What would be the consequences of a Russian collapse?

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Russia’s military defeat has challenged Putin’s domestic and international standing, as was evident at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit held on September 14th and 15th, when Putin was disparaged by other leaders.

Due to the successful counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region since the beginning of September, during which Ukraine’s armed forces regained control of some 3,000 kilometres of land, the Russian authorities accelerated the organisation of pseudo-referenda. Faced with the prospect of further territorial losses in Ukraine, the Russian authorities decided to annex four oblasts (Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk) and to announce partial mobilisation across Russia. The aim was to strengthen the military and administrative pro-Russian forces in the occupied Ukrainian territories and prevent Putin’s total military defeat. The president has personally taken responsibility for the success of the special operation in Ukraine. Many speculate that Putin’s defeat could lead to Russia’s decay. Let us ask the question: if the Russian Federation is already at a stage where it could collapse, what will be the consequences? Or, on the contrary, will the war allow Putin to consolidate both his own position and that of the Putinist system? To answer these questions, we will consider three possible scenarios below. They may not necessarily happen, but they can outline the consequences of what might happen if they do take place.

Strengthening Putinism

By invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin wanted to prolong the rule of his kleptocratic regime in Russia, which is a country with declining economic and social potential (it produces only three per cent of global GDP). This is due to an outdated economic model based on raw materials. This model generates profits for the country’s political elite, but fails to meet the needs of society and provides no modernisation incentives for private businesses. Russia now has one of the highest wealth inequality rates in the world, with one per cent of the population owning 58 per cent of the wealth and the top ten per cent of Russians controlling 77 per cent of the national wealth.

In the first few months, the war in Ukraine helped boost political support for Putin. This was achieved through propaganda, repression and the imperial indoctrination of the Russian public. In the first months of the war, according to a survey by the Levada Centre, support for Putin rose above 80 per cent and 73 per cent of Russians believed that the so-called special military operation was going well. After all, the Russian people only watched it on television, which showed them that the contract soldiers were helping to fight “the Nazis” in Ukraine as labelled by Russia’s propaganda. For the population, it seemed that the West was falling on its knees before Russia. Things have begun to change with the partial mobilisation that has shocked Russians.

The war, however, is not over yet; and despite the defeats on the frontline, Putin is still hoping that victory will allow him to consolidate the society around him. This is not an unreasonable thesis, provided victory is understood as the retention of the recently annexed territories and resistance to western sanctions, the most significant of which will be those that come into force by the end of 2022 and affect oil imports. As the majority of Russian oil reaches the EU by sea, the sanctions will cover almost 90 per cent of Russia’s oil imports to Europe, significantly reducing Russia’s trade profits.

The Russian authorities seek to repeat the scenario of 2014 – when they managed to accumulate enough equipment and troops on the Crimean peninsula to be able to strike further areas of Ukraine after some time. Therefore, Russian diplomacy has been sending signals to Kyiv and the international community since the pseudo-referenda that it is ready for talks. It wants recognition of the new Russian-Ukrainian borders and to conclude a new Minsk III agreement. More specifically, Putin needs a strategic pause to replenish the weakened armed forces in the occupied territories with new reservists from the partial mobilisation.

At the same time, the Russian authorities are blackmailing Ukraine and the West with the potential use of nuclear weapons, thus creating a “nuclear umbrella” over the new territories while they fail to build up sufficient conventional forces. If Putin succeeds in holding the annexed territories and militarising them, he will consolidate his position in power. Then Russia may be able to conduct another offensive against other parts of Ukraine in the spring with conventional forces. At that time, Putin will return to his ultimatum made a year ago about a new European security architecture. This discussed an American withdrawal from Central Europe and Ukraine’s abandonment of its NATO aspirations.

Ultimately, the strengthening of Putinism means that Russia as well as China will pose a common threat to the unity of the West. Russia cares about defending its sphere of influence while China cares about undermining the global position of the US. Both, on the other hand, care about undermining the western democratic system, as it will challenge the international order upon which countries like Poland and the wider EU build their prosperity and security. So far, NATO and the EU have maintained relative unity, but with the looming energy, migration, and inflation crises, the prelude of which we are currently experiencing, it is unclear how long this unity can be maintained. This moment of relative unity should therefore be used to promote European interests, strengthen NATO’s eastern flank, bolster independence from Russia, maintain sustained military and financial support for Ukraine, and support Kyiv’s EU accession process.

Putin’s downfall

In authoritarian regimes such as Russia, where a system of repression has been perfected over the years, where there is no independent media, etc., the possibilities for mass protests are very limited. Putin had settled a social contract with Russians from the beginning of his rule, which was to demobilise Russian society (although propaganda on TV might suggest otherwise). In this way, the population was to stay out of politics and Putin was to provide for the citizens’ basic needs. Even in the face of the war he had caused, Russians did not come out to demonstrate by the thousands, as many believed they would not be directly affected by it and they believed that they had no influence on the situation in the country. On top of this, Putin had argued that only volunteers and contract soldiers would fight on the Ukrainian front.

The turning point was Putin’s decision on partial mobilisation. The agreement between Putin and the people was essentially broken. Yet, instead of taking to the streets, Russians fled abroad – they chose to protest with their feet. Putin had to choose between the love of the people or defeat and loss of power. The party of war that has formed in the Kremlin was pressuring Putin to escalate further. The propagandists were not making the task any easier, as they were already criticising both the failures of the Russian army and the disastrous mobilisation. Margarita Simonyan – editor-in-chief of the RT propaganda station – tweeted about misconduct among the recruitment committees. Vladimir Solovyov – a Russian propagandist who hosts a nightly TV talk programme – demanded that those in question be executed. When the Crimean bridge was attacked in early October, Simonyan wrote a telling tweet: “And?” She clearly expects Kremlin retaliation in relation to Ukraine.

A split in the elite will see someone from Putin’s current political circle come to power. Already we can see a “bulldog fight under the carpet”, as the Russians often call the ongoing struggle between the FSB and the armed forces. Whoever he will be, the new leader will weaken the Putinist system because he will need time to build up the loyalty of the elite. It is not out of the question that he will be overthrown quite quickly and replaced by another representative of the elite, which will start a period of severe chaos. The new leader will need time to build the loyalty of his own entourage and, with deteriorating economic indicators, it will be more difficult for him to manage internal crises within the elite. This will reinforce divisions and rivalries between the centre and the regions. Sanctions are already hitting the provinces unevenly and especially those industries that have been linked to imports of western technology, which will only further impoverish the population.

Putin’s successor will be weaker, but will continue to pursue a confrontational policy towards the West, as the Russian public will not be able to quickly switch to a pro-western foreign policy course. Such a leader is less likely to offer cooperation with the US or European countries. He will continue to base his policy on close contacts with China, Iran and Turkey, but will seek to freeze the armed conflict in Ukraine.

Disintegration of Russia

The collapse of the Russian Federation is, for the time being, an unlikely prospect. Still, most financial, logistical flows in the country pass through Moscow and St. Petersburg. The centralisation enforced by Putin has made the regions dependent on the federal budget, subsidies and Kremlin decisions. Yet, given the looming financial problems resulting from sanctions and the recession that will hit Russia in 2023, together with rising war costs and unequal burdens between the centre and periphery, regional protests may be possible. Added to this will be ethnic tensions and the Kremlin’s colonial attitude towards the regions, which became apparent during the organised partial mobilisation. This took the form of ethnic cleansing, as it unevenly included residents of the Far East and North Caucasus and bypassed the larger cities. A factor that will increasingly hamper Russia’s development is demography. According to projections by the United Nations, Russia’s population will shrink to 138 million people by 2037 (from 142.7 million in 2022).

The war with Ukraine will exacerbate all of these indicators. Some 400,000 people have left Russia since the start of the invasion in February this year, while since the announcement of mobilisation, according to various estimates, between 400,000 and 700,000 people have left Russia in the first two weeks alone. In addition, due to Russia’s economic situation and the sanctions, labour migrants have arrived for the first time this year and, according to UN forecasts, this situation will continue until 2028. The Russian authorities were counting on, among other things, territorial conquests in Ukraine to make up for the shortfall in population with mostly Slavic people. Increasing labour market problems in the provinces, a shortage of men and a demographic catastrophe will cause social collapse in some regions of Russia.

If there is a breakup of the Russian Federation, it will take on a dynamic and conflictual character. The greatest unrest will erupt in the North Caucasus, where the boundaries between the republics are still not settled and the dependence on the centre is personal. Security could be fundamentally undermined by Putin’s absence. After all, Chechen Governor Ramzan Kadyrov declares his loyalty to the president himself. There is therefore the possibility that a section of the elite, whose interests will not be satisfied in the face of defeats on the Ukrainian front, may take advantage of the public mood in the regions and rebel against the centre.

Then some western states will face the challenge of a weak and decaying Russia with a diffuse nuclear arsenal. Political calculations will then be different. Central Europe and the Baltic states will be counting on the breakup of the federation to bring an end to an imperial and colonial Russia. They will want to finally deal with the confrontational potential of this geopolitical power. The United States and the United Kingdom seem to have made a strategic choice for the first time in 30 years. They support Ukraine, even if this would entail the prospect of dismembering the Russian state, since Russia under the autocratic Putin currently poses a greater threat to security and the international order than the prospect of its disintegration. This view is not shared, for example, by Germany, which still believes that the breakup of Russia could be more threatening to the international order than the continuation of Putin’s terrorist state.

However, the breakup of Russia, while it will cause initial destabilisation and possibly conflict, will contribute to the weakening of the alliance of authoritarians around the world. Emerging new states and republics will seek international partners who may not necessarily be China (which often makes states economically dependent). After the war with Ukraine, some of the former republics of the Russian Federation may seek proper relations with the European Union to recover from economic collapse. The West, as a goodwill gesture, may outline a roadmap for the gradual lifting of sanctions, conditioned on the withdrawal of troops from Ukraine, the payment of reparations and respect for human rights.

A fragmented Russia is not going to be a threat to its neighbours, and will finally come to terms with its colonial past. A divided Russia will be stripped of its imperial aspirations, which become the obsession of each successive leader of the country. These infect Russian society and encourage more conquests, diverting attention away from using the country’s potential to develop economically. Just as Russia’s history has been a history of conquest focused on space and territory, perhaps the breakdown of this space will finally save Russia.

Agnieszka Legucka is a professor at Vistula University in Warsaw and an analyst with the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM). In her work, she focuses on the foreign policy of the Russian Federation.

Russia, Russia's war against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin