by Askold S. Lozynskyj
Sept 12, 2024
Several questions have been raised in the course of the Ukraine-Russia war, some provoked by threats that have come from the Kremlin. Will Russia resort to nuclear weapons? In what scenario can the Russian empire collapse? What would happen to the nuclear arsenal in that case? There are many schools of thought on answering these questions, the predominant one in the United States and many countries in the West being the now aged response of appeasement. The only accurate answer has been that appeasement of Russia has never worked in the past. And so why would it now?
The war has exposed some of Russia’s weaknesses. On the morning of February 24, 2022 when Russia invaded full force, many Western experts, political and military, gave Ukraine a week. That certainly has changed two and one half years later. Russia continues to bark about its power, but its bite has been significantly lesser. In fact, if Russia were to fight according to generally accepted rules of international law, meaning without war crimes, targeting civilian sites, women and children, kidnapping, raping and pillaging, its success and Ukraine’s casualties would be significantly lesser.
Ukraine’s incursion into Russian territory is difficult to assess since there has not been much opposition and the local population appears mostly peaceful,offering little opposition if any, but only time will tell. There are only ten thousand Ukrainian troops involved. Further incursions in Bryansk and Belgorod regions are expected. Missile and drone attacks at the gates of Moscow are currently inexplicable, but real.
No one will offer an opinion as to a timeline, but many will opine with a war end scenario. Much of this is predicated on extensive Western support which is substantial, unrestricted and timely. So far the last two factors have been lacking. One other condition predominates. I have never met anyone in Ukraine among the political or military leadership or even the cab driver that does not fear a Trump victory in November.
Travelling through Ukraine, in Kyiv I met up with a Ukrainian citizen of Erzya descent and one of the major leaders of the Erzya people not only in Ukraine, where there are more than thirty thousand, but of the Erzya in Mordovia, much vilified by the Kremlin and a former leader of the League of Free Nations, Boljaenj Syresj. I posed these questions to him and this was his response:
“The process of the collapse of the Russian Federation is inevitable, it can only be slowed down or accelerated. Russia has been falling apart since the beginning of the last century. The Bolsheviks saved it at the expense of a new idea, total terror, harsh exploitation of the population. The artificially created “Union” remained unstable and fell apart. Now we are witnessing another attempt to save the empire.
The Russian Federation is a reformatted USSR, a mixture of Tsarist Russia and the USSR. The flag, the coat of arms of the century before last, the state system – from the past. The main reason for the collapse of the USSR was the reluctance of the Union republics to be part of the USSR. The subjects of the Federation are held by force, and not only the national republics, but also the regions. They do not want to be under the power of Moscow.
Not everyone sees it. But how many people predicted the collapse of the USSR? There are signs that the state management system is on the verge of collapse, which will lead Russia to prolonged chaos with all the consequences. Can someone save the Russian Federation? No! Can the world make the process of disintegration nominally manageable, minimizing casualties and losses? Yes! But not if joint efforts of the world and forces interested in disintegration are successful.
First of all, there are representatives of enslaved national and regional movements, which aim to create free, independent, democratic states, which see themselves as part of the civilized world and share its principles and values. These movements are still weak, because they have no help from the world they want to join. But movements are already coalescing.
The most developed and serious is the League of Free Nations, whose members have announced the nuclear-free status of their future states and insist on denuclearizing the Russian Federation. The nuclear power of the Russian Federation is already in doubt. The bulk of these weapons were adopted in the 1970s and 1980s. For example, the extension of the service life of the SS-18 missile complex (SS-18, Satan) with the involvement of the manufacturer (“Pivdenmash” located in Ukraine) was last carried out in 2006. The IED is not a machine gun or a gun at all. It is a complex that requires special knowledge, equipment maintenance, storage conditions, and transportation. In addition, the components of modern nuclear weapons need to be replaced from time to time, and they are very specific. Jointly with the deterrence assistance from the West any nuclear peril can be avoided.”
Why is this explanation important? Because it clearly points to a more favorable option than appeasing an empire that cannot be appeased, only further enticed.