Russian Empire Must be Destroyed or New Putins will Arise Again and Again, Gabbasov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 15 – Many believe that once Putin is gone, he can be replaced by democratic leaders who will take the country in an entirely new direction, Ruslan Gabbasov says; but unless the Russian empire is demolished, there is no guarantee that new Putins will again arise and carry out repressive and aggressive policies like his.

            To prevent that, the head of the Bashkir National Political Center in Vilnius says, the world must finally recognize that the problems Moscow confronts it with stem not just from Putin but from the forces that will remain at work as long as the Russian empire remains (atodangos.com/rusijos-vientisumas-gresme-civilizuotam-pasauliui/ in Lithuanian and  region.expert/evil-empire/ in Russian).

            “No one can give any guarantee that even after two terms of an administration headed by some Gary Kasparov or Yuliya Navalnaya as president of Russia that some Igor Strelkov will not come to power” and will repeat what Putin is doing by manipulating the Russian people with talk about how deceived and abused they have been.

            And then everything now going on will be repeated once again, Gabbasov says. Some may say this is too pessimistic; but no one can point to a case in Russian history when that is not exactly what has occurred. “Even in Russia’s most democratic years, 1991-1999, it conducted wars in Transnistria, and against the Chechen Republic Ichkeria.”

            “To break this vicious imperial circle under the name of Russia,” he continues, “it simply must exist as a state. This empire must fall apart into dozens of independent states which will then choose their own paths of development.” Some will be democratic, others less so, but none will be as dangerously aggressive as the Russian Empire now is.