Putin Likely to Exploit Terror Attack to Abolish Non-Russian Republics, Aysin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 23 – Vladimir Putin has always blamed Lenin for creating conditions that led to the disintegration of the USSR by creating the union republics and been hostile to the non-Russian autonomous republics within the Russian Federation which, in his view, may threaten that country’s demise as well, Ruslan Aysin says.

            That explains the Kremlin leader’s continuing attacks on the prerogatives of the non-Russian federal subjects; and now as he has in the past, Putin is likely to exploit the latest terrorist attacks to point to such units as a threat and move to abolish them, the Tatar commentator now living in Turkey says (idelreal.org/a/novyy-terakt-novye-lisheniya-aysin-o-tom-chto-esche-iz-dostizheniy-referenduma-o-suverenitete-mogut-otobrat-u-tatarstantsev/32872800.html).

            Under Putin, terrorist attacks have always been the occasion for tightening the screws on the population and going after the non-Russian republics. (For a discussion of this phenomenon in the context of the Crocus City attacks, see jamestown.org/program/moscows-disturbing-reaction-to-crocus-city-hall-attack/.)

            Even before the latest incident, there had been suggestions that Putin would move to abolish the non-Russian republics this year now that he has “won” his latest “election” (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/03/before-end-of-2024-putin-will-abolish.html). Aysin builds on those and suggests that such a threat is increasingly real.

            “After the terrorist action,” the Tatar commentator says, “suggestions that the federal authorities may launch a campaign for the liquidation of the republics are likely to take on clearer form. The regime needs a new internal enemy” that it can present “as the source of all misfortunes.”

            It has already gelded or completely repressed almost all other centers of oppositions, Aysin continues. “What is left” besides the statehood of the non-Russian republics?  But if Putin does move in this direction, he will face opposition – and it is likely to be far stronger and potentially more fateful than that offered by those Putin ahs repressed up to now.  

            The Kremlin leader recognizes this, and that is why he has moved slowly, salami fashion, against the non-Russians. But perhaps now, given his own “electoral triumph” and the latest terrorist outrage, he may very well feel that the time to destroy the republics has come regardless of the resistance he will certainly face.