Moscow presents a dual challenge for the West: its neo-imperial ambitions, as evident in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the looming prospect of Russia’s state rupture. While much has been written about Moscow’s expansionism, less attention has been paid to the shaky pillars of the Russian Federation. The two factors are closely related, as the Kremlin will become more aggressive internationally to disguise its internal fissures. Escalating internal problems have convinced Moscow that a bolder and riskier foreign policy strategy can bring domestic benefits by mobilizing citizens around “fortress Russia” and silencing dissent. However, this will boomerang against the regime if the war in Ukraine is prolonged, costly, and heavily sanctioned. Both re-imperialization and fragmentation will confront the Western alliance with critical policy decisions in deterring and defending itself from Russia’s attacks while simultaneously managing Russia’s demise as a single state.

The Kremlin has pursued a policy of imperial restoration by partitioning states along its borders, undercutting U.S. influence in Europe, and undermining the NATO alliance. President Vladimir Putin has bemoaned the expiration of the Soviet Union not only as a disaster but also as the demise of “historical Russia.” This reveals a deeply rooted conviction that the multi-national construct was simply a disguise for a Russian imperium. Kremlin officials continue to believe in global empires and assert that the world should be organized on a “multipolar” basis with small countries orbiting around powerful centers. The Kremlin views its “pole of power” as consisting of Eurasia, or the northern Eurasian landmass, and as much of Europe as possible, especially those regions that were part of the Russian sphere in the Soviet or even Tsarist periods.

Unlike other imperial states that discarded and liberated themselves from their overseas empires, Russia needs liberation from itself. Russia became an empire before Russians became a nation and before Russia could evolve into a nation-state. As an empire, Russia focused on its territorial size and largely neglected nation-building. It expanded contiguously by incorporating numerous ethnic groups whose national identities could not be fully assimilated and Russified. Even after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the territory lost by Moscow was smaller than that surrendered by Western empires following decolonization.

Despite assertive rhetoric and actions, Putin has failed to transform Russia into a major “pole of power” or a genuine source of political, economic, and cultural attraction for neighboring states. Invasions of neighbors and threats against Western countries are not signs of strength but frustration in cowering them into submission. Instead of successful empire-building, the Putin regime has truncated parts of neighboring countries but failed to gain international legitimacy for its acquisitions. In addition, unlike voluntary unions, state conquests intensify the economic and security burdens on the center with only short-term domestic benefits of patriotic mobilization.

The Russian Federation is also a failed state. It was constructed as the successor to the defunct Soviet Union but confronts crippling challenges to its own survival. In the last three decades, attempts to transform Russia into a nation-state, a civic-state, or a stable imperial-state have proved futile. The federation is based on brittle historical and ideological foundations and has failed to generate a unified national identity. Instead, there is a persistent struggle over Russia’s future between nationalists, imperialists, centralists, liberals, and federalists through brewing confrontations between Moscow and the country’s diverse regions and ethnic republics. State officials appear to be cognizant of the oncoming dangers. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has compared Russia to the former Yugoslav Federation, complaining about external pressures in combination with internal threats that could divide the country along nationality, class, and religious lines and result in disintegration. It is Moscow’s policies of hyper-centralization, regional exploitation, economic mismanagement, deepening repression, and manipulation of Russian ethnonationalism that could drive the country toward a violent implosion instead of the relatively peaceful rupture witnessed during the dismantling of the Soviet Union.

In a recent video conference, Putin rejected a proposal to let Russian regions secede if they no longer want to be part of the state. He warned of a repeat of the bloody wars in a collapsing Yugoslavia during the 1990s and revealed that there were 2,000 territorial claims nationwide that should be treated “very seriously, as they could divide up Russia. Putin’s admission indicates that the country’s domestic conditions are deteriorating on economic, demographic, social, regional, ethnic, and political fronts.

Russia’s officials display high anxiety about state disintegration through a repetition of Soviet Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempts at reforming communism in the late 1980s. Paradoxically, such fears will continue to preclude the economic and political reforms that are necessary to prevent a systemic collapse. Putin and his security services, Kremlin-tied oligarchs, corrupt officials, and the privileged class of civil servants are not prepared to endanger their power and purses by pursuing reforms that would give citizens a choice through democratic elections. On the other hand, without economic modernization and diversification in combination with democratization, decentralization, and genuine federalism, Russia will slide toward an existential crisis.

Russia’s state failure is exacerbated by a hazardous confluence of factors, including an inability to ensure consistent economic growth, stark socio-economic inequalities, growing demographic defects, widening disparities between Moscow and the federal subjects, a precarious political pyramid based on personalism and clientelism, deepening distrust of government institutions and policies, increasing public alienation from a corrupt ruling elite, and a growing disbelief in state propaganda. More comprehensive repression to stifle opposition and maintain state integrity in deteriorating economic conditions driven by more effective Western sanctions will raise the prospects for elite power struggles and public revolts.

Russia has displayed prolonged economic decay with short-term cycles of recovery. Russia is the world’s sixth-largest economy but is increasingly dwarfed by the United States, China, and the European Union. It only generates 3 percent of global GDP compared to about 16 percent by the United States and 18 percent by China. Economic performance alone does not determine strategic ambitions or short-term capabilities, but it will impact domestic conditions as the regime overstretches and miscalculates its potential. As a major exporter of crude oil and natural gas, together with assorted minerals and metals, the Russian economy’s performance remains highly sensitive to significant swings in world commodity prices, and the prospect of a Western energy embargo. In 2020, Russia’s economy shrank by about 3 percent during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although growth was restored during the second half of 2021, future projections highlighted deep-rooted structural weaknesses even before the imposition of financial sanctions that will see the growth rate plummet.

Although the Russian Federation does not face outright “demographic collapse,” negative population trends will undermine the country’s stability. These include a steadily shrinking ethnic Russian population, especially in the majority of the twenty-two ethnic republics; growing population disparities between inner Russia and Moscow’s Siberian, Arctic, and Far Eastern possessions; stark population differences between large metropolises and smaller cities, towns, and villages; reductions in the working labor pool; a steadily aging population; consistently high mortality rates and low birth rates; the high outflow of well-educated laborers; and declining health care and other social services that shorten lifespans and undermine economic growth.

Russia’s population has steadily declined from the 147.4 million recorded in the last Soviet census of 1989 to 142.9 million according to the 2010 census. The numbers subsequently increased because of the migration of ethnic Russians from neighboring states, but the pool of newcomers has dwindled. Low birth rates in the 1990s ensured a smaller number of women of childbearing age in the current decade and this negative loop will continue into the foreseeable future. Regularly published data indicates that the population continues to fall. According to the State Statistical Service, Rosstat, Russia’s population stood at 146.24 million in January 2021, down from 146.75 million the previous year—a fifteen-year record of decline. Rosstat also predicted that deaths will continue to outnumber live births over the next fifteen years and in one worst-case scenario, the population would fall to 134.2 million during that time.

Russia is an economically, socially, and regionally fragmented country, consisting of a few developed cities and micro-regions and a vast impoverished and disconnected hinterland. Collapsing transportation links, including air and rail connections, between regional capitals and smaller towns are isolating many regions from the rest of the country. The population of Siberia, the High North, and the Pacific region continues to decline. An estimated 40 million people in smaller cities and towns are especially neglected by the government and face acute poverty.

Regional restlessness is based on an accumulation of grievances, including economic stagnation, official corruption, state exploitation of regional resources, inadequate social services, and the absence of authentic federalism, local democracy, regionalist parties, or governmental accountability. The Kremlin views the country’s regions both as exploitable resources and also as liabilities that need to be suppressed to prevent fragmentation. Throughout its imperial history, Russia’s rulers have harbored a neurotic fear not only of enemies outside the empire’s borders but also of the subject peoples within them. Because economic modernization would not only require democratization but far-reaching decentralization, regional autonomy is viewed as a threat to the autocratic center and the continuity of the state

Moscow’s assertive foreign policies serve to disguise Russia’s domestic decline and state failure. Indeed, escalating internal vulnerabilities are likely to make the Russian regime more aggressive and confrontational to demonstrate its strength before its capabilities seriously dissipate. To ensure its survival Russia needs to develop into a genuine federal democracy with a growing economy. But with no democratization on the horizon and economic conditions deteriorating amid punishing Western sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine, the federal structure will become increasingly ungovernable.

Extensive public protests in Belarus in the summer of 2020 over blatant election fraud were an early warning for Moscow. Conventional wisdom about a passive Belarusian public mirrors the widely held image of Russian citizens. Support for protesting Belarusian citizens was reported in various parts of Russia and although the rallies were eventually subdued, similarly to Russia, the causes of the protests were not addressed. The unexpected demonstrations and storming of government buildings in Kazakhstan in early January 2022 in response to rising fuel prices was another reminder to Moscow that public anger simmers below the surface. The appearance of stability and public passivity, for which Belarus and Kazakhstan have been renowned, cannot be taken for granted in Russia either. A military quagmire in Ukraine with mounting losses for Russia’s armed forces and punishing Western sanctions that squeeze the economy and alienate Kremlin “oligarchs” will not be sustainable. Regimes that lose wars or cannot win them when they have staked so much on victory invariably collapse in Russia. Power struggles within the ruling stratum can then explode in full force.

The Russian state’s accelerated decline and the emergence of quasi-independent entities will challenge the NATO alliance’s ability to respond. One cannot assume that Russia’s fracture will be swift through a sudden collapse of the government or by a state-wide revolution. It is more likely to be an evolving process that accelerates at critical junctures. The triggers for rupture can include an attempted transfer of power by Putin to a successor; an explosive protest against economic impoverishment; an inter-ethnic clash that escalates into a wider conflict; a violent provocation by hard-liners or nationalists that escapes police control; mutinies in the military as a result of the failed war in Ukraine; or intra-military clashes based on ethnic allegiance.

State rupture will also impact neighboring countries. Some will be susceptible to conflict spillover or subject to Moscow’s provocations as the Kremlin seeks to divert attention from domestic upheaval. Other states will benefit from Russia’s cleavages by easing their security concerns and regaining lost territories. A federal collapse will also impact major powers’ positions and strategies and could lead to significant strategic realignments that further raise China’s stature. The United States needs to develop an anticipatory strategy for managing Russia’s demise by supporting regionalism and federalism, acknowledging aspirations to sovereignty and separation, calibrating the position of other major powers, developing linkages with nascent state entities, strengthening the security of countries bordering Russia, and promoting transatlanticism and transpacificism among emerging states. Neglecting Russia’s state failure could prove more damaging to Western interests than preparing to manage its international repercussions. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union over thirty years ago should serve as a lesson that geopolitical revolutions occur regardless of the Kremlin’s denials or the West’s adherence to a transient status quo.

Janusz Bugajski is a Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington DC. His recent book, Eurasian Disunion: Russia’s Vulnerable Flanks, is co-authored with Margarita Assenova. His new book, Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture, will be published in the Spring.

Image: Reuters.