JRL NEWSWATCH: “Putin’s War and the Dangers of Russian Disintegration; The Unraveling of a Fragile Multiethnic State Could Lead to More Violence” – Foreign Affairs/ Marlene Laruelle
“As … Putin doubles down on his war in Ukraine …. [s]ome observers have predicted that [Putin] could be overthrown; others even hope for a breakup of the country. … Could Russia splinter? Russia’s geography makes cohesiveness elusive. Spanning 11 time zones, it is the largest nation … by landmass. Twenty percent of its population is not ethnically Russian but belongs to local Indigenous nations. While Moscow was named the third most prosperous city in the world by the UN-Habitat’s City Prosperity Index a few weeks before the war began in February, a large part of the Siberian subcontinent is impoverished and sparsely populated. In the far north, declining extractive industrial cities predominate. In the Far East, residents are economically more connected to China, Japan, and South Korea …. Under Putin[] … power has been heavily centralized in Moscow … [P]olitical and cultural autonomy in the provinces have been reduced. Some Western observers have been not only speculating about Russia’s collapse but agitating for one … [as] a solution to Moscow’s international behavior. A breakup, however, would not solve the West’s ‘Russia problem.’ Any positive future for Russia and its neighbors such as Ukraine, as well as for the rest of the world, will require the country to reinvent its federalism from the inside, rather than explode. …”