Scenarios on future relations with Russia. The latest issue of New Eastern Europe is now available. Find out what's inside and how to get your copy.

Understanding the future of relations between Russia and the West depends largely on how the war in Ukraine plays out. In this way, three possible scenarios need to be examined: a Ukrainian victory, a Russian victory, and a long, drawn-out stalemate.

Putin’s genocidal war against Ukraine has fundamentally changed Russia’s relationship with the collective West, making a return to any form of partnership impossible for the foreseeable future. It would be hard to envisage western governments dealing with the current Putin regime in Moscow as long as it remains in power and refuses to accept responsibility for its war crimes and crimes against humanity (and the damages it has inflicted on Ukrainian infrastructure).

No one knows how the war in Ukraine will end. However, Russia’s weakening position in Ukraine may be an indication of something much greater internally. Three scenarios outlined below can help us understand what might be next for Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation.

One of the reasons for Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine was to accelerate the process of dividing and weakening the West while strengthening his internal position by repeating the “Crimea effect” of 2014. Meanwhile, there are many indications that through the war in Ukraine, Putin may instead be contributing to the disintegration of the Russian Federation. This would be a paradox of history, as he has accused his predecessors of contributing to the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century, which is how he defined the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Russo-Ukrainian War, which on February 24th 2022 transitioned from a hybrid phase to full-scale conventional war, is not only attracting the attention of the whole world. It also gives us reason to think about what the configuration of relations between the two states will be after the end of the war – a war in which only one of the states may have a chance to survive intact.

The ideological underpinnings of the Russo-Ukrainian War are contradictory. On the one hand, Russian President Vladimir Putin published his article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” last summer, which was filled with amateur arguments about the Ukrainians’ lack of right to their own statehood. On the other hand, on February 24th 2022, Putin, among other things, declared the need for the "denazification of Ukraine", though he failed to find an adequate explanation for this thesis. Official Russian ideology allows for combining the rhetoric of a “fraternal people” with the “Nazi regime that prevails in Ukraine”.

Any normalisation of relations with Russia will only take place once Moscow gives up its imperial ambitions and pays for its crimes. There should be no notion of a new policy towards the Kremlin without change at the top and the complete removal of its threat to European security. We cannot repeat the mistakes of 1991.

Germany’s post-reunification Ostpolitik has ended in a national and European disaster. A policy that was supposed to foster peace, stability and reconciliation has resulted in war and an energy crisis. This is not to say that Germany is to blame for the aggression against Ukraine. The responsibility clearly lies with the criminal policies of Vladimir Putin and his regime. Nevertheless, Berlin needs to accept that post-reunification Ostpolitik, especially in the last 15 years, helped to enable the Kremlin to pursue its attacks on neighbours.

In the western media and capitals, voices can be heard that what journalists report from Ukraine under the relentless Russian onslaught should not be identified with Russian language and culture. Why not? This callous attitude rightly offends Ukrainians, because it is none other than Russian soldiers and officers, educated and bred on “great Russian literature”, who keep committing heinous crimes in Ukraine.

Following Russia’s onslaught on Ukraine in early 2022, the novel term rashism (рашизм) rapidly coalesced for referring to and negatively assessing the mixed-bag fascist-inflected ideology of neo-imperialism that the Kremlin deploys for justifying and promoting its actions. Yet, in the West too little attention is paid to the Russian language’s role in this ideology.

Ukraine’s recent success on the battlefield has encouraged discussion on potential changes to Russia’s political setup. While a new leader would be needed, more fundamental change would be required if the country is to embark on a path towards democracy. The key issue lies in Moscow’s relations with its periphery, an exploitative relationship that has persisted for centuries.

The war in Ukraine has been made possible by Russian and Soviet authorities continually focusing their ideological and political attention on European Russia over the centuries. In doing so, they have been ignoring the interests of other regions of the country, as well as their non-Slavic populations. In this sense, 75 per cent of Russia’s territory acts as Moscow’s internal colonial empire. Not only is it financing the war with its oil and gas, but it is also providing cannon fodder for Russian military commanders, who do not value the lives of Buryats, Tatars or Chechens as much as those of the Slavic citizens. As a result, decolonisation is essential to ensuring the democratisation of Russia.

Most western experts predict Ukraine will win the war with Russia. When it does, we should allow the Russian Federation to dissolve.

Western politicians want borders to stay the same. Stability is good for capitalism. That is why Olaf Scholz has stalled arms shipments, sending in the first six months of the war enough weapons to keep Ukraine from losing, but not enough to turn the tide. This is why, even after Russia’s atrocities in Mariupol, Bucha and Borodyanka came to light, and even with proof of the daily shelling of homes, preschools, and hospitals in Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Odesa, French President Emmanuel Macron sought to help Vladimir Putin save face. Western leaders also cling to the status quo because they fear Putin will nuke Ukraine. This is an intimidation tactic also employed by the Soviet Union. But Putin is not suicidal.

Despite earlier mentions, it was not until Peter the Great’s reign when “Little Russia” was officially co-opted and could be located on a map. The linguistic distinction of Great and Little Russia was also a key part of establishing a separate “Ukrainian” identity. By 1721, the distinctions between Rus’, Russia and all the “Russias” were confused.

Before the 1917 revolutions, “Russian” applied indiscriminately to Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. They were defined respectively as Velikorosy, Malorosy and Belorusy (Great, Little and White Russians). The Soviet regime did away with this but retained and enhanced the traditional notion of “brotherly” relations, with Russians playing the elder brother role. However, in 2021, Vladimir Putin wrote a now famous article on the “shared history” of Russia and Ukraine. In it, he seemingly revived this pre-revolutionary thinking.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has changed not only Ukraine but also nearby countries due to the massive influx of war refugees. Poland has become the major destination for people fleeing from the war and hosts the highest number of those seeking shelter. What does this new Ukrainian diaspora mean for Poland and what impact will it have on Polish politics, demography and society?

Immediately after Russia’s full-scale invasion started on February 24th 2022, war refugees began to stream into neighbouring countries, with Poland quickly becoming the main destination. The refugee influx found the Polish state unprepared for such a situation. There was no pre-existing infrastructure nor administrative experience that would be sufficient to comprehensively manage the crisis by state agencies and civil servants.

On July 27th 2022, the Russian ministry of justice sued the Russian branch of the Sochnut Jewish Agency – an important non-profit which assists Jewish communities around the world. The recent repression of this Jewish organisation seriously contradicts Russia’s own claims that Ukrainians are Nazis who do not tolerate any other nations and cultures.

By the time Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, entered office in the spring of 2019, Ukraine’s prime minister was Volodymyr Groysman. This meant that the country’s two most powerful positions were occupied by Ukrainians with Jewish roots for the first time in the history of modern Ukraine. At the same time, Russia’s state propaganda continued to come up with more nonsense allegations that Ukraine was controlled by far-right Nazis.

Stalinisation – just like the system of the Third Reich – was a source of the greatest tragedy of Europe in the 20th century. It meant deprivation of freedom, forced labour camps (the Gulag), prosecution and massive suffering of millions of people living in Central and Eastern Europe. In its Soviet form, totalitarianism has Stalin’s face.

While Europe has managed to, more or less successfully, hold those who created and implemented the Nazi regime accountable, Stalinism, in its light versions, which are often not associated with crime and genocide, has survived until today. Stalinism was one of the bloodiest and most inhumane forms of communist dictatorship. However, in the West, and especially in France and Italy, light versions of communism and Bolshevism had their own devout admirers.