But any pretence to freedom has gone, army assaults on civilians removes all claims to civilised behaviour, and it’s diplomatically isolated.
7 May 2024 •
Vladimir Putin cut an almost forlorn figure, standing alone at the foot of the Kremlin steps in the pouring rain to watch a march past marking his inauguration as Russian president for a fifth term. His seeming isolation, however, belied his grip over Russia, now stronger than ever despite the disaster of the Ukraine invasion.
His control has been likened to that of a tsar, but he increasingly resembles Stalin in the way he has removed all opposition and rivals. It is more than 24 years since he first assumed the presidency, aged just 47, with promises to promote democracy. He foresaw Russia as “free, prosperous, strong and civilised, a country that its citizens are proud of and is respected internationally”.
Today, it is none of those. Any pretence to freedom has long since gone, the economy has tanked, the Russian army’s murderous assaults on civilians in Ukraine removes all claims to civilised behaviour, and it is isolated from its closest European neighbours.
There was a time when we hoped to see an end to Russia’s distrust of countries to its west, a paranoia not entirely unjustified given the history of invasion over the centuries. Putin even joined the comity of industrialised nations, turning the G7 into the G8.
The illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 put paid to that experiment and served to reinforce the national delusion that everyone was out to get Russia, a myth cultivated by Putin to underpin his power. He subsequently altered the Russian constitution to run for the presidency for two further six-year terms and he can potentially remain in office until 2036, by which time he will be 83. His election victory in March with almost 90 per cent of the vote was widely considered fraudulent.
President Putin used his inaugural address, largely boycotted by Western countries, to insist that Russia’s forces will be victorious in Ukraine, whatever the cost. Two years ago, when his armies were pushed back from their assault on Kyiv, there was talk of a coup against him, but he appears to have consolidated his power even as the war has turned into a bloodbath.
Yulia Navalnaya, widow of his principal opponent Alexei Navalny, who died mysteriously in prison before the election, said Russia was doomed to remain in a state of conflict so long as Putin stayed in power. Sadly, that looks likely to be a lot longer than many once imagined.
Selected DT readers’ comments :
J Finnemore
He should have stuck to his originally declared policy of not invading Ukraine.
Instead he went back on his own professed statements, launched an entirely unnecessary war against his neighbour, caused the death and injury of hundreds of thousands of his own countrymen, widespread destruction and his own indictment on war crimes for child abduction, whilst trying to blame it all the while on the West.
An evil dictator for whom others are just expendable pawns in his dream of conquest.
Daniel King
I suspect Putin is relatively content with the land corridor held in Ukraine and will sit it out in advance of the inevitable negotiations for agreeable settlement. Trump, as next president, will conclude matters and the world will move on.
David R Crawford
Reply to Daniel King
Well, that post truly glossed over the hundreds of thousands dead or maimed due to Putin.
I guess Putin should be “relatively content” with the slaughter he’s caused, and the estimated $200Billion he’s looted from Russia. How about posting that Putin should be in a cell at The Hague due to his trial for war crimes?
D Jolly
Reply to Daniel King
Only if the western world allows it. Our leaders and diplomats are clueless on how to deal with him. Those countries that support him need to be encouraged to distance themselves from him and to further isolate him. More needs to be done to inform the Russian people what is really happening and why – all because of his ego. The EU is full of words, empty words, when shells and tanks are needed. Macron sees himself as everyone’s friend when in fact he is not even France’s friend. Do we have any leaders left in the West or have they all been neutered by years of membership of the EU and dancing to the tune of the WEF?
Nigel Stafford
But many Russians think he is the best thing since holes in indoor toilet seats were invented, but then what would they know as most don’t have any.
An alternative to this DT editorial was put out by Elena Gold on Quora on Dec 24, 2023. She accrued 2.6M views for this alone and is a prolific poster.
When will Russia collapse?
Elena Gold on Quora:
Russia is dying.
And it’s not a catch phrase, but a fact.
States seem eternal, but they are not. Sure, the land on which they are located will still be there, but that’s all. The peoples inhabiting the land, the borders of the countries, and more importantly — the forms of government change.
Breakaway regions of Kievan Rus, vassal lands of the Golden Horde, the Muscovy principality, the Russian Tsardom, the Russian Empire, the Russian Republic, the USSR and the Russian Federation were all fundamentally different states.
A change in the government system almost always entails a change in elites, rights, laws, property distribution, image of the future, governance structures, political alliances — and at times, the physical destruction of the population, at least partially.
Now, we can take the date of adoption of the state’s constitution as a marker of “the birth of a state”: a state’s constitution is its genetic code, which (more or less) determines everything else.
The world’s oldest state (by the date it’s current Constitution was adopted) is the USA — its Declaration of Independence is 237 years old.
The United States Constitution was written in 1787 and became effective in 1789. It was based on 1780 Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, drafted by John Adams.
* The Russian Empire existed for 196 years.
* The USSR lasted 69 years.
* The Russian Federation is only 32 years old (like the rest of the post-Soviet states — including Ukraine).
But the Russian Federation is already dying.
What is a state, really?
States are systems.
Any system has several key characteristics that show what stage of the life cycle the system is in.
The first characteristic is structural complexity, which is determined by the number of elements of the system and the connections between them.
The structural complexity of a state is determined by the size of the population and the development of subsystems — science, education, health care, industries, services, the finance sector, non-governmental organizations, political movements, law enforcement, and so on.
In a developing state, new structures are constantly emerging: they interact with each other, create new chains of internal and external connections — and this allows the state to implement a greater number of functions.
* Primitive states had simple functions: protect their territory and collect taxes.
* Modern states provide citizens’ security and well-being, protect their rights and freedoms, ensure compliance with laws, give citizens social security — and much more.
Degrading states as systems become smaller and simpler: existing substructures disappear, connections between the remaining elements are getting destroyed.
In Russia, both the size of the population and its quality are quickly declining: the gender and age structure are deteriorating; the most economically active part of the population is fleeing the country — and is being partially replaced by migrants from less developed countries.
Many substructures of the state (political parties and citizens’ movements, public associations, NGOs, the judicial system, etc.) in Russia are diminished and replaced by dummies that do not fulfill their functions.
Russia’s economy as a whole is shrinking.
High-tech industries — aerospace, shipbuilding, mechanical engineering, microelectronics — had been hit especially hard.
Health care, science and education (especially professional education) are also shrinking.
Since the year 2000 when Vladimir Putin became the president, almost 50% of existing hospitals, 40% of schools, and 30% of kindergartens had been closed down, for the sake of “efficiency”.
Due to the war with Ukraine unleashed by Russia’s leadership, foreign policy ties and alliances created over centuries had been almost completely destroyed.
Russia’s “allies and partners” of today are mostly the outcasts — the likes of North Korea, Iran, and Afghanistan. (China is Russia’s master, not a partner or ally by any means. China still has the eyes on Vladivostok and other China’s lands occupied by Russia since mid-1800s).
Russia’s trade, scientific and financial ties with the most developed countries of the world had been severed.
Domestic policy had regressed to the level of feudalism, and the management system is represented either by gerontocrats or appointees selected for obedience rather than talent, which makes it extremely ineffective.
There is no positive image of the future: Western images of the future had been abandoned; communist ones had discredited themselves,; and the idea of “staples” such as Orthodoxy and serfdom (in the 21st century) are genuinely embraced by a very few.
In general, by all indications, the structural complexity of Russia as a state is rapidly declining.
Let’s have a look at the second characteristic of the system: the efficiency of use of the state’s resources.
A developing system creates more resources, and spends more of the resources on consumption, maintenance and development.
States obtain resources through extraction of minerals, agriculture, industrial production, know-how innovative industries, transportation and tourism.
In Russia, things were satisfactory with the extraction of minerals — but not so good with everything else.
Russia’s GDP (in dollar equivalent) is now at the level of 2008, so we can’t talk about sustainable growth.
Russia’s funds from the sale of mineral resources were: partially frozen in the foreign banks, partially burned in (mostly useless) “national projects”, partially stolen by the officials and “The Boss” (you know whom).
The maintenance and development of the resource industry were grossly neglected for years (“why fix what’s not broken?” logic).
Over the past 15 years, the level of depreciation of fixed assets has been steadily increasing. In 2022, Rosstat changed its methodology (I reported on that before) — and suddenly, the rosy picture of pre-2014 levels was supplied to the public. But it was a big lie.
Russia’s expenses had increased sharply due to the war in Ukraine going wrong (no “Kyiv in 3 days” parade-ready triumph whatsoever) and the ensuing sanctions. Oil and gas revenues had dropped by at least 30%.
This means that the level of degradation of Russia’s production capacities and infrastructure is now rapidly accelerating. It is already visible in the aviation industry with Russian planes breaking in the air or unable to take off every other day.
All these consequences are not due to uncontrollable circumstances (natural disasters, changes in market conditions, etc.), but rather the result of planned actions of the country’s political leadership, which created a crisis entirely of its own volition.
The behavior of the system in a crisis is its third important characteristic.
Developing systems use the crisis as an opportunity to become stronger: to increase their structural complexity and efficiency of the use of resources.
Developing countries are emerging from crises with an economy freed from the ballast, an updated legislation, new vectors of development and the skill of solving several problems at once.
Degrading states, in an attempt to solve one crisis, generate several new crises. The frequency of crises is increasing, they are are stacked on top of each other; the crises are drawing on the resources faster, threatening the system’s stability.
We are now exactly at this stage, when the decline in Russia’s leader’s ratings is attempted to be rectified up by a war and internal terror; failure at the war is attempted to be rectified by mobilization of civilian reservists and release of violent offenders from prisons, and the loss of markets is attempted to be resolved by becoming a raw resources appendage to China.
But that’s not all.
Having exhausted the reserve of stability, states reduce their complexity, returning to archaic forms of social organization and reducing the size of the population.
A state can be destroyed by a shock, when a large-scale crisis develops faster than the state can adapt to, a systemic collapse, when several crises merge into one continuous chain, and due to absorption by another state.
The absorption of Russia by force with the loss of sovereignty is rather unlikely (due to the possession of a nuclear arsenal), but a major military defeat could provoke a crisis, as has already happened in the case of Prigozhin’s mutiny.
The lack of visible success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive reduced the likelihood of such a development of events — but if the West (accidentally or intentionally) floods Ukraine with weapons, thus could possibly happen again in May 2024.
Wars are unpredictable things.
System collapse caused by critical deterioration of infrastructure, degradation of industry and depletion of reserves, before the start of the war, could have occurred in Russia by 2036–2040.
Now it’s going to happen much sooner.
The weakest point of the Russian state at the moment is its management system, which depends on the capacity and health of one elderly man, failing which a large-scale crisis is inevitable.
No one becomes healthier or smarter with age, so a long-awaited obituary (or another brilliant solution) will become the most likely start of a crisis, which can lead to the collapse of the Russian state.
As you can appreciate, in conditions where all scenarios are probabilistic in nature, it is impossible to accurately predict the final date.
But it’s obvious that sooner or later one of these scenarios will inevitably come true.
That’s why Russia is now a kind of Schrödinger’s state: it seems to have been on its last legs for a while, but it still hasn’t died.
But there is no doubt: it will.
Very good points by Elena Gold, an almost complete analysis of the state of the Federation! Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Scradge (however, why not as a posting of its own?). What I’d like to add is that in a dictatorship, power inevitably rests on the armed forces. And that is Putin’s weak spot, as the Prigoshin uprising had shown. With the overwhelming majority of the forces needed to hold the front in Ukraine, hardly any reserves of Putin loyal troops are left to defend Moscow. The Chechens can’t be trusted for that – should they defend the capital, they may get funny ideas of assuming power there themselves. So, there’s still the possibility of an army revolt marching on Moscow again, reaching the city from the frontline in two days.
The shocked Putin has banned Wagner from Russia, but he can’t get rid of all experienced units or else he’ll lose the war. It only takes one popular leader to spearhead a mutiny to destabilize the government. The regime tries to prevent such an alpha guy from reaching higher ranks, but there are countless examples in history of lower ranked, though charismatic officers, gathering large numbers of soldiers for coups. Prominent successful examples are Colonel Nasser, Colonel Gaddafi, Flight Lieutenant Rawlings (Ghana) and Master Sergeant (!) Samuel Doe (Liberia). So, this threat to Putin’s power is real and will increase, the more desperate the soldiers become. A single emotional event can trigger a riot that spreads through large parts of the army. I hope, another 1917 (or 1918, in Germany) may be right around the corner! 😎
She has a lot of output.
I’ll go through her recent stuff and post the best ones.
Excellent, Scradge! 🙂👍
“He foresaw Russia as “free, prosperous, strong and civilised, a country that its citizens are proud of and is respected internationally”.
The fascist gutter rat managed to achieve the complete opposite.
For all practical purposes, mafia land is a dead man walking. It just doesn’t know it yet … until it falls over.