A potential break-up of Russia?

 Financial Times:

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It may seem odd to talk about Russia’s disintegration when Putin appears set on expansion by annexing parts of Ukraine. But in this interview with the Italian magazine Limes, the prominent Russian foreign policy thinker Sergei Karaganov was asked if a long war in Ukraine might result in Russia’s break-up. He replied: We know it’s a possibility and we are openly talking about that . . . We also know that for the first time since the . . . cold war we have some western powers openly aiming at disaggregating Russia. The west, of course, doesn’t consider itself at war with Russia. Yet in Karaganov’s view, Russia is locked in an “existential” struggle with the west, one in which it must prevail. “It is whether the country survives.” Make what you will of Karaganov’s rather apocalyptic outlook. He is no Kremlin mouthpiece, but his views broadly reflect the antagonistic, anti-western mindset of Russia’s political and military leadership. At a minimum, this suggests that the prospects for an early settlement of the war in Ukraine are bleak. US and European conservatives In recent months, several essays in favour of breaking up Russia, or radically reorganising the country, have appeared in US magazines such as the National Interest and the Atlantic. Here is one, “Decolonize Russia”, by the New York-based writer Casey Michel. Quoting from the memoirs of former CIA director Robert Gates, Michel recalls that, during the USSR’s collapse in 1991, the then defense secretary Dick Cheney “wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat to the rest of the world”. Michel lists various Russian regions, from the Komi Republic and Tatarstan to Udmurtia and Sakha, that proclaimed their “sovereignty” as the Soviet Union broke up. This process unfolded partly in response to Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s invitation to the regions in 1990 to “take as much sovereignty as you can swallow”. Under Putin, all Russia’s regions were dragged back under Moscow’s central control, with the partial exception of Chechnya. There, the warlord Ramzan Kadyrov is allowed to rule his territory like a personal fiefdom on condition of loyalty to Putin. Michel says it may not be necessary to break up Russia, as Cheney advocated, if the country can be modernised and rebuilt as a democratic federation. A very different take comes from Janusz Bugajski of the Jamestown Foundation. He says Russia’s break-up might set off ethnic and territorial conflicts, but could also promote “the creation of several viable states with a notable degree of political stability” — for example, in the middle Volga, the Urals and Siberia....

There is more.

If the Russian federation disintegrates it would likely result in less aggression from that part of the world.  It is not like anyone in the West wants to rule the area.  They more likely just want to be left alone.