Page 77 - bne monthly magazine June 2024 Russian Despair Index

bne June 2024 Opinion 77
RAGOZIN
Exhausting Russia, strategies and fantasies Russia and Iran have some people in Moscow asking questions
Leonid Ragozin in Riga
The long-delayed allocation of $61bn by the US Congress gives Ukraine yet another chance to negotiate peace with Russia without losing even more lives and territory, provided it succeeds in stalling the current Russian offensive.
But the political class, both in Ukraine and the West, is too invested in a maximalist vision of Ukraine’s victory, while Putin is confident he can realistically end the conflict on his terms and – as things stand now – he might have a point.
All of that means that the war could spill into 2025 or beyond, when Russia may very well be quite worn out, but Ukraine completely devastated.
Breaking up is hard to do
As the Russian advance accelerated in recent weeks and
the headlines in Western media began exuding doom and gloom, several former US ambassadors manned a panel at a Jamestown Foundation event in DC together with the think- tank’s president, Peter Mattis.
The conference, called Russia’s Rupture and Western Policy, focused on the possibility (and desirability) of Russia’s eventual
breakup. The event’s web page featured a map of Russia divided into dozens of nations, each with its own flag. The co-organiser, Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum, is closely linked to Poland’s former ruling PiS party and fugitive Russian politician Ilya Ponomaryov. He works with the Ukrainian government to recruit Russian nationals into the military units run by Ukraine’s military intelligence.
Participants in Post-Russia forums, previously held in Europe, claim to represent separatist movements in bigger ethnic autonomies, such as Bashkortostan and Buryatia. Others identify themselves with Tolkien-styled imaginary states, such as “Ingria” (area around St Petersburg) or “Smallandia” (Smolensk region). It is safe to say that none of them has any clout in their region and most are entirely unknown to its residents.
The expectation that Russia will break up into many independent states as a result of Ukraine’s military victory
is one of the wildest ideas which keeps popping up in the Western discourse. It betrays the shining ignorance of its proponents about the country’s demography, geography and
Some Western security experts have pushed for policies to encourage the break-up of Russia. / bne IntelliNews
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