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Culture & History Russia

Signs of Future Division in the Russian Federation?

A recent report by Yuri Zarakhovich of the Jamestown Foundation discusses the possibility of a future dissolution of the current Russian Federation.

“I establish the fact that the Russian Federation is developing signs of the initial stage of a breakup,” said Professor Alexei Malashenko, Scholar-in-Residence of the Carnegie Moscow Center, earlier this month. “Not unlike the case of the USSR, the current economic crisis threatens to bring already badly strained internal ties to the breaking point.”

One Russian territory in particular, the Kaliningrad enclave, seems more likely than others to separate due their differing interests and geographic isolation from the Motherland. Bordering Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea, the region is completely detached from Russia.

Other Russian regions which are showing signs of discontent with Moscow include the Republics of Tuva, Dagestan, and Sakha.

“With economic ties broken and self-organization traditionally suppressed, the rotten barrel of Putin’s state indeed risks falling apart, once the authoritarian hoops strain to the breaking point,” noted Oleg Panfilov, a prominent scholar and human rights activist.

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