West Must Prepare for ‘Fragmentation of Russia,’ Kyiv Official Says; but National Activist Suggests that May Not Happen Immediately

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 18 – Aleksey Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Service, says that the West must begin to prepare for the inevitable “fragmentation of Russia” so that it doesn’t repeat the mistakes it made three decades ago when it acted as if the CIS would hold everything together (except for the Baltic countries).

            That mistake meant, he argues, the West did not promote the genuine independence of the 11 non-Russian union republics but continued a Moscow-centric policy despite the fact that these  nations could survive only if they were truly separate (news.liga.net/ua/politics/news/danilov-zakhid-maie-hotuvatysia-do-frahmentatsii-rosii-na-mapi-ziavliatsia-novi-krainy).

            Danilov’s words come in the wake of the mass protests in Bashkortostan which he sees as opening the way to this process of fragmentation, a view that many other supporters and opponents of that outcome agree upon although they differ considerably on how fast that will happen with many predicting imminent.

            But some of the more thoughtful leaders of the non-Russian nations, while completely agreeing with Danilov’s assessment as to what it needed from the West now to ensure the survival of their peoples in the future, are suggesting that while the West should prepare, it should also recognize that achieving this goal may take some time.

            One of those is Aida Abdrakhamova, deputy prime minister of the Tatarstan government in exile and a member of the League of Free Nations of Post-Russia (radiounet.fm/pradstaunicza-ligi-volnyh-narodau-aida-abdrahamava-situaczyya-u-rasii-yashche-ne-saspela-kab-adbylasya-dekalanizaczyya-rf/).

            She argues that the recent events in Bashkortostan have shaken “all the national republics in Russia and regional movements as well.” Moscow is on course to destroy these peoples and can be stopped “only by creating their own democratic legal states, free from imperial Moscow” and its policy of “terror.”

            But achieving that, Tatar leader says, won’t necessarily be easy or quick. “We have supporters of independence there … but at the moment, they have no opportunity to act,” adding that she does not think that “the internal situation is sufficiently developed … for all the activists to come out and carry out the decolonization of the Russian Federation.”

            “That is what we all strive for, that is, the collapse of Russia,” but neither we nor our friends in the democratic West can assume that will happen soon given the resources available to Moscow and the Kremlin’s willingness to use them against the population, Abdrakhamova concludes.