It’s time for the West to prepare for the growing possibility of Russian defeat in Ukraine, says Daniel Hannan – and for the violently chaotic unravelling of the federal Russian state that could follow.

It might not happen. Perhaps Ukraine’s counter-offensive will fail, or the conflict will end in stalemate. But if Ukrainian troops can break through, reach the Azov Sea and cut Russia’s land corridor to Crimea, the “large Russian garrison there would be kettled, and Ukraine would, to all intents and purposes, have won the war”. Putin and his associates would be finished, and the consequences could be messy. The West must be ready – and, crucially, it should not attempt to stand in the way of Russia’s disintegration.
In 1917, Russian morale at the front collapsed suddenly, and for a time the Russian Empire fragmented into “a series of squabbling successor states”. If something similar happens today, there’s no reason to assume that Russia’s various military units – state, private and territorial militias – would all recognise the same command. Nor that all the republics would recognise Vladimir Putin’s successor as “tsar”.
In such a situation, attempts by the West to shore up the status quo would be folly. Already, there are independence movements in Buryatia, Sakha, Dagestan, Chechnya, Kamchatka Krai, Komi, Novosibirsk, Archangel, and Tatarstan. Across the Russian Federation, local elites are “preparing for a clean excision, a chance to join the comity of nations as (in many cases) resource-rich republics”.
The West doesn’t have the power to forestall these secessionist movements. “All we can do is determine whether they start out as our friends” – and work out what we want as the price of recognising new states, from democratisation to denuclearisation.
What of the rump Russian state? It would “need to rethink its identity, rather as Austria and West Germany did after 1945” – a good thing for both Russia and the world. Russia’s great problem is that its national identity is so intimately bound up with expansionism and empire. The reality of defeat and partition might force a smaller Russian successor state, “freed from its imperial burdens”, to think differently. It could learn to define itself not as the successor to Ivan the Terrible and Stalin, but as a modern, democratising, state – rather as Turkey did when it shed the Ottoman Empire. Russia’s dissolution would be “much more of an opportunity than a danger” and “we should not stand in the way” of it happening.

I remember when th USSR fell. I was on my way to Australia and we were cheaking the news every stop we made. I remember when we got to Sydney, there was a warship anchored at the mount of the harbor. The transition was undramatic. When we got to Sydney it was all over. I don't know how the fall of Putin will go. I believe that by next summer there will be unrest in Russia. The Ukaraians are gaing back their territories, but this summer it has been slow. However, the Ukaraians are killing a lot of Russians. A kit more than the Ukaraians are loosing. This war is going to be very unpopular very soon. Putin has made sure there isn't a group that opposes him. So we don't know what his fall will look like.

It’s time for the West to prepare for the growing possibility of Russian defeat in Ukraine, says Daniel Hannan – and for the violently chaotic unravelling of the federal Russian state that could follow.

It might not happen. Perhaps Ukraine’s counter-offensive will fail, or the conflict will end in stalemate. But if Ukrainian troops can break through, reach the Azov Sea and cut Russia’s land corridor to Crimea, the “large Russian garrison there would be kettled, and Ukraine would, to all intents and purposes, have won the war”. Putin and his associates would be finished, and the consequences could be messy. The West must be ready – and, crucially, it should not attempt to stand in the way of Russia’s disintegration.
In 1917, Russian morale at the front collapsed suddenly, and for a time the Russian Empire fragmented into “a series of squabbling successor states”. If something similar happens today, there’s no reason to assume that Russia’s various military units – state, private and territorial militias – would all recognise the same command. Nor that all the republics would recognise Vladimir Putin’s successor as “tsar”.
In such a situation, attempts by the West to shore up the status quo would be folly. Already, there are independence movements in Buryatia, Sakha, Dagestan, Chechnya, Kamchatka Krai, Komi, Novosibirsk, Archangel, and Tatarstan. Across the Russian Federation, local elites are “preparing for a clean excision, a chance to join the comity of nations as (in many cases) resource-rich republics”.
The West doesn’t have the power to forestall these secessionist movements. “All we can do is determine whether they start out as our friends” – and work out what we want as the price of recognising new states, from democratisation to denuclearisation.
What of the rump Russian state? It would “need to rethink its identity, rather as Austria and West Germany did after 1945” – a good thing for both Russia and the world. Russia’s great problem is that its national identity is so intimately bound up with expansionism and empire. The reality of defeat and partition might force a smaller Russian successor state, “freed from its imperial burdens”, to think differently. It could learn to define itself not as the successor to Ivan the Terrible and Stalin, but as a modern, democratising, state – rather as Turkey did when it shed the Ottoman Empire. Russia’s dissolution would be “much more of an opportunity than a danger” and “we should not stand in the way” of it happening.