In Moscow's Shadows 264: Russia’s Bear(s) On The March

A fat, smug bear sits at the heart of Russia’s politics right now and it is not just a party logo. The State Duma election has handed United Russia - whose logo is the bear - its biggest ever share of seats. Of course, the vote was rigged, but what does Putin do with this mandate now? A quick look at the state of the Ukraine war (where it's heading to be a nasty winter) then leads to a few words about the threat the Russian bear poses Europe: not a direct military one, but increased and potentially risky hybrid war operations.

Then in the second half, a detour into Russia’s surge in sometimes fatal bear encounters. Is this thanks to climate change and shrinking habitats, or - and here I may be indulging my own whimsies here - considering the powerful role of the bear in Russian folklore, a Sign?

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Transcript

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Welcome And Patron Notes

MG 0:00

Well it's a tumble political practical spiritual fantastic mythology to fantastic mythology. Hello, I'm Mark Galliotti, and welcome to my view of Russia in Moscow Shadows. This podcast, of varying length, frequency and format, yet always reassuringly low production values, is supported by generous and perspicacious patrons like you, and also by the Crisis Exercise software company Conductor. So before I start to explain just what on earth I'm going on about when I talk about bears, just a quick note for patrons to keep an eye out. Should be later today, you'll be getting a message about submitting questions for the next patrons-only QA session. So take a look at

United Russia’s Duma Landslide

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your email for that. Anyway, look, bears, well of course, the uh bear that is the symbol of the United Russia Party is looking pretty fat and smug after last weekend's elections. I mean, officially, and we'll come on to that, but officially the turnout was just under 60%. And from that, United Russia ended up with 349 seats of the 450-seat State Duma. So not only a supermajority, but a constitutional supermajority, and in fact, the largest share of the Duma that they've ever had. Now it's interesting this point about constitutional supermajority. It means that without even needing the votes of other parties, although of course the other parties will generally fall into line when it's anything that the Kremlin wants to happen, but nonetheless, even without then, they could actually modify the constitution. Doesn't necessarily mean that they will, or that there's any plan to or any suggestion of that. But I do raise it just simply to note when it comes to looking at potential for peace in Ukraine. If that peace involves a de facto freezing of the front line, obviously there's these territories which are, technically speaking, according to Russian law, part of Russia. And yet will be on the quote unquote wrong side of the front line. Now, they might just simply accept that and just simply say, well, these are, as far as we're concerned, Russia temporarily occupied by Ukraine, just as Ukraine will use that precise same formulation about the territories occupied by Russia. Or it could be that they could just simply once again modify the constitution to basically say Russia's borders are where they are now. I don't know, just worth flagging up. So United Russia, the bear has roared and been granted this huge majority. Communist Party is down from 57 to 37 seats. Though there's been some essentially speculative modelling of what the result might have been like if it hadn't been rigged, and that would give the Communist Party not a majority, but the largest share of the deputies. They was robbed. The Liberal Democrats, well, they're in third place. Again, there was at one point talk about whether they'd actually be able to get into second place or be given the second place, but nonetheless their seats technically went up from 21 to 23. Just Russia suffered the most striking sort of collapse beyond the communists, down from 27 to 17 seats, but at least they were at the very last moment allowed to edge their share of the party list vote over 5%. That was the threshold. So they were at 4.9%, which would mean that in effect the votes cast for them in the party list part of the election. Remember, it was a mix of voting for individual candidates on a first past the post basis and voting for parties with candidates coming from the party list. Well, you know, until that last moment it looks as if their votes had been wasted. And the new New People Party, which is not quite so new these days, anyway, it's gone up from 13 to 19 seats. So, you know, broadly speaking, essentially, you know, we still have five parties in the Duma, United Russia having a massive majority, and the rest are simply

What Rigging Looks Like Now

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there as elaborate fig leaves to give some sense of pluralism. Now, according to Ella Pamphilova, the chair of the Central Election Commission, there were a total of 6,598 complaints about the electoral process received, four times fewer than in 2021. Does that mean that this was four times more honest? Of course it doesn't, quite the opposite. This was heavily rigged. Probably, and again, this is based on mathematical modelling of the results, which is open to all kinds of dispute, so just treat this as indicative rather than specific. Turnout was probably forty percent rather than sixty percent. And more to the point, the United Russia share of the vote instead of being around 58%, was probably something like 37%. So very heavily rigged, all sorts of indications of this, and particularly because of the large share of United Russia votes that came from the occupied territories, where the voting was even less transparent than in the rest of the country. Though, again, we should note that this is not just simply a case that the presidential administration sits down and just makes up the results. They have to work with the existing results as far as they can. So, and again, I think I'll probably touch on this maybe next week. Anyway, there are some regions where actually the turnout in the United Russia share of the vote was substantially less, others where it was higher. Some governors and mayors and other local leaders are going to be being praised because they met or exceeded their KPIs, others will be in the doghouse because they didn't. And although, for example, the plan seemed to have been for about a hundred Duma deputies to be elected from those who had served in the special military operation, they actually only got 46. And many of those quote unquote veterans are not real veterans. They are essentially politicians who, feeling the need to burnish their resumes, went and served for a few weeks or a couple of months in a rear area sort of drone unit where they were going to be pretty much safe. I mean, there were there are some genuine veterans in the Duma, but nonetheless, a lot of these quote unquote veterans did that just so that they could go and have a photo up with them with a medal and a camouflage jacket. Is there going to be any real change? Well, I mean, Vyachislav Volodin is still going to be the speaker. This is still essentially a fairly token chamber, just simply there to rubber stamp whatever decisions are made. We're going to get, as usual, all kinds of ludicrous rhetoric coming out of the Duma, which then, in a sort of rather perverse feedback loop, certain Western sources are going to pick up as Russians are saying this, and that gives them a little bit more oxygen of publicity, and therefore this even more inclination to say extreme and toxic things. Fact of the matter is that if you're a Duma deputy, on the whole, you do not matter. One of the few ways you can try to matter and try to catch the attention of the powers that be is precisely by your media profile. So ironically, Western commentators actually encourage Duma deputies and other commentators to say outrageous and westophobic things. But there

Why Duma Deputies Perform Outrage

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you go, that's the nature of the modern world. The United Russia faction looked like it's set to be chaired by one Dmitry Kabylkin, who actually is someone who might be worth watching. I mean, in very brief, he's 55 years old, he was born in Astrakhan. Originally he was a geologist and a mining engineer, he went into business, then ducos became the governor of the Yamalonetsk Autonomous Okrug. That was in 2010 through until 2018. And he actually seems to have done a pretty good job in both 2014 and 2015. He took joint first place in the sort of league table that's established by the Civil Society Development Foundation for the effectiveness of Russian governors, measured by a whole variety of indices, but in particular about how well do you advocate for your region to the centre. And apparently he did a pretty good job of that. Then it was Medvedev who made him Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment in 2018, during the Medvedev Prime Ministership. When Mishustin became Prime Minister, I mean he he he kept he kept Kabilkin on briefly, I think really as much as anything else, just as a sort of a way of avoiding excessive churn while he appointed the people he really wanted to the jobs he particularly wanted them to be in. But then in due course, Mishustin dropped him from the cabinet in 2020. The official line was that this was in no way a rebuke or a reflection on his work, it was just part of a rotation of the cadres or whatever. And he became the State Duma Deputy instead in 2021. Now that raises an interesting prospect. Remember it was Medvedev who promoted him, and Medvedev is now, after all, let's not forget, the chair of United Russia. So it does raise the prospect that actually he is, or best considered to be a client of Medvedev's, not that many of them sort of who are doing well, and it suggests that in some ways Medvedev is looking to the State Duma as part of his own power base. But of course, you know, again, this is the nature of Russian politics. Everyone has clients and patrons, and just as you seek to cultivate good patrons and boost them up, because as they rise they're meant to bring you up, so too you have your own client base whom you will mobilize. His former and apparently still protege, the erstwhile deputy governor in Yamalonyet's autonomous region, Yelena Panova, she's also been elected to the Duma, but interestingly on a new people ticket. So, you know, these these client networks they spread across institutions, they spread across even parties, insofar as the parties really matter. So just a nice little sort of uh vignette there about how

Patronage Networks And Medvedev’s Clients

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the politics works. If we're talking about little vignettes, by the way, obviously we should look to Chechnya. There Kadyrov took a quite ridiculous 99.85% of the vote. That was slightly up from his modest 99.73% in 2021. And it really does demonstrate a different philosophy to vote rigging. In the main, the approach that is taken by Kiryenka and the political technologists in the presidential administration is that, as I mentioned in the past, you really want to have to rig the vote as little as possible. Because you want the vote to look legitimate. So you essentially you pre-rig as far as you can, you know, you exclude the all candidates, like Jabloka. You ensure that there's the sort of the right line being put out by the media, blah, blah, blah. You get employers and state agencies to bus their people to the polling stations and try to ensure that they vote the quote unquote right way. You know, all of this to try and mean that when you actually just sit down and just simply crassly stuff the ballot box or just reclassify votes from one party to another, you don't have to do it as much as you might have to. Because again, you want people to basically be willing to think that the result is plausible. The alternative philosophy, and the one we see in a lot of really heavy handed tyrannical authoritarianisms, is that you present a truly ridiculous and thoroughly implausible result, and that's the point. You are essentially making a challenge. Yes, of course this result is ridiculous. What are you going to do about it? You're not going to do anything about it, are you? Just remember that you are impotent before the mighty Leviathan of the state, so just shut up and do what you're told. One is essentially about trying to manufacture consensus. The other one is just about imposing will, and that's definitely the Kadyrov model. Final note from the elections. Concurrent with the State Duma was a whole series of local votes for local assemblies and for eight governors. Seven out of eight ended up going to United Russia, and the one that wasn't was the incumbent communist, and it was all part of a deal in order to keep the Communists sweet. United Russia didn't even put up a candidate against him. Anyway, there was one again veteran of the Special Military Operation who was, well, not so much elected as confirmed because he was already acting governor. That's Alexander Shuvaev in the border region of Bielgorod. But again, what was really interesting is having picked a major general, a decorated hero of the Special Military Operation, he actually did not lean on that in his election campaign at all. Instead of uniform and medals, we generally saw him in sober civilian suits, indeed sporting the kind of slightly retro spectacles that Andy Burnham of the British Prime Minister could could easily have rocked himself, and definitely playing down military rhetoric as well. I mean he talked the talk of the technocrat. It was all about inward investment and efficiencies and such like, rather than heroic struggle of the people. And the answer is that he well, he'd obviously had had his own pollsters and focus groupers and the like, and they came back to basically say that if you if you pushed the military line too much, this is going to scare voters off. It turns voters off. So it's quite a striking sign that for all Putin's talk about the veterans being the new elite, actually not only are they much less visible still in politics and administration, but that that certainly doesn't seem to be what the Russian people want. Anyway, as I said in today's Sunday Times, I mean Putin has, well, has granted himself a massive political mandate. The question is, does he have anything that he knows what to do with? And here the focus is on the Ukraine war. There is this growing sense, and I know you've heard this here before, but the next year is going to be the decisive year and the war when the year when the war may end, 2027. As I say, you've heard it before, but bear in mind, this is not so much me saying it as what I'm hearing from people in in Moscow, people who are properly connected, and also a bit of a vibe that's coming out of the presidential administration through the media, the expert community, and the like. And the idea is essentially that of course we're going to see this winter another escalated Russian campaign to hammer Ukraine's energy infrastructure, and in fact, all of its infrastructures. I'll come on to this in a moment. And then meanwhile, you take advantage of the bad weather, which ironically, once upon a time that made combat harder. Now, because it actually makes drones less effective, might make advances easier. Anyway, that the hope in Moscow is that they'll finally, finally, finally have taken Kalamatorsk and Slavyansk, the last two so-called fortress cities, remaining in the Donbass region. Putin can then declare victory. But even if they can't take those fortress cities, and honestly,

Chechnya And The Point Of Absurd Results

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the odds don't seem to be that good. Well, maybe then, you know, he can declare a peace anyway. He can just simply sort of say, that's actually fine, we didn't really want these cities anymore, and we can declare a ceasefire, freeze the front line, start negotiations, and and essentially call it a triumph. Of course, the thing about seeing 2027 as the as the crucial date is this. It really comes from an understanding that yes, Ukraine is in crisis, but actually Russia doesn't want to slide into a full-blown crisis. And the costs of the war, especially proportionate to the potential gains, are increasing. So this cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely. But of course, as I've mentioned in the past, both the Hawks and the pragmatists are trying to spin this to their advantage. The pragmatists are saying, so absolutely, so let's just kind of accept that what we've got is enough and we can end the war now. And the Hawks are saying, no, this is why we have to escalate. We have to, whether it's mobilize or do whatever else, in order to try and impose a quick military solution, and in order exactly to take Kramatorsk and Slavyansk, so that then, even though in the short term what we are doing is going to have serious political and economic costs at home, as well as international costs. But the point is that if we can quickly end the conflict on our terms, then basically everything can be smoothed over, everyone will accept that we did what we had to do. My concern is if Putin is seduced by the hawks, and for example, does launch a new mass mobilization wave, and we have 300,000 more or whatever soldiers being thrown into the battle, which will mean a hell of a lot more casualties, he will have locked himself into a position. He will need to be able to show some kind of positive results as as a as an outcome of that. He can't just do that, have it fail, and then him shrug and say, Well, this'll do well enough. That would just be, I think, potentially very serious for him politically. But also, I think this in his head he would regard that as catastrophically bad. Remember, the lessons that Putin felt he'd learned from witnessing the collapse of both East Germany and the Soviet Union is that these were the result of weak leaders. Leaders who were not only weak but were seen to be weak. And at that point he might fear that he too would be looking weak. So that's when he might escalate into even more dangerous ways. Perhaps, you know, some people have been talking about striking directly at factories and railway lines, bringing weapons to Ukraine or something like that in Europe, the sort of thing of which, you know, war scenarios begin to be made. I don't think it's likely, I should stress, but nonetheless, that's the only circumstance in which I think that kind of escalation is really likely, or possible rather. Um, because he will still need to have something.

Veterans As A Political Prop

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The thing is, at the moment, as I say, the the the odds of taking those two cities look look pretty slender, especially because in their Operation Vivaldi, the Ukrainians have actually launched a successful counter-strike along the northern flank, shall we say, of this particular bit of the battlefield, Liman. The idea being to relieve the pressure on the fortress cities, so we'll have to see what's going on. But of course, the real battle is in many ways taking place behind the front lines. Ukraine launched its deep strikes into Russia, I think, thinking that this might help bring the war to an end. And what it's actually done is demonstrated that the Russians can and do still have escalatory options. I'm gonna have to try and start and stop using the words escalate this podcast. I think I've used up my allowance of it. Anyway, because what's happened is the Russians are now really hammering a whole range of different targets. I mean, Ukraine is on the verge of losing its steel industry, quite frankly. Its agrarian sector is in crisis. It can scarcely export anything through the port of Odessa, for example. We've got strikes which have been demonstrating the sort of large warehousing capacity in a sort of very, very clear mirror imaging of Ukraine strikes on the wild berries and then ozone warehouses of the online marketplaces in Russia. But again, Russia's been doing it rather more extensively within Ukraine. They're now hitting data centers, with the idea being precisely to try and see what they can do about degrading or even crashing the data architecture of Ukraine. And that's before they really seriously start on the power grid. So again, this is this is going to be a probably a tough winter, almost regardless of whether it's mild or cold. At the moment, Ukraine is also facing political problems. Again, look, you can assume there's always going to be a certain amount of general kind words being said by all sorts of different Western leaders, everyone saying the usual things, oh, we're right behind Ukraine, Ukraine is turning the corner, Ukraine has our support as long as it needs it, blah blah blah. That's all very well. But actually, where do the words turn into actions? Ukraine is looking for something like 30 billion euros at the moment because it faces a 23.5 billion budget shortfall this year. And in particular, it's because a lot of the funds. That were allocated to cover the war effort in the second half of the year were spent in the first half. And frankly, Europe, yeah,

Why 2027 Becomes The War Clock

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I mean it's it's it's looking around for money, it's looking about bringing forward the I mean, these are notionally loans, so I don't know if anyone expects them to be paid back. Anyway, the funds that were planned to be paid next year. But the point is, if you start spending next year's money now, you're just simply punting the crisis down the road. Now, sometimes that's the best you can do, but nonetheless, there there is clearly an issue here. And as a result, Ukraine is looking for whatever it can do to try and increase its own tax revenues, because otherwise it is entirely dependent upon European largesse. I mean, we even had a fascinating example that they're actually looking at decriminalizing consensual adult pornography so that they can tax it. Apparently, there's nearly 8,000 Ukrainian OnlyFans creators, and if you know what OnlyFans is, you know. Anyway, they made more than $131 million during 2023. I don't have more uh more up-to-date figures, but I wasn't going to bother hunting. And so the idea is that if they can tax this industry, they could raise upwards of $25 million. Now, $25 million, who would sniff at that? Except when it's in the context of a 23.5 billion euro shortfall, then you have to realise that actually the options available to the Ukrainian government are fairly limited. And we had Zelensky at the UN General Assembly in New York. Again, lots of positive words. Did he get his Patriot missiles that he was desperate for? It doesn't look like it. Did he get anything else in particular? It doesn't look like it. Now again, I don't want to paint this entirely negatively from the Ukrainian point of view, but in some ways I feel as if it's necessary sometimes to push back against Western coverage that focuses on the bad stuff that is happening in Russia, which is happening, there's no question about that, without realizing that in some ways we are talking about both sides racing towards crisis. And the question is not, are they heading towards crises? They are. But who could get there first? And, you know, in that context, Ukraine's movement should not be underestimated. And it's interesting that whereas once upon a time he decried the idea as being entirely unacceptable, now Zelensky is saying that a ceasefire along the current line of contact is an acceptable step. So we'll have to see what happens. And the final news item that I want to do in the first half before I move into something a tad more whimsical, is to talk about the current alarms that are taking place in Europe as various politicians raise the notions that Russia is not just going to escalate its hybrid war operations, which of course it will, but actually might be moving to direct some kind of military incursion into European territory. And there's been a variety of assessments coming out. I think most recently it was from the Danes saying that this is a greater risk. And people focus on that without looking at the overall context, which is invariably that the risk is greater, but from a very, very low base. So in other words, from being minuscule or microscopic, it has become pretty minuscule or microscopic. So we are still not talking about any such plans. And in fact, precisely when you when the professionals are asked, they say, you know, we see no movements, we see no preparations, we see no plans. So let's keep this in context. This is a worrying situation, of course, but not in any way the one that sort of poses imminent catastrophe. And even the idea of some kind of small scale military operation, with this, again, very sort of bizarre notion of testing NATO, again, I think I do need to drill down into this in a future podcast, really has little prospect. Sure, you could pull together 20, 50, 200 special forces guys to do a little green man operation, whether it's in and I do feel sorry for the Ukrainians, constant, sorry, the Estonians, my apologies, um, constantly being presented with this idea that Narva is where it's gonna all gonna happen, this uh town with a particularly substantial Russian-speaking population right on the border with Russia. There's again no reason to believe that. But you know, whether it's Narva or some island in the Baltic or whatever, sure, you could you could send your little green men. But what then? The question is always, where are you on the and I'm allowed myself to use this word once more, escalation ladder are you? Because you have to have options. So you send in your little green men, they are met by local security forces and

Strikes On Industry Data And Power

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are stopped, maybe even killed, driven away, or even, okay, so they have some success. But then immediately reinforcements start to be mustered by the defenders. What do you do next? Are you in a position then to augment that with, I don't know, a battalion or a brigade? If so, you will have had to have prepared them, you'll have to have moved them and arm them and equip them and so forth. That will be very, very visible. So the point is you you can you can really do very little to then support your guys, other than just try and say, oh, I don't know what, we are gonna nuke you if you try to displace them. That's not really plausible. So I think you know we have to realise that the scenarios just don't work. And speaking of scenarios that don't work, we had the claim that the reason why the CIA director was in Moscow was to warn the Russians off from a plan to launch Gerbera drones from containers on merchant vessels in the Mediterranean against France, Italy, maybe Spain. Again, I find this an extraordinary notion. The idea that uh, you know, the odd drone might wander over the border into Poland or Romania, sometimes because it's been misdirected, sometimes because of electronic warfare, jamming its systems and so forth, and sometimes maybe deliberately, but it gives you that little bit of deniability if it's just wandered over the in within the battle space. Just as, let's be honest, a lot of Ukrainian drones have wandered into NATO airspace too. But Gebera drones fired from merchant ships in the Med. There is no room for ambiguity. There is no room for deniability. These things will be tracked on radar. The ships, frankly, could then be intercepted with the launch systems clearly identifiable upon them. Yeah, this isn't just some accident. This would be an outright act of war. And frankly, if you're going to start an act of war, you probably are not going to start it by, for example, targeting Spain. I mean, because what advantage have you got and what disadvantage? Again, I think I do sometimes feel that people are so excited by some of these scenarios that they don't just stop and engage a certain degree of cautious skepticism. But anyway, as I say, look, the hybrid war is going to continue and it will scale up. There you see, I've avoided the E-word. And in particular, now, we are seeing less of the kind of random, you know, hitting a shopping mall here and such like type attacks, and something that is rather more focused. And it's particularly focused on the facilities, the factories that are building weapons for Ukraine and the transport routes taking them to Ukraine. And I think this stresses the fact that in part this is a campaign that is driven by emotion. You know, we have to realize that, particularly in a personalistic system, actually, if you piss off the guy at the top, there may well be consequences, regardless of whether it makes sense. There is a sense that the Europeans basically they want to be able to provide the Ukrainians with weapons to strike Russia, provide the targeting information so that they can strike Russia, fund these operations to strike Russia, and yet claim not to be involved in this proxy war. So then there is a sense of no to hell with you. You're gonna feel some of the pain too. There's also actual practical political reasons. There is this belief, and I still think it's a mistaken belief, that by doing these attacks in due course, certain constituencies within European electorates are gonna decide that actually the costs of supporting Ukraine compared with the inconvenience to their own lives is no longer worth it and will therefore push their governments to reduce or withdraw support from Ukraine. As I said, I really don't think it's gonna happen, but there is this notion that every country has that everybody else is that much more inconstant. Everybody else can be pummeled into submission. More specifically, though, again, if if we think of 2027 as the year in which we may see negotiations take place, I think there is a slightly more plausible political motive of essentially providing sufficient inconvenience so that as and when negotiations may start, the Europeans are going to be in a particularly conducive frame of mind to want to see a peace emerge, to want to see the negotiations actually succeed, and that therefore they will bring gentle pressure to bear on the Ukrainians in that. So we'll have to wait and see. But of course, there are dangers with all this, dangers of miscalculation, dangers of accident. You may be trying to ensure that you hit facilities and not cause human casualties,

Europe’s Alarm And The Limits Of Threats

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but you can easily get it wrong. That for me is quite scary. What happens if there is a clearly Russian-vectored attack that has significant collateral damage, as the awful phrase goes, considerable human casualties. What then happens? Should we be calling this war as some people suggest? Oh take out the hybrid, it's you know Russian terrorism and and warfare. Well, look, we do need some kind of term for something between full-scale war and just simply espionage and the other usual state craft of civilian life. Because after all, if you start calling this war, it begs the whole question, so what are you gonna do about it? And if you're not gonna be in a position, and I don't think we are and should not be, to strike directly at Russia in a sort of comparable and visible way, well, we end up just looking weak. So actually, in this respect, although I don't like the term hybrid war specifically, but we need a term for s for this something in between, what we think of as war and what we think of as peace. Anyway, that's enough looking at uh the news of the moment. Let's have a break and let me talk about bears. Just the usual mid-episode reminder that you're listening to the In Moscow Shadows podcast. Its corporate partner and sponsor is Conductor, which provides software for crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counterterrorism, and civil affairs. But you can also support the podcast yourself by going to patreon.com slash in Moscow Shadows. And remember that patrons, as well as knowing that they're supporting this peerless source on all things Russian, get a variety of additional perks depending on their tier, including articles I've written, the most weekly Gavarit Moskvar press briefing, and other bonus content like the Chronicles of a Different Russia alternative histories. And you can also follow me on Twitter at Mark Galliotti or on Facebook MarkGaleotti on Russia. Now back to the episode. This week my eye was caught by a headline in Izvestia. Russia's longest staircase has been closed to visitors due to bears. Now this is the 1,200 meter long Torgashinskaya staircase between the Krasnoyask Pillars National Park and the Turgashinsky Ridge. And it's not a unique situation. The Pribaikalsky National Park has suspended permits for six routes. The Altai Biosphere Reserve has closed all of its tourist routes until the end of the season. Routes in the Ergaki Nature Park and the Khaxian Ancestral Trail also temporarily closed. And in Sharagesh tourists have also been warned off dangers on the trails because of the growing problem of bears intruding into the human world. I mean this summer they killed at least a dozen people in various regions across the country. Sometimes it's hard to know exactly because you don't know if someone's just sort of missing in action, shall we say. Including one particular horrific case where it seems a pensioner was snatched from a window and killed. The town of Abaza in Hakassia was placed in a state of emergency as it was virtually besieged by several bears. And then I suppose it's one for the poetic justice file. In the Vologda region, a seventy three year old former game warden went into the forest to shoot bears and was killed by one for his pains. So why is there this apparent plague of bears? Combination of factors. First of all, an increase in the simple animal population. There's an estimated 308,000 brown bears in Russia now, and since the 1990s that number has increased 2.3 fold. And in the early 2000s, the average birth rate for a female bear was 2.2 cubs. Now it's 2.5 or more, and people aren't entirely sure quite why that's gone up. So obviously they're more active because increasing population size and density, it disrupts traditional social structures, intensifies competition for territory, and pushes people people bears into new areas. There's also a shortage of natural food, and particularly this is actually a result of climate change. 2026 has seen a very poor food harvest for the bears. The berries and the cedar nuts, the pine cones, all of these things, particularly bears, help us to gain fat before hibernation, have become scarce, and meanwhile, obviously human beings tend to be quite lazy in terms of how they dispose of their food, so bears have moved closer to populated areas looking for food. Their natural habitats have been shrunk, and again, actually climate change has a distinct factor because often it's because of fires, as well as in some cases that the reckless development of the Taigar regions. But anyway, there were major fires, wildfires in Krasnoyas territory, for example, which drove a lot of bears to the Kemerova and Tomsk regions, and others even further to the Altai region. So again, you you move them out of their traditional neighborhoods, and they find others. And these others are increasingly close to humans because of changing land use. The large fields and the meadows, which in many ways tended to form a kind of buffer zone, because they're not conducive, this is not natural bear territory. Anyway, but these tended to be around villages and townships. Well they have increasingly disappeared, in part because of settlements expanding, but also in part actually because of reforestation. Young forests and shrubs grow, and bears have occupied them. So these predators are actually that much closer to human homes than before. And finally, there's that much less hunting. Now, I mean, obviously there are quotas for bear hunting. Hunters usually take only between 10 and 30% of the permitted quotas each year, because bears are not regarded as a particularly, well, especially obviously not a particularly easy target, but also not a particularly worthwhile one. I mean, bear meat is unpopular, especially because there's a risk of contracting a rather nasty parasite from eating it and suffering trichinosis and very severe gastrointestinal upset. Their pelts are unmarketable, and and this is actually perverse good news, I would say, the trade in bear paws and bear bile, which traditionally went to China for traditional medicine, has been pretty much strangled. So yay for Russian border guards and customs officers, certainly in this respect. So, in other words, there are more bears, suitable feeding areas are shrinking, climate change is essentially again moving them closer towards humans, and it's also delaying hibernation. So, as you'd expect, there are culling activities taking place with bounties being put on bears' heads. Between late August and early September, more than 530 bears have been killed, and there's there's a bounty of I think 36,500 rubles for the head of a bear in Krasnoyar's territory, for example. But, you know, that only goes so far. Above all, the Russians are just basically waiting for hibernation for those pesky bears to go to sleep. And in many regions of Russia, the 13th of December is known as Bear Day, and it's commonly believed that that's when all bears have finally settled into their dens for winter hibernation, not to emerge until spring. But of course it's not actually an even process and depends very much on the climate. Again, so bears in Yakutia, in the far north, for example, are already beginning to hibernate. However, in central Russia and Siberia, bears will only hibernate when the temperatures drop below

Bear Encounters Across Russia

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freezing and a stable snow cover has settled. So you know, maybe they'll be hibernating in November at the moment. It's hard to tell. And the latest hibernations will be for the bears living in Sochi and other warmer regions to the south. I mean that's going to be December. But again, climate change is actually at the moment tended to push that back. And in any case, bears are not going to be able to sleep if they are disturbed or if they haven't been able to build up the necessary fat reserves. You know, I mean, bears can stay awake through the winter, it's just it's usually not a good survival strategy. And that's one of the reasons why they're especially aggressive now. They are desperately looking to stock up on fats so that they can sleep through the winter. Now, why am I telling you all this? Well, first of all, I think it's an interesting story. Not everything in In Moscow Shadows is about politics and war. Sometimes it's about other aspects of this country. But also, you're gonna have to indulge me now, and if you don't want to indulge me, well, you've you've already had, what, forty-one minutes of podcast, so you can probably afford to stop. Because there is an interesting for me folkloric dimension. Now Russia is traditionally represented as a bear. Now in the West that tends to mean something big and powerful and lumbering and snarling. In Russia, though, actually we must remember that the concept is rather more positive, that the bear is strong, resilient, playful, and protective. Or just a little aside, actually, when my short history of Russia came out at the beginning of 2021, a very, very fine encapsulation of Russian history, available at all good bookshops. Uh anyway, some Poeface commentators took me to task because the original cover used a snarling helmeted bear caricature from I think actually the late 19th century. Anyway, I was attacked for wickedly retailing russophobic stereotypes and the like. As I said, that was the beginning of 2021. Since February 2022, I haven't heard that critique anymore. I haven't been I mean, I've been criticized for many things, but not that one. Anyway, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there were even some politicians arguing that it should be the bear that went on the Russian, new Russian coat of arms, though you know it lost out to the traditional double-headed eagle. Though there are some funny little things out you can find on internet land of double-headed bears and things. But still, the bear has become precisely the symbol of United Russia, because that's meant to be a symbol of the Russia. And indeed, if you think of Dmitry Medvedev, the chair of United Russia, well, Medvedev means of the bears. Many regions still have bears on their own local coats of arms. Novgorod, Karelia, Perm, Chabarovsk, the Mariel Republic, the Nanetsk and Chukotka Autonomous Districts. The bear matters in terms of Russian self-image. And this has really deep roots into pagan times. Now, bears may well have been the original Yeshi, because in Russian folklore they are these mighty forest guardians, at once protective but also capricious and incredibly dangerous if

Climate Change Food And Culling

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crossed. I mean they've since become a kind of Slavic ents, if you know your Tolkien, but again, probably bears were the original source of this notion. Then in these old East Slavic and neighbouring Finnoogric and Baltic traditions, bears were seen not just simply as a very powerful totem animal, symbol of fertility and strength, but also what is technically called a psychopomp, the mediator and the guide between the life and the afterlife. So in this respect, they are about life, and they are obviously about death. Now, as paganism went from simple animism to a more complex and more ordered pantheon, which is also heavily influenced by the Norse mythologies, the bear became very heavily associated with Velis, also known as Volos. The god of the underworld, the god of the earth, waters, livestock, and wealth. So again, a very sort of central role for the bear. And therefore, you treated bears with a mix of respect. I mean they're often still called by human names, like you'd address a bear as, say, Mikhail Ivanitch, Mikhail's son of Ivan. But you also treat them with fear and with reverence. And not just because this is a third of a ton of muscle and teeth, but because the bear is a figure of mystic power. Indeed, bears were not even technically called bears. The original Indo-European word for bear was so heavily protected by ritual taboo because if you said the name, you might summon the beast, that the Slavs stopped using the original word. Instead, they adopted this linguistic work around Midved, which comes basically means honey eater. And this has become the standard Russian word for bear, but I said it was actually just simply because they needed a euphemism because they couldn't call it by its real name. So bears loom very large appropriately enough in the folkloric and mythic mindset. Now as Christianity spread, bear cults went where the rest of paganism, which in Russia's case was not just into oblivion, but incorporated into Russian Orthodoxy, which is a very syncretic religion. In other words, it very much builds on other faiths. So Veles, the bear god, became St. Vlasy, known here as St. Blaise, patron saint of livestock. In Northern Russian folk orthodoxy, Saint Nicholas also absorbs the functions of the bear cult as a protector of wild animals, guide to the afterlife, and so and indeed a helper of beekeepers appropriately enough, because after all, the bear is honey eater. In other cases, saints acquired authority by their reputed ability to be able to control a bear. St. Sergius of Radonish, very much

The Bear In Russian Myth And Faith

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venerated for his life as a hermit in the deep forests. There he famously befriended and hand fed wild brown bears. So in a way the saint became the new master of the forest because he had mastered bears. An archaeological work in Novgorod, I know I'm going on, but there is a I'm getting somewhere, I suppose. Shown that the tradition of wearing bear fangs and bear claws as amulets actually peaked after Christianization. Peasants, you know, they they would they would wear their little baptismal cross, but they would also wear these folk charms, thinking the bear's physical remains could help them sniff out and destroy evil spirits and curses. So so what? Well, do you remember Alexander Gabyshev, who was this Yakut shaman, who in 2019 embarked on a rather quixotic 5,000 mile walk from Yakutsk in Siberia to Moscow, to, as he put it, exorcise Putin, whom he called a demon and a beast. Now, it didn't work out so well for him, as he's now in psychiatric detention. But maybe and maybe not, but maybe, now that he has failed, the bears, the forest lords, are taking matters into their own paws, beginning their own long march to chastise today's Russia for straying from the righteous path. Back in 2014, Pieskov, Dmitry Pyskov, Putin's press spokesman, memorably, if not entirely plausibly, said, Bears aren't idiots. If they see Putin, they will behave properly. Maybe. But then again, you remember the claim by Alexei Dumin, who's now the State Council Secretary, but was once one of Putin's bodyguards? Anyway, he claimed that one night the president was asleep at a mountainside residence, when a bear somehow went right the way through the outer secure perimeter and turned up standing at the glass door to Putin's residence. By Dumin's account, what he did was he emptied his handgun's entire clip at the bear's feet, and it just lumbered off. Now, I'm not saying that this was an intervention, a last chance to try to get to see Putin and make him confront the error of his ways, but can we rule it out? I mean, you know, it's clear unfortunately that they weren't going to see sense, and now they're rampaging, as the TV propagandist Dmitry Kisilyov used to say, Sapanya Nedumayu. Coincidence? I don't think so. So just remember this. If we start to hear of bears near Moscow, and if Putin ever gets to reprise that famous stage direction from Shakespeare's A Winter Tale, Exit Pursued by a Bear, well then remember you heard heard it here first. But maybe, just maybe, I have strayed a little bit too far into the realms of whimsy here and therefore ought to stop. Thank

Final Whimsy And Farewell

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you, though, for um bearing with me. Well, that's the end of another episode of the In Moscow Shadows Podcast. Just as a reminder, beyond this, you can follow my blog, also called In Moscow Shadows. You can follow me on Twitter at Mark Galliotti or Facebook, MarkGaleotti on Russia. This podcast is made possible by generous and enlightened patrons, and you too can be one. Just go along to my Patreon page, that's patreon.com slash in Moscow Shadows, and decide which tier you want to join, getting access to exclusive materials and other perks. However, whether or not you contribute, thank you very much indeed for listening. Until next time, keep well.