Window on Eurasia: Russian Federation Will Cease to Exist Within 20 Years, Former GRU Officer Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 14 – Viktor Suvorov, a GRU officer who defected to Great Britain in 1978 and who has attracted attention since for his books and articles about Moscow’s security services, says that the Russian Federation will disintegrate sometime during the next two decades and that Vladimir Putin will be “the last president” of that country.

            In comments to the Polish weekly “Do reczy,” Suvorov argues that no one should “fear Russia” because that country even now “is not capable of defeating an opponent stronger than Georgia.” Indeed, “in the event of war, the Russian army would hardly be able even to cross Belarus” (dorzeczy.pl/rosja-niedlugo-zniknie-z-mapy/; in Russian at sibpower.com/novosti-regionov/viktor-suvorov-putin-poslednii-prezident-rosi-stranu-zhdet-raspad.html).

            The growing gulf between the Russian people and the Kremlin, ethnic conflicts, regional competition, alcoholism, and the spread of Chinese influence into Siberia and the Russian Far East, Suvorov says, means not only that Russia is weak but that it will disintegrate during the next 10 to 15 years.”

            By that time, he continues, “Siberia will not be part of Russia.”  It doesn’t belong to China yet, “but one should not say now that it belongs to Russia. Russians form the very same percentage of the population as the British did at one time in their African colonies.”  And that situation will only get worse from Moscow’s point of view.

            In addition, the former Soviet military intelligence officer says, Russia faces ethnic problems at its center. “Already today, Russians form only 31 percent of the population of Moscow; the remainder are Tatars, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens, and Chechens,” Muslim groups very much at odds with Orthodox Russians.

            Suvorov adds that “the first” republic to leave the Russian Federation will be Tatarstan.”

“The main error of Putin’s regime is an overrating of its own possibilities,” Suvorov argues.  “The army can still participate in training exercises, but it cannot fight” because “morally, it is completely destroyed” given the way in which the Russian political elite behaves generally and with respect to its armed forces.

During World War I, Suvorov recalls, “the daughters of Nicholas II were military nurses. Stalin’s children fought in the ranks of the Red Army during World War II, [but] if there were a war today, then the children Putin and his oligarchs would be instantly evacuated” and both they and the army’s commanders know that.