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"The disintegration of Russia is coming, the West must prepare"

2023-04-22 11:24:28Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Vladimir Putin

Russia's poor performance on the battlefield and the growing belief that Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons should not be taken into account has encouraged Western analysts and Russian dissidents to publicly call for the "decolonization" of Russia itself.

They refer to the Russian Federation, the successor to the Soviet Union that consists of 83 federal entities, including 21 non-Slavic republics.

The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an independent agency of the US government with members from the House of Representatives, the Senate and the departments of defense, state and commerce, has declared that the decolonization of Russia should be a "moral and strategic objective".

The Post-Russia Free Nations Forum, made up of politicians and journalists defected from Russia, held a meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels earlier this year and is promoting three events in various US cities this month.

It has even published a map of a fractured Russia, divided into 41 different countries, in a post-Putin world, assuming that the Russian leader is losing Ukraine and will be overthrown.

Western analysts are increasingly convinced of the theory that Russia's breakup is coming, and that the West must not only prepare to manage any possible spillover from any civil war that follows, but also take advantage of it.

They argue that when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the West was blindsided and failed to take full advantage of its benefits. It must now devise a strategy to end the Russian threat once and for all, instead of empowering Putin.

But many others see Russia's routine as a graver threat to global peace and security and have warned against appeasing an adversary that, while weaker than the West militarily and economically, still possesses nearly 6,000 nuclear warheads, militia armed and vast resources trapped in a sparsely populated landscape bordering China.

Janusz Bugajski, a senior fellow at the Jamestoen Foundation, has stated that Western sanctions have damaged the Russian economy and there is "concern in many regions about their shrinking budgets".

He lobbies against giving Putin security guarantees. Others who have agreed with this idea believe that Putin's loss in Ukraine will destroy his strong cult following and expose him as a weak leader.

Once the elites in the non-Slavic republics realize that Moscow is neither rich enough to line their pockets nor militarily strong enough to suppress their dissent, they will rise up.

Sergej Sumlenny, director of the European Center for Resistance Initiative in Berlin and a former editor-in-chief at Russian business broadcaster RBC-TV, said Putin has controlled nations by corrupting their elites and stoking fears of a Chechen-style conflict. .

In 1991, after the Soviet Union dissolved, 14 of Russia's nations declared sovereignty.

The bloody campaign in Chechnya a few years later was designed to discourage and disperse independence movements, while Putin's centralized policies brought the supposedly autonomous republics under Moscow's control.

But the war in Ukraine has exposed Putin as a disillusioned and weak man unworthy of the image he had cultivated, Sumlenny argued.

"He was seen in Russia as a leader who could defeat anyone, and Ukraine was seen as so weak that he would be defeated without any effort," Sumlenny told Foreign Policy.

"But now, everyone, including the ruling elite in the republics and regions, can see that Moscow has neither money nor a strong army.

"If you're a mob boss, the worst thing that can happen to you is for your underlings to suddenly realize you're not as strong as you pretended to be."

There has been discontent in some parts of the Russian Federation for years. Five thousand miles from Moscow, thousands in the Khabarovsk region of Russia's Far East protested for months in 2020 against the arrest of their governor.

They said the Kremlin ordered the arrest of Sergei Furgal, the man they chose to lead, and replaced him with a "puppet". In the same year, protesters in the Republic of Bashkortostan protested against the limestone mining of what they considered to be sacred hills.

In 2018-2019, people of the Arkhangelsk region, 700 miles north of Moscow, blocked roads and erected tents to stop the Russian government from using their territory as a dumping ground for Moscow's waste.

In the Republic of Tatarstan, a slow nationalist movement has grown due to the imposition of the Russian language and a ban on switching to the Latin alphabet from the Cyrillic script, as Tatars fight for more cultural autonomy. Bashkortostan has also protested to protect their native language and used slogans such as "Without a language you are not a nation".

Recently, as Putin announced partial mobilization and recruited a disproportionately large number of conscripts from poorer regions, protests broke out in various parts of the country.

The Free Buryatia Foundation was created to help reservists avoid conscription in the Republic of Buryatia, while the republics of Dagestan and Chechnya, the latter of which leader Ramzan Kadyrov has pledged loyalty to Putin, have both said they have already complied. their recruitment quota. Women came out in the city of Yakutsk, Sakha Republic, and chanted, "Let our children live!"

Experts cite past protests to illustrate that tensions have long existed in the region. Some believe that the current anti-mobilization protests will act as a unifier and spur independence movements across the Russian republics.

For every argument made by those angry about the impending disintegration of Russia, there are more counterarguments. The truth is that there is an information vacuum deliberately maintained by Russia; and yet lack of information in itself does not justify the theory.

Experts point out that Russian citizens in the autonomous republics may be afraid of Putin, but being anti-Putin does not necessarily mean being against Russia.

And even for those states that really want to leave the Russian bloc, there is no guarantee that what follows will be democratic or friendly to the West.

Experts fear that many regions in the Russian Far East are already leaning towards China. Then there is the worry of civil wars and regional dictators fighting over Russian nuclear weapons.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former CEO of Yukos Oil Company and then a political prisoner in Russia, rejected a peaceful breakup of Russia and warned of regional wars.

"First, Russia is tied into a single transport and economic mechanism," Khodorkovsky said.

He added that most of the resource-rich regions do not have access to the sea.

"This creates a potential conflict between regions that have fewer people but large resources and those that have a large population and means of transporting resources."

These different regions will fight over borders and try to gain control of nuclear weapons – a nightmare for the West.

Khodorkovsky added that another dictator will come to Moscow instead of Putin to regain the lost territories.

"Will the West be faced with 15 to 20 new states that are at war with each other and possess nuclear weapons?" he asked.

"Will the West face the dictator who will reunite the country, at the request of the Russian army and poor population."

Although the Kremlin accuses the West of fomenting trouble inside Russia consistently, talk of Russia's disintegration in Western capitals could fuel nationalists and cause Russians to rally behind Putin.

It could also be used by Putin's far-right supporters across Europe to bolster anti-Americanism. Worse, it can feed the disinformation machine and be cited by conspiracy theorists.

Dissolving Russia is "almost impossible," said Joana Deus Pereira, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in Europe.

"After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russians were told they would be closer to Europe," she said. "This did not happen and hurt Russian pride.

"In this context, look at Putin's first speech, where he said he would raise Russia from humiliation. There is a lot of support for Putin from what we see and follow, and any talk or attempt to divide Russia will only help him," said Deus Pereira.

Moreover, she said, non-Slavic republics and regions do not really want the dissolution of Russia, but only "recognition of their region, their flag and more cultural independence within the Russian Federation."

Both those who believe a Russian collapse is imminent and those who warn against it agree on one thing: the Russian Federation has never really been a federation.

Decentralization is the key, Khodorkovsky said.

Whenever the time comes for the West to lift sanctions, it must negotiate with a government that has taken legitimacy from the regions.

"This will tip the scales in the direction of federalization," Khodorkovsky said.

Anchal Vohra is a Brussels-based columnist for Foreign Policy, who writes on Europe, the Middle East and South Asia.

She has covered the Middle East for the Times of London and has been a television correspondent for Al Jazeera English and Deutsche Welle. She has reported on conflict and politics from over two dozen countries. / By Anchal Vohra, Foreign Policy


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