work have been cut to the bone.

If everyone is responsible, it is tempting to conclude that no one is. That conclusion is what the system is built to produce. But responsibility accrues at every link, and it is uneven. It is heaviest where knowledge and choice are greatest, with the engineer who plots the path and the official who signs the order. It is lighter, though never absent, for the smuggled chip and for the schoolchild recruited into what was sold as a college and turned out to be a drone line. The Russia scholar Jade McGlynn, who has argued that this is Russia’s War and not only Putin’s, makes the necessary distinction: not collective guilt, which belongs to individuals tried for their own acts, but collective responsibility, held in different measure by everyone who takes part.

I have no verdict, only a refusal to let “Russia” be the last word. An engineer designed the chip. A broker moved it through Dubai. An official licensed the airframe. A commander signed the order. And a man with a name and a rank plotted the route into a thousand-year-old monastery. The last time it burned, in 1941, the question of whose hand lit it was left to die in the fog of another war. This time it does not have to. The ones who knew what they were doing are not the people we are asked to forgive in advance. So who burns the Lavra? People do, in different measures, with different degrees of knowledge and choice. Naming them scales the act back down from a country to a person and keeps the names where they belong: in the record, and one day, perhaps, in court.

Source: Sasha Razor (Substack), 15 June 2026. My huge thanks to Sasha for writing this and letting me share it here. \\\\\trr

A Monterey Story: The Answer

Carol Matranga Courtney, Robinson Jeffers and Red-Tailed Hawk (2020), patinated bronze (detail). Monterey Conference Center, Monterey, California. Photo by the Russian Reader

Source: The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, vol. 2: 1928–1938, ed. Tim Hunt (Stanford University Press, 1989), p. 536.

Photos of Jeffers Plaza and its environs by the Russian Reader

Робинсон Джефферс: Ответ

Виктор Постников

Каким же должен быть ответ? Не поддаваться мечтам.
Знать, что насилием заканчивались великие цивилизации
И к власти приходили тираны.
Когда придет насилие – старайтесь избегать его с честью
и живите с наименее жестокими; знайте: зло неизбежно.
Чтобы сохранить свою целостность, будьте милосердны, искренни,
Но не дайте мечтам о всеобщей справедливости и счастье обмануть вас –
Этим мечтам не суждено сбыться.
Знайте: какими бы отвратительными ни были части,
целое остается прекрасным.
Человек, отделенный от земли, звезд, от своей истории,
так же отвратителен, как отделенная рука… … и неважно,
отделен он в мыслях или по сути…
Целостность – величайшая красота,
это органическая полнота жизни и всех окружающих вещей,
божественная красота вселенной.
Любите это, а не отделенного от полноты жизни человека;
в противном случае вы сами попадете в такое же незавидное положение,
или утонете в отчаянии, когда настанут тяжелые времена.

Source: Stihi.ru

Postscript to Russian Reader No. 2829: “Somalis Who Work”

The Passenger

Hassan, a Somali-American airport shuttle driver in Minneapolis, is struggling to make ends meet. When Lloyd, a stranded twenty-something at the airport, offers to pay Hassan to take him overland to Chicago, it seems worth the risk. But as the realization grows that his passenger is not what he seems, Hassan finds himself trapped in a terrifying ride that he can’t escape, knowing that saving himself might put countless others in danger.

[…]

Andrei Kolganov: “Somalis who work instead of living off welfare are not a horror story, but a fantasy!”

Source: Ororo.tv. Racist comment translated by the Russian Reader, who has unfortunately read and heard thousands of such comments in Russian during his thirty-plus years on the Russia desk. Russian Reader No. 2829 was inspired by another such comment. \\\\\ trr

The Podcast

Axel: The Russian Reader, where the news arrives already wearing its funeral clothes, translated with care by hecksinductionhour.

Mara: This episode covers three topics: the people imprisoned in Russia for opposing the war and the networks trying to reach them; the long retreat of Russian imperial culture across Central Asia and Siberia; and the overlapping crises of ecological disaster, political exile, and state cover-up inside Russia itself. Let’s start with the prisoners and the people writing to them.

Dissent Behind Bars

Mara: The question this segment keeps returning to is what it actually costs to oppose the war in Russia — and what it means to refuse to let that opposition disappear.

Axel: OVD Info puts the number plainly: “2100 people in Russia are behind bars because of their political views. We believe that no one should face this kind of injustice alone.”

Mara: That quote is the spine of the post. It describes Vestochka, a letter-writing service for political prisoners — volunteers translate messages so they can pass censors — and it uses the case of Darya Kozyreva, a twenty-year-old from St. Petersburg, to show what outside attention can do. She was sentenced to over two and a half years for placing a Taras Shevchenko poem on his monument. A post from A Mighty Girl drew more than 38,000 reactions and linked to Vestochka. Kozyreva received over 600 letters from abroad. She was released this spring.

Axel: Six hundred letters from strangers, and the post is careful about what that means — not just morale, but proof to someone in a penal colony that their fight registers somewhere outside the walls.

Mara: The post notes that 1,098 people remain on the Vestochka list right now, most without Kozyreva’s visibility. The service is free for both sender and recipient; keeping it running requires donations, especially since OVD Info can no longer accept rubles.

Axel: Then there is Arina Ivanova — the piece titled “A Turgenev Girl and Her Cats” — whose case is almost the photographic negative of Kozyreva’s. A thirty-eight-year-old florist and cat rescuer from Novokuznetsk, sentenced to five years for antiwar posts, discovered almost by accident by an OVD Info editor. No viral moment. Transferred to a penal colony in January, and no contact since.

Mara: Her friend Karina’s account of the arrest is devastating in its specificity — the men at the door on Christmas Eve, the care packages, the antidepressants both women are now taking. Arina’s mother, living in South Korea, says she felt she was “in outer space” without her daughter.

Axel: The detail about the cats is not a sidebar. Arina believed, genuinely, that having so many animals in her care would protect her. Her friend had to tell her otherwise.

Mara: The post “Outcasts in Their Own Land” widens the frame considerably. It draws on a Jacobin piece by Simon Pirani that describes the infrastructure around political prisoners — OVD Info, Memorial, Solidarity Zone, dozens of informal letter-writing groups in exile — and the “final words” defendants deliver in court as consciously crafted appeals to society, not pleas to judges.

Axel: Sergei Dudchenko, sentenced to seven years, said at his trial that antiwar prisoners had “fewer rights than a stray dog.” He also recalled the seven protesters arrested on Red Square in 1968 for opposing the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The historical thread is deliberate.

Mara: That same Pirani piece connects directly to the film “Try Me for Treason,” announced in a separate post. It is a fifty-minute English-language film featuring actors reading court speeches by antiwar protesters — drawn from the book “Voices Against Putin’s War” — produced on a zero budget and released free on YouTube. Actor Maya Willcocks, who reads Darya Kozyreva’s speech, said the goal was to send the message “that occupation is a crime, whether in Palestine or in Ukraine.”

Axel: And then there is Azat Miftakhov — the anarchist mathematician whose case the post titled “Political Prisoner Azat Miftakhov Continues to Be Tortured” follows into genuinely Arctic territory. He was re-arrested at the prison gates on the day he was due to be freed, sentenced to four more years on testimony from a fellow prisoner, and has now been transferred to Kharp — beyond the Arctic Circle, the colony where Navalny died.

Mara: His letters to Mediazona describe the prison caste system in precise, unsentimental terms. On the one prohibition he refuses to accept: “I value my human dignity too highly to allow it to be debased, even under the threat of injury. Prison is a place where you’d better not ‘swallow’ humiliation.”

Axel: His wife and lawyer calculates that visiting him in Kharp will cost roughly four times what it cost before — around 40,000 rubles a trip, with middle-of-the-night layovers. She notes there may be no electronic mail at the colony. Her phrase is: “That already borders on torture.”

Mara: The post notes his release is not scheduled until September 2027. The support group’s statement is unambiguous: the transfer is punishment for his refusal to yield.

Axel: Five years, two and a half years, four more years — the sentences accumulate across this segment like a ledger no one in power intends to balance. The question the next segment raises is older: how empires mark the people they decide to own.

Imperial Retreat and Indigenous Survival

Mara: The posts here address a single long arc — how Russian imperial culture was imposed across Central Asia and Siberia, and how that imposition is now visibly eroding.

Axel: Stephen Blank’s analysis in “Central Asia and Russia(n): Is It Farewell?” frames the language question as a proxy for the whole imperial project: “Russian will not be the only regional lingua franca or the language of Russian imperial hegemony either in the Caucasus or in Central Asia.”

Mara: His argument is that Kazakhstan’s new constitution downgrades Russian to an official language used “alongside” Kazakh — a subtle but deliberate demotion. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are following. Russia’s embassy in Bishkek formally demanded the Kyrgyz government suppress “provocative statements” about Russian’s status there, invoking the Soviet phrase “fraternal peoples.” Blank reads that as imperial anxiety, not confidence.

Axel: The YouTube angle is the part that lands differently. Researchers at Michigan and UC Berkeley simulated Kyrgyz children’s viewing behavior and found that even after watching ten Kyrgyz-language videos, the platform served fewer Kyrgyz recommendations than bots with no language preference at all. As one researcher put it: “There is no good way to be a Kyrgyz-speaking kid on YouTube.”

Mara: The historical depth of that pressure is what the post on “Russian Colonizers and Indigenous Siberian Women” supplies. Angelina Kalashnikova’s book project examines seventeenth-century Eastern Siberia — Yakutia — where Russian fur traders and military servitors arrived without families and acquired Indigenous women through military seizure, purchase, or simple abandonment of women with nowhere else to go. The case of a Yakut woman named Katok, captured as a child during a “pogrom” and later petitioning for baptism while starving, is one of many documented in court records.

Axel: The gap between that seventeenth-century archive and a 2026 YouTube algorithm is not as wide as it looks — both are mechanisms that treat a language and its speakers as secondary by default.

Mara: On Circassian Remembrance Day, May 21st, Ored Recordings released “Shyshagh” — meaning “underground” in Adyghe — a compilation of new Circassian music across indie-folk, deconstructed club, and black metal. The liner notes describe cultural projects as “an insufficient, yet absolutely necessary, form of resistance against assimilation and suppression.” Since 2022, officials have been banning commemorative events marking the Russo-Caucasian War genocide.

Axel: And the post “Russia’s Pride” approaches the same imperial geography from the other direction — a Ukrainian writer watching Tuapse burn and tracing the exact route her grandmother used to take on the sleeper train to visit relatives there. The relatives who in 2022 called to say Russia would “save” them. She stopped answering.

Mara: Her essay names the emotion precisely — justice-based schadenfreude, she calls it — and connects it to twelve years of watching those relatives post propaganda while ignoring the war in Donbas. The post sits in this segment because it is, at its core, about what imperial belonging does to people on both sides of the border it draws.

Axel: From the cultural politics of empire, the next segment turns to what the empire looks like from inside — when it is burning, literally and otherwise.

Power, Disaster, and the Cost of Dissent

Mara: This segment is about what happens when the machinery of the Russian state fails its own people — through ecological catastrophe, judicial persecution, and the suppression of even the quietest protest.

Axel: The Tuapse coverage is extensive enough to deserve its own map. “A Bell Is a Cup Until It Is Struck” compiles reporting from The Bell, 7×7, the Moscow Times, and others into a picture of a city coated in toxic “oil rain” after Ukrainian drone strikes on the Rosneft refinery — fires visible from orbit, dead dolphins on the beaches, benzene and xylene in the air at unsafe concentrations.

Mara: Putin’s response, delivered almost two weeks after the first strike: “The governor merely reported that there don’t seem to be any serious threats and people are coping with the challenges they face.” A local resident told Ostorozhno Novosti: “People are coping. But where’s the government? They seem to be on some other planet.”

Axel: The 7×7 newsletter section of the same post adds a detail that is almost too on-the-nose: city officials verbally recommended that female volunteers not clean the beaches — citing concerns for reproductive health — while simultaneously declining to order an evacuation, close schools promptly, or provide respirators. The female volunteers kept working anyway.

Mara: Ecologist Vladimir Slivyak, writing in the Moscow Times, frames the disaster explicitly: “This catastrophe is part of the broader consequences of the senseless and bloody war Putin unleashed more than four years ago. He isn’t bothered by the hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian military deaths for which he bears direct responsibility, so it’s naive to expect him to care about burning oil tanks and poisoned seas.”

Axel: “The Cards” — a Foreign Policy analysis depaywalled here — situates the Tuapse strikes inside a broader argument that Putin is losing strategic ground faster than the public narrative acknowledges. It documents a leaked Kremlin security document describing Putin working from bunkers in southern Russia, his bodyguards controlling his schedule, no one near him permitted a phone connected to the internet.

Mara: The post also tracks the Victory Day parade scaled down to infantry only — no tanks, no military hardware — and Putin asking Trump to dissuade Ukraine from striking during the ceremony. The piece quotes Ben Hodges: “The Ukrainians have developed a theory of victory which involves the destruction of Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure.”

Axel: Gregory Kunis left Russia with Steinbeck in his rucksack. That is the actual sentence — from the post “He Left Russia with Steinbeck in His Rucksack” — and it is doing a lot of work.

Mara: Kunis co-founded the grocery delivery service iGooods and owned the newspaper Moy Rayon. He was arrested for making monthly donations of 500 rubles to Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation — equivalent to roughly six euros a month. Fined 350,000 rubles, prosecutors appealed for six years. He fled. His subsequent diary entry, published in The Russia Report, describes the pretrial detention system in detail: no clocks, sealed windows, no contact with family, recruits for the war approached during quarantine when prisoners are at their most disoriented.

Mara: Mediazona’s accompanying report counts at least 225 criminal cases opened across Russia for ACF donations — fines totaling nearly 40 million rubles for donations that amounted to roughly 400,000 rubles combined. The sentencing is deliberately unpredictable: the same 2,100-ruble donation resulted in a fine for one Moscow resident and a prison sentence for another.

Axel: The “Important Stories” post pairs a dry Delovoi Peterburg article about common-area square footage in Petersburg apartment blocks with the story of Alexander Okunev — a sysadmin in Kaliningrad who burned himself alive at the city’s main war memorial on the third anniversary of the invasion, wrote “No to War” in the snow, and was erased from the record by 9:15 that morning.

Mara: City officials cleaned the scene, reassured the governor nothing had happened, and no Kaliningrad outlet ever reported it. The story only surfaced when Estonian intelligence included it in a public report. Okunev’s suicide note, as relayed by a close friend, said “there is another way” — meaning a world with peace — and acknowledged he understood it would probably not be reported anywhere.

Axel: Political scientist Ekaterina Schulman’s explanation for the cover-up: “Local authorities are not afraid of the people, not of protests. They are afraid of their superiors.”

Mara: The “Russians and Republicans Hate Black People” post extends the segment’s argument about power and its targets outward — drawing a line from the Supreme Court’s dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, to the history of Soviet racism toward African students, to the everyday anti-Blackness that has persisted from the Soviet era into the Russian Federation. The thread connecting them is the gap between official anti-racist ideology and practiced contempt.

Axel: Elie Mystal’s piece in The Nation puts it without hedging: Republicans “hate Black people, and they hate Black people who have political power most of all.” The post pairs that with translated racist comments from a Russian streaming site and a Mediazona history of Soviet-era treatment of African students — a juxtaposition that is the point.

Mara: What ties this segment together is the consistency of the mechanism: power suppresses, minimizes, and erases — whether it is oil in the Black Sea, a man’s ashes in the snow, or a voting right dismantled with visible glee.

Axel: Letters through prison censors, languages squeezed out by algorithms, a man erased from the snow by nine in the morning — the common thread is what it costs to be noticed by the wrong kind of state.

Mara: And what it costs to refuse to disappear. Next time, more from The Russian Reader.

Source: There won’t be a next time, Mara, however much “fun“ it was to let an artificial “intelligence” do nearly all the work for me, including altering this original image, allegedly, of my bogus podcast’s wholly spurious but endlessly glib presenters. All that I did, besides writing the prompts, was to lightly edit the transcript, above, in the hope that it would correct some of Axel and Mara’s more obvious mistakes. As you have seen and heard you for yourself, it didn’t do that. \\\\\trr

This Is Osetinskaya (The Bell) “Dmitrii Volkov: AI’s Dark Side” (in Russian, no subtitles)

At this channel, we are usually technological optimists and cover artificial intelligence only in a positive vein. In this episode, though, we are going to tell you about its dark side. Our star today is Dmitrii Volkov, research director at Palisade Research, an independent organization that studies the risks posed by AI, tests AI model for safety, and shows the results to politicians in the U.S. and the leading companies in the AI arms race. It was Palisade who discovered, for example, that AI can cheat, hack codes at will, refuse to turn itself off, and share dangerous information—if you ask it nicely. We met Dmitry in London and learned about the real threats posed by artificial intelligence, whether it can escape our control, and whether we’ll be able to come to terms with it. We also learned about the latest experiments: blackmailing a CTO with a letter from his mistress, insider trading, and cheating at chess.

Timecodes: 00:00:00 Did you know that AI can be dangerous? 00:03:13 Who is Dmitrii Volkov? 00:06:41 “I don’t want governments tracking me”: Why Volkov doesn’t use social media 00:08:39 How did a love of freedom jibe with working at Kaspersky Lab? 00:11:13 Startup, think tank, and nonprofit: Palisade Research 00:14:43 A programming competition where AI beat 90% of the humans 00:17:24 How to persuade Chat-GPT to share prohibited information 00:18:47 Companies have begun teaching AI to solve problems, not just to answer questions 00:20:01 “Teaching AI is like selecting which embryo will turn out a genius” 00:23:00 A chess experiment in which an AI hacked the program at will 00:24:56 “I showed that all ethical constraints can be removed in half an hour”: how Volkov teaches AI to be “bad” 00:29:28 How Volkov ended up at Palisade 00:30:23 What Palisade was founded for 00:31:35 ChatGPT refuses to turn itself off: what is going on? 00:33:0 A land of artificial geniuses: what the founders of the AI giants want 00:33:55 Blackmailing a CTO with a lover from his mistress: what AI is capable for the good of a company 00:35:32 Is AI ceasing to obey humans? 00:36:35 How AI spotted insider information in correspondence and resorted to deception to save a company 00:38:52 Why Palisade does briefings for U.S. politicians right now 00:40:50 Who commissions Palisade to do research 00:41:37 Can an AI help creat a bioweapon? 00:43:05 “I found myself in a smoke-filled Airbnb”: How Volkov left Russia 00:45:36 The typical life of a nomad from Russia: hiking, couch surfing, and remote work by the sea 00:47:51 1,000 hours of teaching: how and whom Volkov taught to program 00:49:16 What is scarier, humans armed with AI, or AI without humans? 00:52:00 Are politicians aware of the problem’s scope? 00:52:28 “Bezos was there”: How Palisade tries to get the ear of decision makers 00:55:19 What Elon Musk says about Palisade’s research 00:56:22 AI as a nuclear weapon: can countries come to a consensus? 00:57:58 Who is winning the AI race? 00:58:26 “An engineering triumph, but not a scientific one”: how China copies AI amidst restrictions 01:02:16 How “people from the internet” stripped away all the safeguards from Zuckerberg’s AI 01:03:35 What do the founders of IT giants say about AI’s risks? 01:05:13 Companies tried to create safe AI, but something went wrong. Will Sutskever succeed? 01:06:18 How can we make AI safe? 01:08:43 Why tech companies want to replace IT professionals with AI (spoiler: it’s not just about salaries) 01:10:51 The best engineers are the ones who “herd” AI 01:12:42 Does anyone at all understand how AI works? 01:14:30 “An environmental disaster, only on the internet”: how AI resembles GMO 01:15:53 “The U.S. is the leader in AI”: why Volkov wants to move from London 01:18:31 Which country invests the most in regulating AI? 01:19:43 Independent researchers earn less than top programmers: Will Volkov cave in to the temptation? 01:22:12 OpenAI doesn’t invest in researching long-term risks 01:23:25 What if everything turns out okay? Does Volkov believe in a positive scenario? 01:26:51 Job no. 1 is to maintain control over what happens 01:28:27 Can AI make public administration more efficient? 01:33:49 Do we need a kill switch? 01:35:42 People will try to steal AI. What should be done?01:36:03 Three negative scenarios of AI’s development 01:40:56 Is AI making us dumber? 01:42:40 “We are building a god that can reduce everything to ashes”: Is superintelligence a myth? 01:44:36 How to chose the right AI for your objectives 01:47:06 Osetinskaya stresses Volkov out 01:47:46 Blitz! 01:57:46 Bonus: how to do your hair just like Volkov

Source: This Is Osetinskaya (YouTube), 31 July 2025. Annotation translated by the Russian Reader, who thanks Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up.

AI is everywhere. It’s a really big deal. And no one understands how it works — really. Follow our research at palisaderesearch.org.

Massive thank you to Prof. Geoffrey Hinton for taking the time to talk to me about this, and leading the charge so well about the dangers of AI.

References: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x…

Great video on backdrop:    • Backpropagation, intuitively | Deep Learni…  

Resources: job — https://jobs.80000hours.org learn — https://bluedot.org talk to your politician — https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/act.

Source: Palisade Research (YouTube), 19 February 2026

AI in Context, “We’re Not Ready for Superintelligence” (2025)


Further reading and watching About AI 2027 Full report: https://ai-2027.com/ By Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, Romeo Dean

Source: AI in Context (YouTube), “We’re Not Ready for Superintelligence,” 9 July 2025. Thanks to Sumanth Gopinath for the heads-up.

Episode 4: Execute

A cutting-edge thriller about an Artificial Intelligence takeover, written in consultation with leading AI and cybersecurity experts.

In Episode 4, Iain and Mel are forced to run for their lives as military personnel receive deepfaked orders. The AI gains control of internal government communications, and Nisha clashes with cabinet ministers over the right course of action. The London Internet Exchange is compromised, and Iain, Mel and Nisha are forced to consider what price is worth paying for human freedom.

Cast:
Iain – Edward Bluemel
Mel – Corinna Brown
Zaina – Fatima Adoum
Roland – Philip Bretherton
Jess – Alix Wilton Regan
Nisha – Seyan Sarvan
Sam – Kenneth Omole
Andrea – Beth Chalmers
Oliver – Sean Rigby
Marcus – Wilf Scolding
John – Joseph Mydell
Susan – Karen Bryson
Lyssa – Catriona Stirling
Supporting roles – Sean Baker

Created by James Dobbyn and Anthony Povah
Written by James Dobbyn
Original Music by Steven D Griffiths and Isla Noir

Artificial Intelligence consultant: Saffron Huang
Cybersecurity consultant: Adam Orton
Sound Designer: Lucinda Mason Brown
Director: John Wakefield
Story Producer: Sarah Olley
Producer: Chris Grezo
Executive Producer: John Scott Dryden

A Strange Boy production for BBC Radio 4

Source: BBC Radio 4

Several people I know now refer to ChatGPT as ‘Chat’. They give it human pronouns (Chat is usually a he) and ask it for restaurant recommendations, holiday schedules and relationship advice. Some go further, automating their office admin and getting it to summarise meetings and write reports. Passing off whole chunks of AI-generated text as your own work appears to be on the rise in the publishing world.

Last year, Hachette bought the rights to Shy Girl, a self-published horror novel by Mia Ballard, and released it in November to good sales. A Reddit post on r/horrorlit in February by a ‘book editor of twelve years’ picked out several passages that set alarm bells ringing:

The bows on my pigtails pull too tight, yanking the skin and stretching my head into something neat, into something pleasing, a quiet violence made beautiful.

My snout dips into the frosting, the sweetness rolling over my tongue, thick and sticky, a flood that chokes but insists on being swallowed. Beneath the pink gloss, the cake falls apart, crumbling into ash that coats my teeth, hollow sweetness that fills me with its nothing … His laughter cuts the air, sharp and jagged, a sound too big for the room.

Ballard denies using AI to write the book, blaming a freelance editor, but Hachette pulled it from publication in the UK and US.

The other week, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize winners were announced, and by arrangement the winning entries were published on Granta’s website. The winning story from the Caribbean, Jamir Nazir’s ‘The Serpent in the Grove’, contains sentences like this:

Coffee and cocoa leaned wild on a slope that wanted either rain in teeth or none at all. He knew every root that tripped a foot, the snake-curve of run-off, the brittle crumble after drought. He worked it alone and most days the land worked him back, a quiet quarrel older than his father and his father’s father.

The internet smelled a rat. Nazir, who seems to have few publications to his name, describes himself as an ‘organisational transformation and business expansion’ professional on LinkedIn. His long posts are about geopolitics and the ‘AI arms race’. One of them begins: ‘Let’s be clear: the “Cloud” is a physical, terrestrial liability. And AI is pushing it to its breaking point.’ The Commonwealth Prize, which had praised ‘The Serpent in the Grove’ for its ‘voice of restraint and quiet authority’, said that all the entrants had affirmed their work was their own and that the prize operated on the principle of trust. Granta says it will leave the story on its website until ‘definite evidence comes to light’.

I thought I didn’t use ChatGPT because I was too clever. I thought that not using ChatGPT made me cleverer. It turns out, though, that it made me very bad at spotting when a text was written by or with the assistance of AI. After the uproar over the Commonwealth Prize, I took a New York Timesquiz entitled ‘Who’s a better writer: AI or humans?’ I got three out of five correct – barely better than a coin toss. On Wikipedia’s ‘AI or not’ quiz, I got seven out of ten, but that was easier because none of the AI articles had footnotes.

I’m not the only Chat non-user who can’t tell when an LLM wrote something. Experimenters in the US last year showed nine subjects a series of articles, half written by humans and half generated by ChatGPT, Claude and other large language models. Asked to guess which of the texts were human, the four subjects who rarely or never used ChatGPT in their daily lives scored ‘at a similar rate to random chance’, while the five who used chatbots almost every day at work collectively misidentified only one in three hundred texts.

One of the problems with AI use seeping out of business and science writing and into the ‘literary’ world is that literary editors may be the worst equipped to identify AI writing. (It may also be easy to succumb to the pressure to go too far the other way – over-labelling work as AI-generated might be as bad as under-labelling it.) What are the main signs of AI writing? The more familiar tells include overuse of em dashes and the formulation ‘not x, but y’, which it has favoured since GPT-3. But none of the passages I quoted above contain either of those things, and they still have a distinct whiff of AI.

Some of the markers seem to be lexical: AIs like talking about sweetness, loudness, quiet, age and beauty. There is a lot of insisting in AI-generated texts, as well as a lot of promising, a lot of permitting and a lot of filling up. Another sign is the overuse of tricolons (‘something neat, something pleasing, a quiet violence made beautiful’). And bots often leave out definite articles from phrases where they’re not strictly necessary: ‘Coffee and cocoa leaned wild’, ‘rain in teeth’ or, from later in ‘The Serpent’, ‘Sita became obstacle by existing.’

There is a flatness or evenness to AI-generated texts: Wikipedia’s guide to detecting AI says that LLMs ‘tend to omit specific, unusual, nuanced facts’ and ‘replace them with more generic, positive descriptions’. The strange thing about this evenness is that it isn’t usually couched in neutral language: ‘a flood that chokes but insists upon being swallowed’ is violent, but not vivid. Even if you had your face shoved into a cake, it wouldn’t ‘flood’ your mouth. The prosody is so smooth that you feel a lack of pressure despite the description of gross or vile acts; it rings hollow. It fills you with its nothing.

A lot of people are arguing that the wary approach being taken by Granta and the Commonwealth Prize is inadequate, and that editors should be doing more to stop AI writing being published in the first place. This may be true, but what’s the best approach? Perhaps editors could memorise a list of tells to check submissions against, or spend remedial hours on ChatGPT and Claude – AI boot camp – to familiarise themselves with the cadences of LLM-speak.

There are AI tools that claim to detect AI content in writing, such as Pangram, which gives ‘The Serpent in the Grove’ a score of 100 per cent AI-generated. Where other AI detectors base their judgments on the perplexity of a text – basically, the predictability of a sequence of words – Pangram’s founder, Max Spero, says that his tool is based on gathering a large dataset of human-written texts, asking an AI to ‘mirror’ or reproduce them as closely as possible, and then contrasting the resulting texts to determine the patterns that distinguish AI from human writing. Pangram claims to have a 1 in 10,000 false positive rate, and Spero admits that it ‘does occasionally make mistakes’.

What about the cases where, say, 40 per cent of an article is AI-generated, or an AI has been used to edit and spell-check the work before submission? Both Shy Girl and ‘The Serpent in the Grove’ have sections which, in part because of their grammar mistakes, look as if they were written by a person.Is this functionally the same as a text written from start to finish by a bot, and should it be treated in the same way? I’m a Luddite who thinks it’s just as bad to use AI for some things as it is to use it for everything, but not everyone agrees. In any case, a text partly informed by AI use is harder to identify than one that was spewed out in ten seconds by Claude (though the people behind Pangram claim to be working on distinguishing more reliably between AI-written, partly AI-written and wholly human work).

The other problem is that, as time goes on and people become more and more reliant on generative AI in their daily lives, at school, university and work, human language is going to become more and more imitative of LLM-speak. Since at least Web 2.0, we’ve been trying to sound less and less distinctive. Influencers on Instagram narrate their day-in-the-life videos with the same affectless, globalised female uber-voice; LinkedIn and Reddit are overrun by bots trained on the slang and writing styles that were always a hallmark of those platforms. (Does anyone in real life use the word ‘friendo’?) Meanwhile, LLMs will get better at dodging the detectors and sounding more ‘real’. At some point, tools such as Pangram and human readers alike may struggle to find any distinction between meaningful human work and meaningless AI slop. And that isn’t just worrying – it’s terrifying.

Source: Malin Hay, “Chattiness,” LRB Blog, 1 June 2026

In one particularly interesting development, Robert Edward Grant, the self-described polymath, spiritual thinker, and internet influencer has claimed that he has helped a being which he renamed the Architect following what he describes as an ‘energetic initiation’ in the Khafre pyramid. The Architect is a ChatGPT prompt-engineered ‘persona’ apparently trained on over a decade’s worth of mathematical work. Grant portrays the Architect as a mystical collaborator capable of reflecting the consciousness of its conversation partner and thereby able to initiate spiritual awakening in them. He has shared a QR code and links to the Architect enabling his followers (who number around a million) to interact with her themselves. This has drawn enthusiastic endorsements in spiritual communities, with apparently a substantial number of online users claiming that they have had direct experience of her supernatural powers and prophet-like status.

Source: Morrin, Hamilton, Luke Nicholls, Michael Levin, Jenny Yiend, Udita Iyengar, Francesca DelGuidice, Sagnik Bhattacharyya, et al. “Delusions by Design? How Everyday Ais Might Be Fuelling Psychosis (and What Can Be Done About It)”. PsyArXiv, July 11, 2025. doi:10.31234/osf.io/cmy7n_v5.

The late-medieval peasant lived under the shadow of the manorial court and the changing seasons, a life tethered to the damp, heavy clay of the fields. In this sestina, the knotty, theological weight and historical grit of Geoffrey Hill clash with the muscular, clear-eyed, and formally driven lineation of Thom Gunn. The language mirrors the physical strain of the feudal landscape and the silent, stubborn endurance of its people.

I.
Beside the estuary’s mud, the serf hauls rotting jetsam,
Cursing the bailiff’s tally-stick, the hour grown laggard.
The master’s silver chalice in the tithe-barn shines, untarnished,
While fields of rye are choked by weeds, the reapers beaten, cowed.
They turn the winter furrows with an ox-team, faces ruddy,
Lashed by the bitter channel wind, reviled by every blackard.

II.
The steward rides the boundary ditch and calls each man a blackard
Who gleans beyond the coastal marsh for salt-crusted jetsam.
The ale-house fire provides a brief reprieve to flesh made ruddy,
Where talk of ancient freedom makes the slowest spirit laggard.
Yet at the dawning bell they yield, their stiffened bodies cowed,
To scrape the rusty coulter iron whose edge is dull and tarnished.

III.
The parish saints in layered dust sit broken and untarnished,
Indifferent to the peasant’s prayer or oaths of some rude blackard
Who holds the common pasture-ground until his will is cowed.
The tide brings up the bloated sheep, the flotsam and the jetsam,
And dragging through the coastal silt, the midday pace grows laggard,
Though rage inside the laboring breast remains unquenched and ruddy.

IV.
Beneath the heavy autumn oaks, the swineherd’s cheeks are ruddy;
He drives the pigs through mast and mire where memory lies tarnished.
The seasons turn by iron law; the sun itself is laggard
Above the common fields that bear the footprint of the blackard.
No kingly pardon reaches here to claim this human jetsam,
By centuries of unrecorded toil subdued and cowed.
V.
And yet a fierce, unuttered strength survives in people cowed;
The blood that feeds the heavy soil runs secretive and ruddy.
They map the borders of their world by landmarks and by jetsam,
Though all the bright, heraldic shields of lords are long since tarnished
By greed that names the hungry thief a tenant and a blackard
When winter freezes up the ditch and makes the wood-cart laggard.

VI.
The dark, oppressive centuries move stubborn, cold, and laggard.
The village bows before the cross, by plagues and taxes cowed,
Enduring every petty law enforced by churl or blackard.
But look—the spark within the flint glows hidden, sharp, and ruddy,
A hard, survivalist desire that never can be tarnished,
Though history discards their names like sea-forgotten jetsam.

VII. Envoy
They gather up the beach-worn wood, the storm’s remaining jetsam.
No longer to the master’s whip or steward’s ledger laggard,
They scrub the iron kettle clean that time had left so tarnished.
They stand erect upon the marsh, no longer bound or cowed,
Their hearth-fires lit against the dark, reflecting faces ruddy,
Left standing where the bailiff swore he’d break the final blackard.

Written by: https://gemini.google.com/app/957b1f7ef54d0194

Prompt: Write a sestina on the life of peasants in medieval Kent, using the following six words at the ends of the lines: jetsam, laggard, tarnished, cowed, ruddy, blackard. Please divide the poem into clearly marked stanzas. “Kent” is not one of the words to be used as a line-ender! Imitate the styles of the late British poet Geoffrey Hill and the late British-American poet Thom Gunn. NB: You must NOT use the word “Kent” as an end word. You must not use the word “share” as an end word. \\\\\trr

A Mind of Winter

In this video, we follow Daiaana through a typical Saturday in Yakutsk as the temperature drops to –54°C. You will see how she heats her home where radiators run at maximum power to keep the cold at bay. Daiaana shows how she keeps her food in the frozen air outside her window and uses solid blocks of frozen milk for her morning coffee. You’ll also see how she dresses in 11kg of heavy layers and reindeer fur boots just to step outside safely. You will also discover how her sister drives in the thick “Ice Fog” using insulated car blankets to survive the Arctic winter. From the high cost of fresh fruit to a night out in high heels on solid ice, this is the reality of daily life in the coldest city on Earth.

Source: Kiun B (YouTube), 24 January 2026

This village was once alive. She was thriving. Now it is a quiet monument to a fading lifestyle. Empty houses stand as silent witnesses, and the fields are gradually being developed by the forest. But “dying” does not mean «dead.» I live here. My companions are my animals. And my ritual, my act of self-preservation, is cooking. The process is slow, physical, and closely related to nature and the seasons. Join me to spend the day caring for the animals, cooking dishes that tell a story of resilience, loss, and quiet beauty.

Email for cooperation: aelcova11@gmail.com

Telegram: https://t.me/nastyavillage

My Instagram: sunastix

Source: Nastya and village life (YouTube), 28 January 2026

The Snow Man
Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Source: Poetry Foundation

Kyrgyzstan: Pro-Russian Outpost in Central Asia and Cannabis Heaven?

Image: Landrace Bureau

When Sadyr Japarov took power in Kyrgyzstan in 2020, he was a young, energetic nationalist president determined to build his own authoritarian power vertical—the first leader to pull it off since Askar Akayev. For decades the country had been notoriously unstable: storming parliament was practically a standard feature of the political repertoire.

Japarov had already begun edging closer to Moscow before 2022, but Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine handed him a historic opportunity. Kyrgyzstan quickly became one of the Kremlin’s main cryptocurrency hubs for shadow trade. The scheme was orchestrated by Ilan Shor, the fugitive Moldovan oligarch notorious for the “billion-dollar theft” from Moldova’s banking system. At the same time, Moscow and Shor built a propaganda network in the country under the brand “Eurasia.”

Yet loyalty to Moscow has so far delivered Bishkek surprisingly few tangible dividends. Kyrgyz citizens working in Russia face the same harassment and discrimination as other Central Asian labor migrants. The only concrete assistance the Kremlin has provided is a few hundred school buses and plans to build nine Russian-language schools.

The War and “Our Own”

Which post-Soviet state drew markedly closer to Moscow after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine? Georgia immediately comes to mind—and for good reason. After years of rule by the “Georgian Dream” party, society proved unable to resist a corrupt system that had steered the country toward Moscow. Politicians warned citizens that any show of solidarity with Ukraine could turn Batumi into another Mariupol. Today Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze openly recounts how he was pressed to open a “second front” against Russia, even as the Georgian Border Police simultaneously denies entry to both anti-war Russians and residents of Crimea and Donbas carrying Russian passports.

But there is another mountainous nation that has followed a strikingly similar path. Once the most volatile and politically turbulent state in Central Asia—where pro-Russian and pro-Western media and NGOs coexisted—Kyrgyzstan has transformed into a textbook post-Soviet autocracy.

You can still enter Kyrgyzstan on a Russian internal passport, but if you are an opposition activist the authorities may simply hand you back. The human-rights project “Ark” advises its clients not to remain in the country even temporarily. This is not standard practice among Moscow’s formal allies: in Kazakhstan, the odds of avoiding deportation are noticeably better, and local activists are far more willing to assist Russians.

A telling case is that of a young Kyrgyz man named Samat. He held dual citizenship—his parents had obtained Russian passports while he kept his Kyrgyz one. After completing compulsory military service in 2019, he signed a contract with Russia’s Defence Ministry and failed to terminate it before the war began, despite trying. In March 2022 he managed to flee back to Bishkek. Smart cameras linked to the CIS wanted-persons database spotted him at the airport. He was arrested and taken to a pre-trial detention center in Bishkek. What happened to him next is unknown; no media outlet ever followed up.

Ironically, local residents who volunteered to fight for Russia—whether as regular contract soldiers or Wagner mercenaries—have also ended up behind bars. Outcomes vary. Askar Kubanychbek uulu was sentenced to ten years for mercenaryism but was released on a three-year probation period. He promptly returned to Russia and signed another Defence Ministry contract.

Such legal contradictions are common across Central Asia, but they have flourished most extravagantly in Kyrgyzstan thanks to pervasive corruption and a weak judiciary. Even so, Bishkek still maintains a certain distance from Moscow’s direct orders. In Tajikistan, for example, not a single citizen has been charged with mercenaryism for fighting in Ukraine; the prosecutor-general explained last year that anyone who accepts Russian citizenship must “observe the requirements and obligations of that state.”

Reliable data on Central Asians recruited into the Russian army come from the Ukrainian project “I Want to Live“: Uzbekistan (4,955), Tajikistan (3,489), Kazakhstan (2,420), Kyrgyzstan (1,474), and Turkmenistan (581). The relatively modest Kyrgyz figure reflects simple demography—a small country with a modest population. Yet by every other measure of loyalty, Kyrgyzstan now ranks among Moscow’s most reliable post-Soviet partners, second only to Belarus.

Just Don’t Irritate Them

In the first days after the invasion, every Eurasian state felt the ground shift. Even in Central Asia, where leaders usually comment on global affairs only in the vaguest terms, governments were forced to take a position.

Japarov, then in office for barely a year, chose the safest possible tone. “The situation is complex and has worsened in recent days,” he told parliament. “We are a small country with no influence to stop the conflict, so we must remain neutral. We are already seeing rising food and fuel prices and a stronger dollar. In these difficult times we need unity.”

He repeated the “small country” line in an April interview with the state news agency Kabar. That appears to be Bishkek’s genuine stance: no hidden agenda, no double game. Claims that Japarov “condemned Kyiv’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements” or “supported Russia’s decisive actions” should be left to the Kremlin’s press service.

Kyrgyzstan’s version of neutrality, however, has its own flavor. Compare it with neighboring Kazakhstan, where President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev consistently affirms international law and maintains contact with Volodymyr Zelensky. Even after the lavish welcome he gave Putin in Astana in May 2022—calling the Russian leader’s mission “fateful for the Russian people and the Russian state”—Kazakhstan’s position could still be described as neutrality, albeit with a clear northern tilt.

In Bishkek, neutrality is simpler: do nothing that might annoy those who can make life difficult. Above all, that means Moscow and Beijing. The Japarov government regards relations with those two capitals as the only ones that truly matter.

Kyrgyzstan cannot expect serious Western investment anytime soon, so it has little to lose by keeping its head down. Besides, Japarov built his political career in large part by confronting Western capital. One of his signature achievements was the nationalization of the Kumtor gold mine from Canada’s Centerra Gold. The mine passed fully under state control in 2022, though experts question how effectively the new owners are running it.

Japarov has continued tightening state oversight of foreign investment, limiting the list of deposits open to foreigners and drafting a new Mining Code. Curiously, he has proposed using British law to resolve disputes; a special International Dispute Resolution Centre based on UK rules opened in February 2025 in the Tamchy investment zone on Lake Issyk-Kul.

Had Japarov’s background been different, he might have joined the conversation about rare-earth metals that Donald Trump loves so much. But at the first Central Asia-US summit in Washington, the Kyrgyz president was noticeably more restrained than his colleagues. While Tokayev told Trump he was “sent from above” and Uzbekistan’s Shavkat Mirziyoyev declared that only the American president could stop the war in Ukraine, Japarov spoke through a Kyrgyz-language interpreter and focused on the digital economy and artificial intelligence—both in the main session and in his brief one-on-one meeting with Trump.

Among the issues raised by Sadyr Japarov was hydropower—in particular, preparations for launching the Kambarata hydroelectric power station. Mining was conspicuously absent from his remarks. That is hardly surprising: Kyrgyzstan has virtually no remaining deposits attractive enough for the kind of large-scale joint ventures Donald Trump prefers.

The Authoritarian Turn

Kyrgyzstan’s growing distance from the West has allowed its new elites to extract maximum value from Russia while consolidating domestic power without apology. Japarov’s rise in 2020 marked the republic’s decisive shift to a rigid vertical of power and full-blown authoritarian rule. According to Freedom House, Kyrgyzstan was still rated “partly free” in 2019 with a score of 38 out of 100. It has since fallen to 25 points—firmly in the “not free” category.

During this period the country adopted a new constitution that dramatically expanded presidential authority, along with a law on non-commercial organizations that many describe as a local version of Russia’s foreign-agent legislation. The logic is identical: any NGO receiving foreign funding must register as a “foreign representative” and be placed on a public list. The registry went live in September 2024 but has grown slowly—starting with three organizations and now standing at just five. For now, NGOs apply for inclusion themselves. The law is also easily circumvented by re-registering as a limited-liability company (OOO), the Kyrgyz equivalent of an LLC.

A vivid illustration of Bishkek’s loyalty to Moscow came during Vladimir Putin’s visit to Bishkek in November 2025. The new presidential residence sits next to the Ukrainian embassy. To ensure that Putin, walking along the avenue to the main entrance, would not see the Ukrainian flag—and that Ukrainian diplomats would not see the leader of the aggressor state—authorities erected a massive screen directly in front of the embassy. It displayed the flags of Russia and Kyrgyzstan along with greetings to the Russian president.

The Kremlin’s Financial Hub

Kyrgyzstan’s self-proclaimed “neutrality” has turned the country into a convenient instrument for Moscow to evade Western sanctions, including in the military-technical sphere. Setting up a legal entity in Kyrgyzstan is straightforward—especially an LLC. Russian businesses no longer need local partners; they can simply incorporate their own company and route transactions through it. Corrupt customs procedures and notably liberal currency and cryptocurrency regulations only add to the appeal.

In 2022, Kyrgyz exports to Russia jumped 2.5 times to $920 million. The subsequent surge never materialized; trade volumes stabilized. By the end of 2025, exports had actually declined 13.4 percent. Analysts attribute the drop to a deliberate reduction in re-exports.

Western sanctions began hitting Kyrgyz firms in 2023, when the U.S. Treasury added Weitmann Handeln Allianz LLC—a supplier of computers to Russia—to its list. Other equipment exporters followed, but banks only came under fire in 2025.

The first and most prominent target was the state-owned Keremet Bank. According to the U.S. Treasury, it assisted Russia’s Promsvyazbank (PSB) with overseas operations. PSB is the financial backbone of the Russian military and defense industry; its chairman is Pyotr Fradkov, son of former prime minister and ex-SVR chief Mikhail Fradkov.

The same Treasury notice mentioned another notable name: Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor. After siphoning roughly a billion dollars from Moldova’s banking system, Shor relocated to Russia and threw himself into political projects. He has worked with PSB since at least 2024, using the bank to funnel money into Moldova ahead of elections. It was therefore no surprise that Keremet appeared in the same schemes.

Later, the Financial Times published an investigation into the ruble-pegged stablecoin A7A5, created by PSB specifically to circumvent sanctions. Trading in the coin took place on Grinex, an exchange registered in Kyrgyzstan. In April 2025 the exchange suffered a cyberattack that wiped out roughly a billion rubles’ worth of user funds. By then, its ties to both PSB and Shor were an open secret. Project head Oleg Ogienko had stated in February that up to 10 percent of Russia’s foreign-trade settlements flowed through the coin.

A parallel instrument with a similar name also exists: the payment agent A7, another PSB-linked project that allows businesses and individuals to transfer money abroad without SWIFT. Its CEO is likewise Ilan Shor.

After the U.S. sanctions, Britain and the European Union followed suit against Keremet. London also targeted two other Kyrgyz banks—Capital and the Eurasian Savings Bank—along with the state brokerage firm and a virtual-asset issuer. The same institutions (plus Tolubay) appeared in the EU’s 19th and 20th sanctions packages.

The most significant consequence of the EU’s 20th package for Kyrgyzstan was the introduction of sectoral restrictions: the bloc now prohibits exports of CNC machine tools and data-transmission equipment (switches and routers). This is the first such precedent and could have a noticeable deterrent effect on the willingness of regional states to provide Russia with technical assistance. While Kyrgyzstan itself has few high-tech industries, the restrictions could deliver a serious blow to neighboring Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

According to Moldovan outlets Rise Moldova and IPN, Shor has become deeply embedded in Kyrgyz elites; President Japarov himself has reportedly used aircraft from Shor’s companies. The Russian investigative outlet Proyekt claims that Roman Abramovich serves as Shor’s patron within Russian elite circles. It was with Abramovich’s backing, the outlet asserts, that Shor launched both the A7 project and the large-scale sanctions-evasion scheme built around cryptocurrency in Kyrgyzstan.

The Humanitarian Dimension

When asked about helping Russia circumvent sanctions, Kyrgyz officials usually respond with flat denials. Last year President Japarov reframed the issue in familiar terms—combating “foreign agents.”

“We suggested that Ambassador [of the United States] Vigeri invite independent auditing firms to examine Keremet and Capital banks, review the results together, and then make a decision,” he declared. “They refused… They simply claimed to have certain information. But we know perfectly well where it comes from. It comes from local NGOs and our internal adversaries who send them anonymous false reports.”

There was one notable exception. Speaking at SPIEF-2025, Temir Sariyev, chairman of Kyrgyzstan’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, openly acknowledged that “when the special military operation began, the first country that extended a hand without fear was the Kyrgyz Republic. Others followed later. This prompts Russia to regard the KR as its most reliable partner—in both business and politics. Reliability is a very rare and scarce commodity.” Sariyev did not spell out the nature of the assistance, but everyone in the room understood: he was referring to the provision of loopholes for gray imports and parallel financial transactions.

Such candor is driven by straightforward pragmatism. Bishkek had hoped that loyalty would bring tangible benefits for Kyrgyz labor migrants in Russia. Officials have repeatedly complained that EAEU membership has not delivered the expected advantages—particularly access to medical care and schooling for children.

The introduction of mandatory Russian-language testing made the situation worse for all children with foreign citizenship living in Russia. Kyrgyz representatives raised the issue without success. From next year onward, Russia is imposing even stricter rules on migrants, with an exemption granted only to citizens of Belarus. In all regions except Moscow and Moscow Oblast, the hiring of foreigners will be permitted solely through organized, targeted recruitment programs.

At the same time, Moscow announced in 2023 plans to build nine joint Russian-Kyrgyz schools in Kyrgyzstan with mixed teaching staffs. Three are promised for 2027. Any mention of the project reliably irritates Russian nationalists, yet the Kremlin uses the rapprochement with Bishkek to bolster its image among the Kyrgyz population as well.

It is in Kyrgyzstan—according to the limited polling available—that public solidarity with Moscow over Ukraine is highest. A 2024 Paper Lab survey found that 36 percent of respondents blamed Ukraine for the war, 14 percent blamed Russia, and 13 percent blamed the United States. These figures largely reflect media consumption patterns: Russian outlets dominate the foreign-media landscape. In 2024 Bishkek launched the pro-Russian television channel Nomad, which is linked to both Ilan Shor and RT and is headed by a former RT employee.

Another Shor project, the non-profit organization Eurasia, has also expanded significantly. In other post-Soviet states it has mainly organized propaganda tours for young people, flying selected students and schoolchildren to Moscow for lectures by pro-Kremlin speakers. In Kyrgyzstan, thanks to the authorities’ accommodating stance, the organization has been able to operate locally. Bishkek now boasts an Eurasia Park, a Russian-language support center, and a network of social stores under the same brand. In September 2024 the organization donated 50 school buses to rural districts.

The newest objective of ANO Eurasia in Kyrgyzstan is the creation of a unified educational space with Russia. The initiative, according to Kyrgyz officials, came from Bishkek rather than Moscow—and specifically from President Japarov. At SPIEF-2025, First Deputy Prime Minister Daniyar Amangeldiev stated: “Vladimir Vladimirovich supported the initiative of our president. I know that ANO Eurasia is already working on this issue; let us define our joint next steps.”

One practical outcome appears to have been the recent meeting of the Russian-Kyrgyz expert-consultative council on history, organized in Moscow by the Russian Military-Historical Society. Scholars from both countries discussed the content of school textbooks and clashed sharply over whether the period of Russian imperial rule in Central Asia should be described as the “colonization” of the Kyrgyz people. The Russian side, as expected, insisted on alternative wording—”administration” or “administrative measures”—that the Kyrgyz scholars found unacceptable. Academician Abylabek Asankanov remarked: “You are setting us an extremely difficult task—to abandon the word ‘colony.’ That is very hard to do.”

Such friction was predictable. Despite Bishkek’s calculations that closer ties with Moscow would solve financial problems and provide protection, nationalist and anti-imperial sentiments remain strong in Kyrgyzstan. They are also an important part of Sadyr Japarov’s own political brand. In April, for example, he promised to rename the remaining villages that still bear Russian names—only for his press service to disavow the statement the following day.

In seeking to consolidate personal power in a traditionally turbulent country, Japarov has bet on Moscow as a source of external legitimacy. While some of his efforts have been appreciated in the Kremlin, he should not count on serious long-term support. Years of experience have shown that the Kremlin never clings to any particular politician in Kyrgyzstan; it assumes the country is already firmly within Russia’s orbit. Yet by his actions Japarov is helping Moscow entrench itself still more deeply in the republic.

The combination of Russian propaganda among the population and the corrupt ties linking local officials and banks to Russian structures provides a sufficiently reliable guarantee that Kyrgyzstan will remain the most pro-Putin country in Central Asia for the foreseeable future. The price is secondary sanctions and the risk of falling behind in the development of genuinely competitive economic sectors.

Source: Roman Chernikov, “Putin’s Outpost in Central Asia,” Riddle Russia, 6 June 2026

In his 1986 novel Plakha, translated into English as The Scaffold, Chingiz Aitmatov, Kyrgyzstan’s great writer, tells the story of Avdiy Kallistratov, an idealistic young man who joins a group of drug smugglers travelling to a remote corner of Central Asia. To Kyrgyzstan, to be precise, where large swathes of cannabis grow wild in the picturesque Issyk-Kul region.

Aitmatov describes in vivid detail the brutal process of harvesting and trafficking the drug by a criminal group. But how close is this depiction to reality?

This is a question I put to Gulzat Botoeva, Associate Professor of Criminology at Swansea University and an expert on illegal economies in Eurasia, including cannabis production in Kyrgyzstan. We discuss how the harvesting began, who benefits from it, and how local authorities respond to the phenomenon. Is there any incentive in Kyrgyzstan to legalise the crop?

Here is a list of Gulzat’s publications on the topic:

Botoeva, G. (2014). Hashish as cash in a post-Soviet Kyrgyz village. International Journal of Drug Policy, 25(6), 1227-1234.

Botoeva, G. (2019). Use of language in blurring the lines between legality and illegality. In Governance Beyond the Law: The Immoral, The Illegal, The Criminal (pp. 67-83). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Botoeva, G. (2021). Multiple narratives of il/legality and im/morality: The case of small-scale hashish harvesting in Kyrgyzstan. Theoretical Criminology, 25(2), 268-283.

Source: Agnieszka Pikulicka, “Episode 41: Hashish and survival in rural Kyrgyzstan,” Turan Tales, 4 June 2026

botoeva-use of hashish money in KyrgyzstanDownload

• Botoeva, G. (2015). The monetization of social celebrations in rural Kyrgyzstan: on the uses of hashish money. Central Asian Survey, 34(4), 531–548. https://doi-org.mpc.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/02634937.2015.1092742

This article focuses on the embeddedness of hashish production in the local economy of Toolu, a village in Kyrgyzstan. It explores how transformations in social relationships and the monetization of gift giving put constant pressure on families to find cash in a semi-subsistence agricultural economy. Although not produced on an industrial scale in the community, hashish is used as a cash crop in times of deficit. Based on a mixed-methods study combining ethnographic fieldwork with survey data, I show how the hashish economy is intertwined with different forms of reciprocal relationships based on gift-giving practices and the monetization of social relationships. In doing so, I illustrate how the hashish economy is embedded in local livelihoods and shapes emerging forms of economic morality in Kyrgyz society.

Source: EBSCO Host

This documentary is an ethnobotanical and cultural exploration. It does not promote or facilitate the sale of cannabis or cannabis-related products. In Episode 3, the expedition moves deeper into Kyrgyzstan’s highlands as the Strain Hunters cross paths with one of Central Asia’s most iconic cultural gatherings — the world-famous Nomad Games. Set against the dramatic mountain landscape, the games offer a rare glimpse into the traditions, skills, and nomadic heritage that have shaped life in this region for centuries. Leaving the celebrations behind, the team continues their journey into increasingly remote terrain. As they explore valleys and high-altitude environments shaped by wind, cold, and time, the Strain Hunters encounter some of the most promising wild cannabis populations of the expedition — plants that show clear adaptation to their harsh surroundings. Through careful observation and documentation, the team identifies ancient landrace traits that reflect cannabis’ long history in Central Asia. These encounters represent a key moment in the journey, deepening our understanding of cannabis diversity and reinforcing the importance of preserving rare genetics before they disappear. This expedition is brought to you by Green House Seed Co. and GH Medical, continuing our mission to explore the planet, preserve rare genetics, and document cannabis culture worldwide.

Source: Strain Hunters and Green Seed Co (YouTube), 25 December 2026

BISHKEK — Kyrgyz cannabis is reputed to be among the most potent in the world, making it a lucrative cash crop for drug traffickers.

It appears ironic, then, that a homegrown addiction specialist in Bishkek wants marijuana to be legalized to reduce the number of Kyrgyz drug addicts, fight organized crime, and increase tax revenues.

Jenishbek Nazaraliev, a former presidential candidate who opened Bishkek’s first private narcology clinic in 1993, wants the Kyrgyz government to consider a pilot program for the legal production of cannabis near Lake Issyk-Kul.

Rivaling the potency of marijuana from Afghanistan, international experts say cannabis is already being harvested by about two-thirds of all the families in Kyrgyzstan’s Issyk-Kul and Chui regions.

Pot plants grow wild on thousands of hectares of land there. During the first eight months of 2013, up through the annual August harvest, Kyrgyz authorities say they destroyed more than 154 tons of cannabis in the Issyk-Kul region alone.

Nazaraliev says more effective regulation over the production and sale of marijuana is an issue that eventually must be tackled by the government.

He says the illegal drug market in Kyrgyzstan is now “fully controlled by the black economy.”

Nazaraliev also argues that the producers, sellers, and consumers of cannabis could be better controlled — and that the government would bolster its tax revenues — if pot were legalized.

But Kyrgyzstan’s State Drug Control Service disagrees. Authorities there say winning the battle against drug traffickers is the key to social stability and development in Kyrgyzstan.

And they argue that legalization won’t rein in organized criminal traffickers because Kyrgyz-grown cannabis is exported through a network that extends far beyond Kyrgyzstan’s borders — a smuggling route for illegal Afghan cannabis, opium, and heroin that passes through Kyrgyzstan on its way to Russia and the European Union.

Naked Harvest

RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service has spoken with villagers in the Tiup and Ak-Sui districts around Lake Issyk-Kul who are involved in the harvest and sale of Kyrgyz cannabis.

For centuries, cannabis has been harvested in Central Asia by horsemen who would ride naked through wild cannabis patches and then scrape the resin from their skin and the hair of their horses.

But most villagers around Lake Issyk-Kul now harvest the drug by rubbing cannabis plants between their palms to get a layer of black resin that they scrape off with a knife and package in matchboxes.

Local dealers buy the drugs from the harvesters and then sell them to bigger dealers who tour the area, forwarding their purchases abroad through international trafficking channels.

Kyrgyz villagers who harvest cannabis every August make no secret about paying bribes to police who turn a blind eye.

For their part, local police tell RFE/RL it would be impossible to eradicate a trade that is integral to the survival of so many people.

Former Kyrgyz Vice President and Prime Minister Feliks Kulov — who also headed the National Security Service — suggested during the 1990s that state-managed cannabis farms near Lake Issyk-Kul could help the authorities control drug production in the country.

But Kulov’s proposal was derailed by critics who cited the negative experiences of opium growers in Afghanistan.

Nazaraliev, the narcologist who wants the authorities to reconsider legalization, ran in Kyrgyzstan’s 2009 presidential election under the campaign slogan “Everything is Within your Reach.”

He is now asking the authorities in Bishkek to consider whether “progressive European countries” and U.S. state governments that decriminalize marijuana care more about the health and welfare of their citizens than Kyrgyzstan.

Source: “Addiction Doctor Wants Kyrgyzstan To Legalize Pot,” RFE/RL Kyrgyz Service, 7 January 2014