The Longer Putin’s War in Ukraine Continues, the More Business Outside of Moscow will Organize for a Post-Russian Future, Siberian Regionalist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 28 – The longer Putin’s war in Ukraine continues without some kind of victory, Semyon Atsysehvsky says, the more likely the Russian Federation will disintegrate not only because Moscow will lose its ability to control the situation but because elites in the regions will be seeking to position themselves to take advantage of a post-Russia future.

            “The most pragmatic Russian businessmen and officials are already thinking” in these terms because they know that “the entry ticket to the future political system” at home and abroad “will be a clearly displayed anti-war position now,” the Siberian regionalist commentator says (region.expert/sibelites/).

            The most senior political officials in Siberia remain tightly controlled by the Kremlin, Artsyshevsky says; but “regional businessmen who are represented in regional parliaments will begin to express ever more loudly first economic demands and then political ones” as the economic situation in the country deteriorates.

            There are already examples: Oligarch Oleg Deripaska has condemned the war, the deputies of the State Council of the Komi Republic and some members of the Primorsky Kray parliament have done the same. The politicians involved are members of the KPRF but in this they are “clearly speaking on behalf of their local communities.

            In this way, the Siberian regionalist says, currently banned “regional political parties are actually recreated without permission” from the center. Most of these are being dismissed as individual outliers, but in fact, they represent an underlying shift in public opinion that is likely to play a far larger role in the future than any nationalist protest.