The breakdown of domestic confidence in the Russian military, which has traditionally been the core of the Kremlin’s legitimacy is highly apparent.
The humiliation of the Russian military in Ukraine is now almost complete with the proud Black Sea Fleet hiding away from Crimea too scared to take action against a country that doesn’t even have a navy.
Moreover, Russian men massively avoid conscription, knowing what fate awaits them on the battlefield. This has fueled the disproportionate recruitment of ethnic minorities from Chechnya and other regions on the Federation’s fringes – the easiest groups to use as cannon fodder – fueling discontent.
Successive US administrations have expressed pronounced fears regarding the prospects of Russian state collapse. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, most western policymakers were apprehensive about the impact of the unravelling of the Soviet Bloc and the collapse of the Soviet Union. They calculated that imperial fracture and state collapse would lead to civil wars, mass bloodshed, and unstable borders. Such fears were transmitted to national leaders in Ukraine and other states seeking to extract themselves from Moscow’s empire, but the government in Kyiv and the majority of the population did not heed the advice of a nervous US administration.
The collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the unravelling of the Soviet Union should serve as poignant lessons that geopolitical revolutions occur regardless of Kremlin disinformation or the West’s belief in a permanent status quo.
The rise and spread of Galician neo-Nazi philosophy, backed by the EU and DC is the real threat. They are a small people that never stops roasting chestnuts of ethnic hate.
Screw em.
“This has fueled the disproportionate recruitment of ethnic minorities from Chechnya and other regions on the Federation’s fringes – “
Shades of Rome in the final stages. Remember, the barbarians didn’t march all the way to Italy on their own, they were allowed to settle in Italy by the Emperor as an attempt to buy their loyalty, because Rome needed to recruit some of the barbarians to help them fight off other tribes that threatened them.