With Widening Drone Attacks, Ukraine Driving ‘Wedge’ between Moscow and Federation Subjects, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 7 – Many had expected that Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s far-flung regions and republics would generate support for Moscow and demands across the country for a massive Russian response to what Kyiv is now doing, but the reverse is in fact the case, according to Abbas Gallyamov.

            The former Putin speech writer and now Putin critic says that as he at least expected, by attacking Russia’s regions, “the Ukrainians are driving a wedge between Moscow and the federal subjects (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/10415 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/odno-iz-samyh-uyazvimyh-mest-putinskogo-rezhima).

            That is because people in the regions and republics are now having to an increasingly true reality: the defense of Moscow is being carried out on the backs of the federal subjects – and the center is not defending them as it should if Russia were a truly united country.

            According to Gallyamov, “the only effective defense” against such thinking “would be for Putin to make regular visits to the Russian heartland and, while there, publicly announce decisions to supply each of the regions with a new air defense system.” But “the Russian president is incapable of doing that.”

            Indeed, the commentator says, it is clear that Putin “genuinely believes and with absolute sincerity that protecting the citizens of his country does not fall within the scope of duties the president is expected to fulfill.” Instead, his business is to bomb the enemy; as for how his subjects are faring, that is none of his concern.”

            That has been true for some time, Gallyamov suggests; but what the Ukrainians have done with their drone attacks on Russia’s federal subjects is to make that obvious to ever more people there and even in Moscow but clearly not to Putin who remains oblivious to the consequences of this development.  

            Moreover, although the commentator doesn't suggest it, his reference to "a wedge" between Moscow and the regions will cause many Ukrainians and their friends to think about ethnic Ukrainian areas within the current borders of the Russian Federation, areas that many Ukrainians describe as "wedges."