Instead of the Siberianization the Kremlin Talks About, Moscow is Taking Actions that will Lead to ‘the Final Sinification” of Russia, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 12 – For more than five years, senior Russian officials and commentators have been talking about promoting the Siberianization of Russia as part of Vladimir Putin’s “turn to the east.” But instead of doing so, Vadim Shtepa says, they are taking actions that will lead to “the final Sinification” of the country.

            The editor of the Tallinn-based regionalist portal Region.Expert says that Moscow has ignored the demographic collapse of Siberia and the economic problems the war has exacerbated there in pursuit of an alliance with China which wants to dominate areas that once were its own (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/sibirizacia-ili-kitaizacia-k-chemu-privedet-povorot-rossii-na-vostok).

            Instead of building up Siberia by investing it in in a serious way, Shtepa continues, Moscow has again and again come up with ideas that either can’t be realized – five new millionaire cities in a region losing population, for example – or that play into the hands of the Chinese – calling for building microchip factories east of the Urals with Chinese help.

            The latter is especially absurd, the regionalist continues, because China isn’t going to want to help build competitors to its own microchip industry but Beijing may want to exploit Moscow’s naivete and develop what will be Chinese industries on what is now Russian soil. If so, then that will almost certainly lead to “the final Sinification” of Russia east of the Urals.

            All this is happening, he argues, because Moscow does not take the regions of the country seriously but rather as pawns in its geopolitical and geoeconomic games. Were it to view the federal subjects as potential allies, it would not be making these mistakes and would be improving its chances of achieving its goals and holding the country together.