The power of ignorance often prevails over rational analysis, just as the power of imagination often prevents efforts to see Moscow’s inability to implement effective social, demographic, economic, and national policies. The excessive efforts made by the Kremlin to convince the Western world of the “necessity” of the existence of the old empire, its almost eschatological mission of being a prison for various nations, and numerous paranoid insults towards NATO and the EU, have yielded results.
At the level of the diplomatic corps, staff and freelance analysts of the US and the EU, the collapse of the Russian empire continues to be perceived as evil, while a completely naive belief in the “democratization” or true “federalization” of Russia is still present.
The book by Janusz Bugaisky, translated and published in Ukraine in the first year of the second campaign of the Russian-Ukrainian war, under the telling title “The Incompetent State. Instructions for dismantling Russia”, until it became a textbook for Ukrainian and foreign elites. It should, at the very least, be a reason for a more attentive attitude towards the country, which feeds on the propaganda of past “greatness” and commits ever greater violations of both the system of international law and, ultimately, common sense.
It is true that the purely defensive stance of both Washington and Brussels has given the Moscow leadership great hope that no matter what they do against their neighbours or what operations they conduct in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, or even in the United States itself, with they will be treated in the same way as with the USSR during Stalin’s time. That means, avoiding confrontation as much as possible, watching how the Russian special services undermine the international security system and make completely cosmetic attempts to influence Russia.
The dismantling of Russia is not yet considered either as a crisis or as a potential opportunity to obtain a much more stable territory capable of abandoning an aggressive policy.
Janusz Bugajski rightly observes that the focus of researchers is still not on the numerous rifts and disputes that exist on the territory of the so-called federation. After all, it is not a federation at all – the political system rests on the governors sent from the Kremlin, as well as on the multimillion-dollar repressive and punitive system, while the game of “United Russia” (such an understandable concept of apparent “unity”) is just just a form of access to the country’s resources.
The defeats of the Russian army in Ukraine, and the inability to implement mass repressions inside Russia, did not allow either the Ukrainian or the Western political leadership to realize and accept the fact of the weakness of the Russian state, which, experiencing numerous internal crises, tries to solve them at the expense of aggression against its neighbours.
Weakness should not be understood as the desired fact of tomorrow’s disintegration of Russia, but the dysfunctionality of the domestic budget policy, the decline of infrastructure, the predatory attitude to resources and the glaring disparity in the levels of regional development and demographic decline.
Could Stalin afford to let millions of dissidents out of the country? No. But the Putin regime has decided that it will expel from the country those who have at least some minimal disagreement with it. The rest were appointed by foreign agents who voluntarily accepted this brand.
Practically all national minorities of Russia, who live in their territory or the territories where they were resettled, show demographic growth, while the ethnic share of Russians continues to steadily decrease. This is best seen in the example of Tatarstan and Ingushetia. Therefore, the question arises, what is Russia really, If not an old empire, that exists due to the inertia not only of its own but also of the Western world, which does not want to admit the fallacy of its ideas about it?
It is a mistake to believe that a reactive approach to Russia’s actions can yield results. Its participation in destabilization in the Middle East, Syria, Israel, the war against Ukraine, and sabotage in the Baltic Sea are all desperate attempts to declare its imperial ambitions and convince its own population that they are a surrounded fortress.
The fears of the Russian political leadership are not accidental, they perfectly understand that the centralized management system, the mummified tsar and repressive and punitive methods will not have an effect forever.
It is worth finally seeing and working with real, not fictional vulnerabilities and defeats of the Russian Federation, as Janusz Bugajski quite pragmatically advises.
With his aggressive policy, Putin served the future accession of two more countries to the NATO bloc, and also could not do anything about the accession of North Macedonia and Montenegro to the Alliance, forced the NATO leadership to begin restoring the contingent of troops in Eastern Europe and begin the modernization of the military-industrial complex. Alternative energy and new ways of supplying energy carriers in the territory of the EU have become a reality, which has all the prospects for further development.
The West’s support of Ukraine, including various types of weapons, has shown that the fear of Russia is quite unfounded, as well as the delay in providing weapons.
Investigating Russia’s vulnerabilities should become a priority for both think tanks and our security and intelligence agencies. The real victory will lie in the division of the old empire, which will take place along those really existing regional, ethnic, and clan divisions that exist.
Russia must lose not only the empty status of a superpower but also say goodbye to even the slightest possibility of aggression against its neighbours or planning operations on the territory of foreign states. This is a task both for allies and for Ukraine itself.
It’s easy to be a victim of history. But geopolitical revolutions happen regardless of the ideas and delusions of retirees from geopolitics who long for the old status quo.
Stanislav Fedorchuk
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