Ukrainian Drone Attacks Giving New Impetus to Discussions about Moving Russian Capital to Siberia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 30 – For more than a decade, Russian officials including those at the very top have been mulling the idea that if Russia is to make a new breakthrough in its development and be less integrated with the West, it needs to open “a window on Asia” analogous to the Window on Europe that Peter the Great did by establishing his capital in St. Petersburg.

            That is, Sergey Aksyonov of Svobodnaya Pressa says, Russia needs to decentralize the country’s economy and move the capital to Siberia, either by building up one of the existing cities there or creating an entirely new one analogous to what Peter the Great did when he established St. Petersburg as his “window on Europe” (svpressa.ru/economy/article/525545/).

            Of course, it would have been easier and better if this decision had been made calmly during the “fat” years when the Russian economy was growing rapidly rather than now when Ukrainian drones are raining down on the existing capital in Moscow,  the commentator says.

            But better late than never, he adds, even suggesting that interest in moving the capital has increased because if the political leadership moves, there will be less reason for enemies of Russia, Ukraine now but others in the future, to attack the city and thus allow it to remain the major economic center of the country.   

            Such a consideration will likely reduce the opposition many businesses are mounting to the idea of moving the capital, Aksyonov suggests; and so what has been an idea more or less at the margins of official discussions is now assuming a more central place – yet another consequence of the drone attacks on Russian thinking.