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The World Ahead | The World Ahead 2023

Russia risks becoming ungovernable and descending into chaos

There is growing opposition to President Putin at home

A person holds a Russian Passport at Vaalimaa border crossing point
between Russia and Finland, in Vaalimaa, Finland, September 23, 2022.
REUTERS/Janis Laizans
Nov 18th 2022
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By Arkady Ostrovsky Russia editor, The Economist

WHEN RUSSIA'S president, Vladimir Putin, invaded Ukraine on February
24th 2022, he set out to grab territory, deprive it of sovereignty,
wipe out the very idea of its national identity and turn what
remained of it into a failed state. After months of Ukraine's fierce
resistance, its statehood and its identity are stronger than ever,
and all the things that Mr Putin had intended to inflict on Ukraine
are afflicting his own country.

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Mr Putin's war is turning Russia into a failed state, with
uncontrolled borders, private military formations, a fleeing
population, moral decay and the possibility of civil conflict. And
though confidence among Western leaders in Ukraine's ability to
withstand Mr Putin's terror has gone up, there is growing concern
about Russia's own ability to survive the war. It could become
ungovernable and descend into chaos.

Consider its borders. Russia's absurd and illegal annexation of four
regions of Ukraine--Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia--before it
could even establish full control over them, makes it a state with
illegitimate territories and a fluid frontier. "The Russian
Federation as we know it is self-liquidating and passing into a
failed-state phase," says Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist.
Its administration, she notes, is unable to carry out its basic
functions. The annexation will not deter Ukrainian forces, but it
will create precedents for Russia's own restive regions, including
the north Caucasus republics, which are likely to head for the exit
if the central government starts loosening its grip.

Another feature of a failing state is a loss of monopoly on the use
of physical force. Private armies and mercenaries, although
officially banned in Russia, are flourishing. Evgeny Prigozhin, a
former convict nicknamed "Putin's chef" and a front man for the
Wagner Group, a private mercenary operation, has been openly
recruiting prisoners and offering them pardons in exchange for
joining his forces. Wagner, he says, has no desire to be "legalised"
or integrated into the armed forces. The same could be said of the
force controlled by Ramzan Kadyrov, a Chechen former warlord and now
Chechnya's president. Even Russia's government security agencies are
increasingly serving their own corporate interests.

The Russian state is failing in the most basic function of all. Far
from protecting the lives of its people, it poses the biggest threat
to them, by using them as cannon fodder. On September 21st, faced
with military defeat on the battleground in Ukraine, Mr Putin ordered
a mobilisation of some 300,000 people. Ill trained and ill equipped,
their only function is to stand in the way of the advance of the
Ukrainian forces. Many are unlikely to be alive this time next year.

There is growing concern about Russia's own ability to survive the
war

The mobilisation caused a shock in Russia far greater than the
beginning of the war itself. Some of its effects are already visible:
recruitment centres were set ablaze, and at least 300,000 people fled
abroad (on top of the 300,000 who left in the first weeks of the
war). Most of them are young, educated and resourceful. The full
impact of their departure on the country's economy and demographics
is yet to show, but social tension is rising.

While urbanites flee, tens of thousands of their poorer compatriots
are being rounded up and sent into the trenches. By bringing his
"special military operation" home Mr Putin has broken the fragile
consensus under which people agreed not to protest against the war in
exchange for being left alone. Now they are being told to fight and
die for the sake of his regime.

Mr Putin cannot win, but he cannot afford to end the conflict either.
He may hope that by making so many people collude in his war, and
subjecting them to more of his poisonous, fascist propaganda, he will
be able to drag things out. Whether he succeeds, or whether the flow
of body bags, coupled with the discontent of the elite, results in
his downfall, will determine how many more people will die and how
far Russia falls.

As Alexei Navalny, Russia's jailed opposition leader, said in one of
his court hearings: "We have not been able to prevent the catastrophe
and we are no longer sliding, but flying into it. The only question
will be how hard Russia will hit that bottom and whether it will fall
apart." The coming year will give some indication of an answer to
that grim question.#

Arkady Ostrovsky Russia editor, The Economist

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition of 
The World Ahead 2023 under the headline "What next for Russia?"

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