Fear of destabilizing Russia or even causing its break-up must not deter the West from pressing for a Ukrainian victory. To do otherwise is to protect Russia and Putin from the consequences of their actions in Ukraine and, if anything, increase Russia’s instability in the longer term.
Fallacy
There is a growing narrative that were Russia to suffer a major defeat in Ukraine, then some sort of severe internal turbulence would invariably follow, with speculation on the likely consequences ranging from increased political instability to the break-up of the country. The failed Wagner Group mutiny on 24 June 2023 provided a dramatic illustration of how military infighting might threaten Vladimir Putin’s regime. For many in the West, the worst scenario would be the fragmentation of the Russian Federation into its constituent parts, resulting in the loss of control of nuclear weapons or the creation of a geopolitical vacuum filled by China.
According to this logic, further political instability in Russia is therefore to be avoided at all costs, which means that the country’s armed forces must not be allowed to suffer a catastrophic defeat in Ukraine. This in turn risks encouraging the view that Ukraine’s victory is less important than the avoidance of a Russian defeat.
Analysis
One of the problems with worrying about what Russia might become is that it overlooks what is happening in the country right now: descent into a neo-totalitarian system, whose leaders maintain that the salvation of Russia depends on the annihilation of Ukraine as both a state and a nation. To control and mobilize society, the regime presents the war in Ukraine as a zero-sum game for Russia, with all means justified to achieve victory. Propaganda and coercion are used in tandem to ensure societal acquiescence and create support for a drawn-out war against Ukraine and the West. Equally, wars and geopolitical rivalry offer a means for autocratic political regimes in Russia to sustain themselves – this was the case before Vladimir Putin, and will still likely be true after his eventual departure.
Although the Wagner rebellion is a major setback for the Russian leadership, this should not obscure the fact that in significant respects the war to date has consolidated Putin’s regime.
Although the Wagner rebellion is a major setback for the Russian leadership, this should not obscure the fact that in significant respects the war to date has consolidated Putin’s regime. Both the Russian military and vast numbers of state officials remain loyal to it, and thus willing actors in external aggression and domestic repression. Ultimately, the status, security and wealth of Russian officials rely on regime preservation, so the litany of blunders, miscalculations and battlefield catastrophes do not automatically translate into an increased likelihood of Putin’s removal. Facilitating the regime’s survival both prolongs the war against Ukraine and risks leading to the deeper, longer-lasting brutalization of Russian society. The sorts of massive losses experienced by Russia on the battlefield would stop most governments in their tracks. But despite the current military infighting, there is no sign yet that the number of Russian casualties is making the leadership think twice about pursuing maximalist goals vis-à-vis Ukraine.
Much is made of the prospect that in the event of military defeat, the Russian Federation could disintegrate. Indeed, some hope for Russia’s break-up precisely as a route to achieving the implosion of Putin’s regime. Yet there is no evidence that disintegration of the state would be likely. The preconditions for a break-up are lacking: the regions lack the political leaders, resources, ideologies and instruments to challenge Moscow. The centre’s tight political and economic control, including of personnel and security agencies, provides the regime with significant – though not inexhaustible – capacity to persist, even under extreme stress. Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, is believed to have worked hard behind the scenes to defuse the Wagner Group tensions.
Moreover, Russia’s minorities – which account for about 20 per cent of the population – have little interest in secession. Most non-Russian republics favour decentralization to create a genuine federation, rather than dissolution of the state. These republics are only too aware of how Chechnya was pacified, and clearly have no wish for a similar experience. The temptation to create a parallel between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the current political situation ignores the vast and pivotal differences in conditions between the USSR and Russia today.
Waiting for Russia’s imagined collapse is a way to defer confronting the challenges the regime presents now.
Crucially, narratives on the impending demise of Russia are not only uncorroborated by facts on the ground but counterproductive for Western policy. Waiting for Russia’s imagined collapse is a way to defer confronting the challenges the regime presents now. It is revealing that countries neighbouring Russia – i.e. those most vulnerable to conquest and occupation, or with the most experience of Russian aggression – seem the least fearful of what may hypothetically happen inside the country; their politicians and leaders are far more concerned with what Russia does today than with speculating about the future. Conversely, commentators and officials in more distant countries that are less vulnerable or exposed seem to worry most about the consequences of Russian defeat.
The problem with the latter way of thinking is that, even if inadvertently, those afraid of instability in Russia de facto advocate prolonging Putin’s regime – Russia, in effect, is deemed too important to be allowed to fail. Yet fetishizing a false stability in the hope of ‘modulating’ a political change whose contours inherently defy prediction vastly overplays the West’s influence on Russia. It amounts to an unworkable re-interpretation of the ‘responsibility to protect’ principle – in which, implausibly, the aggressor country is to be protected from the consequences of its own wrongdoing.
The way forward
Western policy cannot be premised on the belief that internal instability in Russia is a greater evil than the war itself and the Kremlin’s domestic repressions. In fact, Russia’s defeat in Ukraine is a necessary condition – if perhaps insufficient on its own, as mentioned – for the demise of Putin’s regime. The Russian opposition cherishes the prospect of military defeat as a means to create cracks in the regime and facilitate a political thaw. Seen from this angle, although a decisive Ukrainian military victory offers no guarantee of toppling Putin and is unlikely to radically destabilize Russia, it still provides the best chance for political reform in the country and is needed, at the very least, to tame Russian imperialist ambitions.
The West needs to deal with the problem in hand – namely, undermine the will and capacity of Russia’s leaders and state to launch wars of aggression and conquest in Europe – rather than devising grand schemes to modulate political change and prevent further possible instability inside Russia.
As the former US diplomat George Kennan said: ‘Few of us can see very far into the future, all would be safer if we take principles of conduct, which we know we can live with, and at least stick to those, rather than try to chart our vast schemes.’ This realization ought to transcend the defeatism among those who think that ‘firmness against Russia can only bring war’, when, in fact, it is indispensable for bringing peace.
