Could the Russian Federation Go the Way of the Soviet Union?

Dressed in olive green, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyryl Budanov, posed for photos last week wielding a bayonet used to carve up a birthday cake baked in the shape of Russia. The easternmost slice went to China. The four westernmost regions went to Ukraine. The icing on a small slice was marked “RF.”That is, the Russian Federation was reduced to a rump state, an expanse smaller than the Russia of Ivan the Terrible. It prompted an adviser to President Putin, Nikolai Patrushev, watching from Moscow, to complain in an interview posted Tuesday that the West “shouts publicly that Russia should not remain united, it should be driven into the framework of Muscovy of the 15th century.”America and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization seek to erase Russia from the political map of the world, Mr. Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s security council, said in a long interview with the newspaper Argumenti i Fakti. Meantime, Western foreign policy analysts now are asking: Can the Russian Federation survive until 2034? Almost half of 167 “leading global strategists,” polled by the Atlantic Council, answered: “No.”It might be that these strategists feel burned by the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago. “Prepare for Russia’s coming crack-up,” is how the study released Monday is headlined. In the poll, 46 percent of the foreign policy analysts — largely Americans and Europeans — agree with the statement: “Russia as we know it may not survive the coming decade.”Of 10 candidate countries, Russia is picked as the nation most likely over the next decade to become a failed state. Asked if Russia will break up internally by 2033 because of “revolution, civil war, or political disintegration,” agreement came from 36 percent of Americans and 49 percent of Europeans.“One of the most surprising takeaways was how many respondents pointed to a potential Russian collapse over the next decade,” the Atlantic Council writes of the study, which probed attitudes on potential crises around the globe. “The Kremlin’s war against Ukraine could precipitate hugely consequential upheaval in a great power with the largest nuclear-weapons arsenal on the planet.”The Russia-Ukraine war is far from settled. Analysts, though, are trying to look beyond the battlefields. “It’s High Time to Prepare for Russia’s Collapse,” a political science professor at Rutgers, Alexander J. Motyl, writes in Foreign Policy. “Not planning for the possibility of disintegration betrays a dangerous lack of imagination.”In the event of a Russian military defeat in Ukraine, Mr. Motyl writes, the “most likely” scenario is President Putin’s “departure from office, followed by a vicious power struggle among the extreme right-wing nationalists who want to continue the war effort and destroy the existing political hierarchy, authoritarian conservatives who have a stake in the system, and a resurgent semi-democratic movement committed to ending the war.”Moscow is the administrative and economic center of Russia, a forced federation of 85 republics and units. If the center loses hold, some ethnic republics could follow the pattern of 30 years ago and seek autonomy or outright independence. Mr. Motyl, a Ukrainian-American, writes: “Leading candidates include Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chechnya, Dagestan, and Sakha. If Russia survives this turmoil, it’s likely to become a weak client state of China.”In the past week, announcements of new military aid to Ukraine have tumbled out of Western capitals. Paris said it is sending armored “tank killing” vehicles. Warsaw is sending German-made Leopard tanks. Washington is sending Bradley Fighting Vehicles. London is considering sending Challenger 2 battle tanks. These would be the first Western tanks to go to Ukraine.With Western commitment seeming firm, analysts compare Russia’s military outlook today to the Soviet Union’s debacle in Afghanistan in the late 1980s.“Misfiring war in Ukraine creates potential for Russia’s disintegration,” headlines an analysis by a Russia expert, Casey Michel, posted Tuesday in the Financial Times. Citing the contribution of military defeat in Afghanistan to the Soviet Union’s collapse, he writes: “Now, with the Kremlin once more bleeding men and resources in a foreign war, and again sagging under a torpid economy, Western policy makers risk being caught out a second time.”Western analysts are starting to look at Russia, the world’s largest country, as a sprawling empire of colonized peoples. Mr. Michel, an adjunct fellow with the Hudson Institute, writes: “Often overlooked in Western academic circles, Russian colonization of these nationalities in the Caucasus, Siberia, and elsewhere paralleled the brutality of European colonization, leaving persistent societal scars and schisms.”Mr. Michel concludes: “Putin’s war in Ukraine risks turning Russia into a failed state with uncontrolled borders. This offers nationalities colonized by Russia and tossed into the maw of conflict the chance to claim sovereignty and freedom.”

Could the Russian Federation Go the Way of the Soviet Union?

Could the Russian Federation Go the Way of the Soviet Union?

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