Would There Be (First) Partition Of Russia Between West And China, If It Is Defeated In Ukraine War? – Analysis
In recent weeks, the prospect of disintegration of the Russian Federation has emerged as one of the major themes in international discourse. Over the last few weeks in the European press and the U.S. press, there have been many comments on the subject. It should be noted that the theme is not new. This new concentrated focus on it is because Russia, which began a ‘special military operation’ to ‘demilitarize and denazify’ Ukraine on February 24, 2022, now, a year later, seems to have come to an impasse.
The war has clearly not brought the expected results. Its prospects appear even gloomier as West boosts Ukraine aid, as Russia bridles at sanctions. In the foreseeable future, the situation is unlikely to change dramatically in Russia’s favor, so there is nothing left for Moscow as to put a good face on a bad game. “Now no one even talks about demilitarization and de-nazification anymore. So what are we fighting for in Ukraine?” some Russians ask. This question hangs in the air for quite some time. Not because there isn’t an answer, but because there are too many answers. But they all seem to be unpersuasive.
A street survey in Moscow by svoboda.org in which journalists asked ‘Do you understand the meaning of the actions that are being taken under the Special military operation?’ establishes rather clearly that most Russians don’t understand the point of fighting with Ukraine. As one of the people interviewed has cautiously commented, “What after all prevails is a lack of understanding of what’s happening, as the wording of the goal is constantly changing”. Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, a former Russian intelligence officer who played a major role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the conflict in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, described the decisions taken within the last 12 months by the Kremlin regarding the Ukrainian situation, including those that are associated with setting and formulating goals, as ‘another series of utter cretinism’.
The current political environment in Russia, anyway, is growing more chaotic and increasingly reminiscent of those in Czarist Russia in the late stages of the war against Japan and in the USSR immediately after the Soviet military withdrawal from Afghanistan. This is apparently what encourages observers to begin to actively raise the topic of probable collapse or disintegration of the Russian Federation. So far, only one thing is clear: Russia is in the difficult position of being engaged in an unprecedented confrontation with the West, in which the latter clearly has the upper hand.
John Dobson, in his article entitled ‘How Putin’s Russia will collapse’, published in mid-January this year, said: “If only Vladimir Putin had read Gaidar’s book. If he had, Russia’s future would not be in so much doubt”. This is in reference to a book by Yegor Gaidar, Russia’s first post-Soviet prime minister, published in 2007 with the title of “Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia”. In it, he wrote, “After the collapse of the USSR, 20 million Russian [and Russian-speaking] people were left outside Russia. They found themselves a minority group in a country they considered to be their homeland. This multiplies the post-imperial syndrome which has become one of the most acute problems of contemporary Russia”. There was a reason Yegor Gaidar had brought attention to this.
He apparently thought it well to warn Russians against the “post-imperial syndrome that [Vladimir] Putin has come to represent”. Since choosing this path may result in terrible consequences for Russia itself… Isn’t that’s what is happening now? And Yegor Gaidar after all said that “Trying to make Russia an empire again means imperiling its very existence”. Russia is doing now in Ukraine that which he feared most and tried his best to counteract. And what is remarkable is that Vladimir Putin, who got into this, himself confirms Yegor Gaidar was right: recent attempts to expand the Russian Federation through the incorporation of the four provinces of Ukraine have brought the country to the verge of disintegration. The only distinction here is that he does not see the root cause of the situation the same way (or more-or-less the same way) that Russia’s first post-Soviet prime minister did. While acknowledging the reality of the situation in Russia, Vladimir Putin is clearly seeking not only to avoid seeing his own faults, but to actively lay the blame on the ‘collective West’.
It almost seems as if it was not Russia who started the Ukraine war. In an interview with Rossiya 1 TV channel, Vladimir Putin claimed that the West seeks ‘to make the Russian Federation collapse and to assume control of its fragments’. The Russian President next started scaring Russian people about which threats they will have to deal with, if they fail to manage to avoid that fate. “If we go down this path [of Russia’s collapse], I think that the fate of many peoples of Russia, and first of all, of course, the Russian people, may change drastically. I even doubt that such an ethnic group as the Russian people will survive as it is today, with some Muscovites, Uralian and others remaining instead”, Vladimir Putin said. He emphasized that ‘these plans are set out on paper’. He then added that previously Russia, proceeding from need of building the conditions for the proper establishment of relations and out of partnership, ‘had been careful not to say about it’. It seems like there’s nothing for Moscow to hide now. “But it’s all there, it’s all written, it’s all on a piece of paper. Well, now that their attempts to reshape the world exclusively for themselves after the collapse of the USSR have led to this situation, well, of course, we’ll have to respond to this”, Vladimir Putin noted.
Or, in other words, it can go like this: if Moscow is guilty of anything, it’s of not wanting to unquestioningly obey the West’s rules. “They have one goal of liquidating the former Soviet Union and its main part, the Russian Federation. And later, [after liquidating Russia] they will probably admit us to the so-called family of civilized peoples, but only by parts, each part separately”, Vladimir Putin concluded. The latter is evocative of what Sergei Kurginyan, a Russian political scientist, said in one of his many TV appearances more than ten years ago: The West does not fear Russia, it fears that Russia would slowly disintegrate into a number of parts, and China would gradually absorb them; so the West wants to accelerate the disintegration of Russia in order to have time to take part in the division of the Russian territories.
John Dobson describes prospects for the development of the situation in Russia as follows: “The war in Ukraine and the resulting sanctions against Russia have intensified the acrimonious tensions between Moscow and the regions. This was the conclusion of a recent poll of 167 global strategists conducted by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Centre for Strategy and Security. Nearly half (46%) of respondents expect Russia to either become a failed state or break up by 2033. Most of these expect Russia to fracture internally because of revolution, civil war, or political disintegration. As a consequence, the Russian Federation could metamorphose into ten or more states, only one of which would be known as Russia. That would change the face of Eurasia forever”.
It seems there will be big changes in the former Soviet space. Every day there is more pessimistic news about Russia’s war in Ukraine. Igor Girkin is sure that without the Chinese Lend-Lease program (the Chinese real help like weapons and ammunition to the Russian Federation) Russia will be defeated in Ukraine war already this year. A little earlier, Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medvedev predicted the collapse of Russia in the event of a defeat in Ukraine. If one is to believe Igor Girkin, the possibility that China can begin delivery of weapons and ammunition for the Russian army seems to be the only hope for Russia to avoid a defeat. And China doesn’t appear to be going to supply lethal weapons and ammunition to Russia. According to information obtained from a very large number of sources, “Chinese officials were shocked by Putin’s failures in the first few months of the invasion and are now careful not to worsen their relations with the collective West; and they even strive to improve them when possible”.
Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, does not believe that China could agree transferring weapons [and ammunition] to Russia. In an interview with the VOA Ukrainian service, he said: “For the time being, I don’t think that China would agree transferring weapons [and ammunition] to Russia… I see no signs that would give reason to believe that such things are at least being considered”. “I am the head of intelligence and rely, excuse me, not on the opinions of individuals, with all due respect to them, but only on facts. I don’t see such facts”, he added responding to the journalist’s remark that American officials were talking about this. The latter refers to a claim by the US that China is considering supplying weapons and ammunition to Russia for the Ukraine war – a claim strongly denied by Beijing.
Vladimir Putin tells the West that Russia cannot be defeated. Observers in Asia believe that if Russia led by Putin is defeated by the West it will deal a heavy blow to China’s geopolitical interests.
According to Igor Girkin, it becomes apparent that without recourse to the help of China with weapons and ammunition, Russia is going to lose the war in Ukraine. As he notes, should such a scenario be realized, Russia would lose a number of its regions and fall under the control of the Western powers. While Leonid Gozman, a well-known Russian political analyst, believes that ‘if Beijing does indeed choose to support Moscow, it means that Russia will become a colony of China’. In both cases, there doesn’t seem to be something good ahead of Russia. One may well wonder if there would be the [first] partition of Russia between the West and China if it is defeated in the Ukraine war.
In any case, it is clear that the Central Asian region, including Kazakhstan, sandwiched between Russia and China, is on the verge of new great changes, either. Until now, the sustainability of the Central Asian ruling regimes and the stability in their countries have been largely based on the grounds that they could count on the Kremlin if they needed help.
This notion proved its viability during the events of January 2022 in Kazakhstan. On the night of December 31, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev began his televised New Year’s Eve speech as follows: “Dear compatriots [co-citizens]! Kazakhstan is [now] steadily entering the fourth decade of its independence”. It is now clear that at that point, the country was on the verge of a large-scale crisis. It may be assumed that not many people knew which way the wind was blowing back then. Later Mr.Tokayev himself described what began in the first days of 2022 as ‘the worst crisis in its [Kazakhstan’s] 30 years of history as an independent nation’. The Kazakhstani officials explained that this had been due to the plot of a premeditated, organized anti-government movement. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev sought help from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in providing military backing and assisting the restoration of peace and order in Kazakhstan. The American administration was dismayed by his decision to call for Russian military assistance in quelling the violent unrest in his country. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Kazakhstan will find it difficult to lower Moscow’s influence after inviting in the Russian military to stop disturbances. “I think one lesson in recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave”, Blinken told reporters.
But what’s done is done. Later on, in a speech to senior government officials and members of Parliament, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said: “We could lose control over Almaty completely. Having lost Almaty, we would have lost the capital and then the whole country”. In other words, the Kazakhs were risking losing at least the integrity of their state.
For the time being, the situation is changing. Moscow has got its own problems right now. It is unclear how it all will end. The West is far. China does not interfere with the internal affairs of other countries unless they affect its interests. To whom Astana and other Central Asian capitals should go to for help when needed?
Akhas Tazhutov, a political analyst
