Close your eyes and imagine a world without Russia. If you live somewhere in the Baltics, Poland, Ukraine, or any other country that has suffered from Russian repression for centuries, this prospect may seem like a liberation..

" Significant parts of it will seek independence as soon as they can,” recently predicted former Czech foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg, a prominent aristocrat and longtime associate of Vaclav Havel..

Politico writes that the Czech duke should be careful with his wishes. Most experts think Schwarzenberg's prophecy is unlikely. However, the risk that Russia will explode under the pressure of its failed attack against Ukraine is still worrisome in capitals from Berlin to Washington.. As military and diplomatic strategists consider a post-war scenario in which the Russian Federation will break up into pieces of fiefdoms under the control of warlords, following the example of Afghanistan in the 1990s and Libya today.

“When in history did the Russians suffer a real big defeat, and their policy remained the same as before? ' asks former George W. Bush administration official Peter Raf, who now heads the Center for European and Eurasian Affairs at the Hudson Institute..

“I don’t see how a big military defeat can allow Putin to stay and the borders of the Russian Federation to keep their modern look,” he added..

Scenarios range from the outbreak of uprisings in more than 20 Russian ethnic territories, stretching across 11 time zones, to a full-blown slide into conflict and lawlessness that engulfed Libya after the overthrow of the dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi. However, either option poses serious threats to regional stability, with potential implications for Europe..

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Supply chains could be further disrupted, nuclear-armed factions could clash with each other, and other countries could face an influx of refugees from a destabilized Russia.. The topic is so sensitive that officials refuse to talk about their assumptions or even admit they are making contingency plans for fear that it will give Putin an argument to increase support for the war in Russia..

Politico writes that during the Munich Security Conference last week, journalists from the publication tried to discuss scenarios for the collapse of Russia with Western officials.. However, they refused to answer questions on the record..

\? Of course,” said Ivan Krastev, a political scientist and head of the Bulgarian Center for Liberal Strategies, who has been an adviser to several European leaders..

At the same time, he stressed that the collapse of the Russian Federation "

“But focusing on this option is absolutely counterproductive.. If you say: “We have gathered to dismember Russia,” you give a serious argument to Putin’s narratives that the West is an aggressor,” he explained.

In fact, Putin himself addressed the topic on Tuesday during an address to the political and military establishment ahead of the first anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine..

“Western elites do not hide their intentions,” he said, hinting that the US and its allies want to destroy Russia..

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On Wednesday, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev went even further, saying that Russia would disappear if it lost the war against Ukraine, which he blamed the US for starting..

“If Russia stops the special military operation without achieving victory, Russia will disappear, it will be torn to shreds,” he wrote on his Telegram page, using a Russian euphemism before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Insurrection.

This message resonates in a country that has repeatedly suffered from military conflicts and is still traumatized by the collapse of the USSR.. Russia's suffering during World War I helped spark a civil war in which Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks opposed a motley group of royalists, capitalists, and other political forces collectively referred to as the White Guard.. These events ended with the victory of the " The collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, which resulted in the independence of Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, as well as the modern EU countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, occurred more peacefully. But one cannot say for sure that similar agitation in the provinces today will not provoke a tougher response..

The structure of the USSR made its collapse more straightforward from a legal point of view. Russia is one country with a very powerful central administration. Unlike the Soviet Union, where half of the citizens were non-Russians, 80% of the population of modern Russia consider themselves Russians.. The most important factor in preventing bloodshed in 1991 was that Moscow was not opposed to the division of the USSR. It is hard to imagine Putin or his potential successor standing silently on the sidelines while regions like Bashkortostan or Siberia try to secede..

One of the worries of Western planners is that if the war in Ukraine ends with the defeat of the Kremlin, as most hope, Russian soldiers will return home and continue to fight there, helping to ignite the dismemberment of the country..

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Many of the men fighting for Russia against Ukraine come from Russian regions like the mountains in eastern Siberia, where most of the population has ethnic and cultural ties to Mongolia, or from the North Caucasus, where many different peoples live, including Chechens and Dagestanis.. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov recently said he was going to create a private army like the Wagner PMC, brutal mercenaries under the control of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close friend of Putin. Speaking in the North Caucasus in 2011, Putin made no secret of his distaste for independence movements in the region..

“If this happens, at the same moment, and not even at the same hour, but in a second, those who want to do the same with other territorial subjects of Russia will appear.. And it will be a tragedy that will affect every citizen of Russia without exception,” he said then..

This means that any attempt by the regions to get out of Moscow's control will be bloody.. And we are talking about confrontation both against the central government and between regions..

“New state formations will fight each other for borders and economic assets. Elites in Moscow who control a large nuclear arsenal will respond with violence to any separatism,” said Marlene Laruelle, director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University..

internal struggle.

What makes Russia so worrisome, of course, is its vast nuclear arsenal, which Putin has mentioned quite often over the past 12 months.. On Tuesday, he announced the suspension of Russia's participation in the Treaty on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START III).. It was the last active nuclear arms control agreement between Moscow and Washington.. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US and its allies were not very optimistic about the nuclear threat.. American intelligence at the time warned that tactical nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists and the black market if action was not taken.. Washington welcomed the independence of the Baltic states. But there was deep concern that parts of the Soviet nuclear arsenal located in other parts of the empire, in particular in Kazakhstan and Ukraine, would fall into the wrong hands.. Now the threat is much less.. Analysts say modern Russia has no nuclear weapons in regions that could potentially secede.

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Therefore, a more worrisome prospect is the beginning of a conflict between members of the Russian establishment, as well as a battle for control of the army.. Some political confrontation has already begun. It continues between the owner of mercenaries, Yevgegy Prigozhin, on the one hand, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, on the other.. On Tuesday, Prigozhin accused his rivals of not giving ammunition and air transport to mercenaries.. At the same time, he spoke about "

The big question in any scenario of the collapse of the Russian Federation is what role China will play.. Instability in a resource-rich neighboring country would give Beijing plenty of opportunities to cash in on it.. But most analysts believe that China will not try to redraw Russia's borders..

“China will be very careful,” says Krastev.

It is also unlikely that the local population in Siberia or other regions will seek Chinese dominance.. The Russian periphery is generally poor and highly dependent on the central authorities in Moscow. This is one of the reasons why the regions would prefer to stay with the “devil they already know”.

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However, although the collapse of Russia is an unlikely event, Western planners still cannot afford to ignore such a scenario.. We cannot exclude the possibility that Putin's attempt to revive the lost empire will cost him the loss of more territory..

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The danger is that this tragedy could very soon become a problem not only for Russia, but for the whole world too..