PUTIN'S DESERT

Sand and autocracy in Russia

The driest corner of Russia and the European continent lies a thousand kilometres from Moscow.
The Autonomous Republic of Kalmykia is a land facing the Caspian Sea that still shows traces of the soviet history. Chief among these is the desertification, caused by the intensive breeding applied after Stalin's death, now worsened by global warming.
As early as the end of the 1990s, 770,000 hectares of the territory consisted of infertile sands. Today the situation seems irreversible, also due to the indifference shown by the Kremlin.
The latter, in 2019, imposed two weird institutional figures on the local government: a kickboxer as President and a Ukrainian separatist as mayor of the capital city Ėlista. Far from solving the issues of the territory, these two Putin lieutenants are mere pawns on his chessboard of power. Yet another confirmation of the autocratic protocol implemented by the new Tsar on the outskirts of the empire.