Putin’s Russia Now a Failed State on Course to Disintegration, Siberian Regionalist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 8 – “The Russian Federation at present is a classic example of a failed state which does not have the ability to fulfill the functions of a state, in particular social ones,” Siberian regionalist Semyon Artsyshevsky says. The situation will only get worse along with the war in Ukraine, and the world must prepare itself for the disintegration of Russia.

            (For another, earlier discussion of this reality and why a failed state may nonetheless retain some powerful institutions, see the article by the author of these lines: “Russia as a Failed State: Domestic Difficulties and Foreign Challenges,” Baltic Defense College Review, 12:2 (2004), pp. 76-83, at bdcol.ee/files/docs/bdreview/bdr-2004-12-sec3-art3.pdf.)

            Western sanctions and the likelihood of reparations to Ukraine in the future, Artsyshevsky says, make the appearance of new states on the territory of what is now the Russian Federation likely and mean that the international community needs to begin thinking about that and about providing assistance to these states (region.expert/postrussian-siberia/).

            According to the Siberian regionalist, the West for reasons of its own security won’t be infected by “the mental virus of Russism, Russian imperialism.” Such people can be found in the regions that may become new states even though at least at present they cannot be found in Moscow. And the major powers need to be thinking about that as they make plans for the future.

            The approaching end of the Russian Federation is closer than most think because “in fact,” he says, “the greater part of the country’s military resources are already being used in the Ukrainian conflict and the Russian Federation is defended only by the myth about the existence of serviceable nuclear weapons.”