kaltenbrunnerpress - PUTIN HAS FINISHED RUSSIA: A COUNTRY IN THE AGONY OF DECLINE AND DECAY

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PUTIN HAS FINISHED RUSSIA: A COUNTRY IN THE AGONY OF DECLINE AND DECAY

The War Against Ukraine, the Militarization of the State, Economic Exhaustion, and the Historical Price of a Quarter-Century of the Putin System

A MAJOR POLITICAL ARTICLE

Author: Doctor of Philosophy in Law Mayer Meir Kaltenbrunner
Researcher in Jurisprudence, Criminal Law, Criminology, and Criminalistics
Independent Researcher, Author, and Political Commentator

Kaltenbrunner Veritas Press
Norway — © 2026

PART ONE

THE RUSSIA THAT IS BEING CONSUMED

Some states perish as a result of foreign invasion.

Some states disintegrate as a consequence of revolutions, civil wars, economic catastrophes, or the collapse of state institutions.

But there is a far more frightening historical scenario.

A country may preserve its state borders, its army, its government, its parliament, its central bank, its television networks, its diplomatic missions, and its place in international organizations for decades — while simultaneously and gradually destroying its own future.

The trains continue to run.

Ministries continue to issue decrees.

Television continues to tell the population about national greatness.

Officials continue to report on the successful implementation of government programmes.

Military parades continue to take place in Red Square.

The state exists.

But the country gradually ceases to develop.

It is precisely this fundamental distinction between the existence of the state and the development of society that must be understood when speaking about Russia today.

The Russian Federation has not disappeared.

The Russian economy has not ceased to exist.

The Russian budget continues to finance the obligations of the state.

Russia continues to export raw materials, manufacture industrial products, produce weapons, and maintain an enormous state apparatus.

For this reason, the expectation that there will come some single morning when the Russian economy suddenly collapses, the Kremlin ceases to function, and the state disappears represents, in my view, a primitive understanding of historical processes.

Great states rarely die in this manner.

They are capable of deteriorating for decades.

And that is precisely why what is happening today is considerably more dangerous than a spectacular, instantaneous collapse.

Russia does not necessarily have to collapse tomorrow in order to lose its own future today.

It may continue to exist for a very long time.

But the question is at what price it will continue to exist, and what will remain for the generations of Russians who come after this era.

WAR AS A HISTORICAL POINT OF NO RETURN

24 February 2022 was not merely the date on which another European war began.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation became a watershed after which the internal contradictions of the political system created by Vladimir Putin developed into a problem of historic proportions.

Before the war, it was still possible to debate the nature of the Putin model.

Its supporters could speak of stability.

Of the restoration of the state after the chaos of the 1990s.

Of rising incomes during certain periods.

Of the restoration of governability.

Of the modernization of the armed forces.

Of Russia's return to the status of an independent international actor.

Of oil and gas revenues.

Of financial reserves.

Of strong presidential power.

All these arguments existed and must be taken into account by any serious author, even one who fundamentally disagrees with them.

But the war changed the very subject of the discussion.

Because a system of government must be judged not merely by how effectively it is capable of concentrating power.

The decisive test of any government comes when it must answer the question of what that power is actually used for.

And it is here that the historical reckoning of the Putin era begins.

Russia possessed an enormous territory.

Vast natural resources.

Nuclear weapons.

A permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

A powerful scientific tradition.

A highly educated population.

A formidable energy sector.

A developed military-industrial complex.

Its own school of space science and engineering.

Enormous cultural influence.

And a geographical position enabling it to interact simultaneously with Europe and Asia.

A state possessing such assets did not need a war to prove its existence to the world.

Yet war gradually became the central political event of the late Putin era.

SOMEONE ELSE'S LAND — AND GRAVES OF YOUR OWN

War always begins with political formulations.

It ends with human names.

Behind the words “military operation,” “offensive,” “strike,” “liberation,” “defence,” and “geopolitical interests” are very real human bodies.

Ukrainian.

Russian.

Military.

Civilian.

Men.

Women.

Children.

Every death has a name.

Every person killed has a family.

And no geopolitical terminology should ever allow society to forget this.

According to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, in January–August 2026 alone, the deaths of 2,222 civilians and injuries to 13,058 people in Ukraine were verified. This was 55 per cent higher than the number of civilian casualties during the corresponding period of 2025. In August 2026 alone, at least 372 civilians were confirmed killed and 2,349 injured.

These are not entries in a statistical table.

They are thousands of shattered human lives.

At the same time, there is another tragedy that must be discussed without gloating and without political hatred.

Russian servicemen are also dying by the thousands.

The independent Russian outlet Mediazona, together with the BBC Russian Service and volunteers, has for years maintained a name-by-name record of Russian military personnel killed in the war, based on open sources — reports from families, regional media, and official publications. The authors themselves explicitly caution that their list is incomplete because not every death becomes publicly known.

Behind every such name stands a Russian family.

A mother.

A father.

A wife.

A child.

That is precisely why I consider it profoundly wrong to transfer the political responsibility of a country's leadership onto every Russian citizen.

Political decisions are made by those in power.

It is the individual human being who dies.

This is one of the most terrible mechanisms of war.

The decision is made in an office.

The consequences arrive at someone's home.

THE WAR AGAINST UKRAINE HAS BECOME A WAR AGAINST RUSSIA'S OWN FUTURE

The greatest mistake is to imagine that the price of war is limited to the number of missiles fired, tanks destroyed, or compensation payments made.

The true cost of war is considerably broader.

It includes everything the state could have done but did not do because its resources were directed elsewhere.

Every state budget is a system of political priorities.

A budget is never merely an exercise in accounting.

If the state allocates an additional trillion to one objective, that trillion cannot simultaneously be spent on another.

The same unit of currency cannot become both a missile and a piece of medical equipment.

It cannot become both a tank and a new school.

It cannot simultaneously finance military production and fundamental civilian science.

That is why the consequences of militarization must be measured not only in terms of direct expenditure on war, but also in terms of the cost of lost alternatives.

What could Russia have built?

What universities could it have created?

What cities could it have modernized?

What roads could it have reconstructed?

What medical technologies could it have developed?

What standard of living could it have provided for its own pensioners?

How many young scientists could it have retained within the country?

How many small towns could it have saved from gradual extinction?

It is here that the real discussion about the price of war begins.

17 TRILLION ROUBLES: A FIGURE THAT REVEALS THE PRIORITIES

At the end of September 2026, new Russian budget documents emerged.

And they say considerably more than any political speech.

According to budget documents analysed by Reuters, Russian military expenditure for 2027 is planned to increase to approximately 17.1 trillion roubles — around 27 per cent above the initially projected level of 13.5 trillion.

At the same time, spending on social policy is expected to fall by approximately 7 per cent, education by 6 per cent, and healthcare by approximately 6.8 per cent. Spending on infrastructure, agriculture, and other areas of economic development is also expected to be reduced.

We should stop here for a moment.

Because this is precisely where propaganda ends and the accounting of the state begins.

One may deliver a thousand speeches about caring for people.

One may organize a hundred televised forums devoted to traditional values.

One may speak endlessly about family, children, education, healthcare, and demography.

But ultimately there is a document in which the state distributes its money.

And that document reveals its actual priorities.

If military expenditure is increased while funding for social sectors is simultaneously reduced, the argument is no longer about rhetoric.

It is about a choice.

The Russian state is choosing war.

And Russian society is paying for that choice.

A BUDGET THAT IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT TO BALANCE

War is expensive even for a wealthy state.

Especially when that war continues for years.

The Russian economy proved considerably more resilient than many Western forecasters expected in 2022. This fact must be acknowledged.

Sanctions did not produce an immediate economic collapse.

Russia redirected a substantial part of its trade flows.

Government spending supported industry.

Military procurement provided factories with orders.

Raw-material exports continued through a transformed geography of trade.

But resilience does not mean that there is no price to pay.

And the ability to finance a war today does not mean that there will be no consequences tomorrow.

According to the latest budget calculations, Russia's projected deficit for 2026 was increased to approximately 3.2 per cent of GDP, compared with an earlier projection of around 1.6 per cent. Net borrowing for 2026 is expected to rise to approximately 5 trillion roubles. Forecast oil and gas revenues were reduced to approximately 7.6 trillion roubles.

Something else is even more revealing.

According to budget calculations, the cost of servicing public debt may account for approximately 9.4 per cent of total budget expenditure in 2027, approaching 10.6 per cent by 2029.

This is where the cumulative effect begins to reveal itself.

First, the state spends money on war.

Then it borrows money to finance its growing expenditure.

Then it pays interest on that debt.

And eventually, servicing previously borrowed money itself begins to compete for resources with the other functions of the state.

This does not mean that Russia faces immediate bankruptcy.

By international standards, Russian public debt remains manageable.

It would therefore be wrong to claim that Russia is about to become financially insolvent.

But the trend matters more than the slogan.

When a state simultaneously increases military expenditure, raises taxes, expands borrowing, draws upon reserves, and increases the cost of servicing its debt, an obvious question arises:

for how many years can such a structure continue without profound consequences for the country's civilian development?

AN ECONOMY CAN GROW WHILE BECOMING POORER IN ITS FUTURE

This is the economic paradox of war.

Imagine two factories.

The first manufactures advanced medical equipment.

The second manufactures tanks.

Both create jobs.

Both pay wages.

Both purchase metals, electronics, and components.

Both increase industrial output.

Both may make a positive contribution to GDP.

But the economic legacy of these two forms of production is entirely different.

Medical equipment continues to save lives.

Civilian technology can become the foundation of a new business.

Scientific development may generate dozens of subsequent innovations.

Infrastructure remains in use for decades.

A munition produced for war, by contrast, exists in order to be destroyed at the moment it is used.

This is why growth in military production cannot automatically be regarded as evidence of long-term economic health.

A state can statistically produce more while simultaneously becoming poorer in terms of its future possibilities.

This is one of the central problems confronting the contemporary Russian economy.

The question is not:

“Are the factories operating?”

They are.

The question is not:

“Is Russia capable of producing weapons?”

It is.

The real question is different:

what will remain after an enormous productive capacity accumulated over several years has been physically consumed on the battlefield?

THE KREMLIN MAY BE ABLE TO BUY ANOTHER YEAR OF WAR. BUT CAN IT BUY BACK A LOST DECADE?

Money has one important characteristic.

It can be printed.

It can be collected through additional taxation.

It can be borrowed.

It can be obtained through oil exports.

It can be taken from reserves.

But there are forms of capital that no central bank can print.

Time.

Human life.

Trust.

Reputation.

A scientific school.

A generation of specialists.

Demographic structure.

International connections.

University traditions.

Technological competence.

If a young engineer leaves Russia at the age of twenty-eight and spends the next forty years working in another country, Russia does not lose merely one year of that engineer's labour.

It may lose four decades of professional life.

If the engineer's family leaves as well, the consequences extend into the next generation.

If a scientist ceases to work at a Russian university, the country loses more than a single researcher.

It loses that researcher's future students.

And their students.

A future laboratory.

Future publications.

Future discoveries.

That is why national development cannot be measured in money alone.

And that is why lost years can sometimes be considerably more expensive than lost billions.

IMPERIAL GRANDEUR PAID FOR BY THE PROVINCES

Moscow may remain capable of ignoring the price of war for a long time.

A great metropolis possesses a peculiar ability to conceal the crisis of the state.

Restaurants remain open.

Shops remain stocked.

The Metro continues to run.

New residential buildings are constructed.

Cars remain stuck in traffic.

Advertising continues to illuminate the streets.

A visual impression of normality emerges.

But Russia is not Moscow alone.

Russia consists of thousands of cities, towns, settlements, and villages.

It is the hospitals of district centres.

It is rural schools.

It is the roads connecting small communities.

It is water supply.

Sewerage.

Municipal transport.

Housing stock.

It is an elderly person who must travel dozens of kilometres to see a doctor.

It is a teacher.

A paramedic.

An engineer.

A worker.

It is at this level that the opportunity cost of the military state becomes particularly visible.

Every billion that civilian infrastructure does not receive cannot be seen as dramatically as a missile explosion.

A hospital that was never built does not appear in a television report.

A road that was never repaired has no date of death.

A young doctor who leaves the country does not become a line in a military communiqué.

A rural school that closes produces no plume of smoke visible from a satellite.

But it is from millions of such small losses that great national decline is constructed.

THE CENTRAL FALSEHOOD OF THE WARTIME ERA

The central falsehood does not necessarily lie in any particular statistic.

It is much deeper.

Society is encouraged to believe that the state can wage an expensive war indefinitely while simultaneously preserving the previous quality of peaceful development.

It cannot.

Resources are finite.

People are finite.

Time is finite.

Demographic potential is finite.

Even oil revenues are not infinite.

Every political choice has a price.

And if war becomes the central project of the state for years, it inevitably begins to transform the state itself.

The economy is reorganized around war.

Industry is reorganized around war.

The budget is reorganized around war.

Propaganda is reorganized around war.

Education gradually adapts itself to a militarized political culture.

Law adapts itself to the demands of security.

Society becomes accustomed to death.

And one day the country discovers that war has ceased to be a separate event in its history.

It has become a way in which the state system exists.

PUTIN DID NOT CREATE RUSSIA

It is here that another political myth must be dismantled.

Russia existed before Vladimir Putin.

And it will exist after him.

Russian culture was not created by the Kremlin of the twenty-first century.

Russian science did not begin in the year 2000.

Russian industry has a history far longer than the biography of a single president.

The Soviet Union's victory over Nazism does not belong to the present Russian administration.

The achievements of the Soviet space programme do not belong to one political regime.

Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Mendeleev, Pavlov, Korolev, Sakharov, and thousands of other figures in Russian and Soviet history are not the intellectual property of the current government.

The state has no right to privatize the history of a people.

And a president has no right to equate his own political destiny with the destiny of the country.

That is why criticism of Vladimir Putin is not criticism of Russia.

On the contrary.

At a certain historical moment, defending a country may require the most uncompromising criticism of its government.

Because patriotism does not consist in an obligation to agree with the state.

Patriotism also consists in the ability to ask the state:

what have you done to our country?

A QUARTER-CENTURY OF POWER

Vladimir Putin reached the summit of Russian power at the turn of the millennium.

In the span of a human life, twenty-six years is an enormous period.

A child born in the year Putin came to power is now an adult.

For millions of Russians, almost their entire conscious lives have unfolded under a single dominant political centre.

During that time, the world has changed.

New technological industries have emerged.

The smartphone transformed human communication.

Artificial intelligence began to transform the economy.

China became one of the world's central economic powers.

Global financial crises occurred.

The energy sector changed.

The technologies of warfare changed.

The information environment changed.

But in Russia, the political system became increasingly concentrated around a single centre of power.

And this fact is of fundamental importance.

Because the longer a political system exists without genuine political turnover, the more difficult it becomes to separate the interests of the state from the interests of the system itself.

A profoundly dangerous question emerges:

at what point does preserving power begin to be perceived as preserving the state?

When does criticism of the leader begin to be portrayed as criticism of the country?

When does disagreement become disloyalty?

When does an opponent become an enemy?

When does state security begin to mean the political security of the ruling structure?

And when does foreign policy begin to serve not only the objective interests of the state, but also the domestic legitimacy of the system?

Without answering these questions, the war cannot be understood.

RUSSIA COULD HAVE CHOSEN A DIFFERENT TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

This, in my view, is the most tragic part of the entire story.

Russia was not destined to arrive where it finds itself today.

It had a choice.

The commodity revenues of the first decades of the twenty-first century could have been used for a vast modernization of the country.

Dozens of world-class universities could have been created.

Russian fundamental science could have been transformed into the foundation of a technological breakthrough.

An independent judiciary could have become the principal guarantee of investment.

Private property could have been protected so securely that Russian entrepreneurs would have dreamed of keeping their capital not in London, Dubai, or Switzerland, but at home.

Thousands of Russian cities could have been modernized.

The country's enormous territory could have been transformed from an infrastructural challenge into a national advantage.

Relations with Ukraine could have been built in such a way that millions of Ukrainians regarded Russia not as a military threat, but as a natural economic, cultural, and human partner.

Russia could have competed for goodwill.

For technology.

For investment.

For universities.

For quality of life.

For the future.

Instead, Russia chose a struggle for territories and spheres of influence.

History will ultimately judge that choice.

But its price is already being paid.

In Ukrainian blood.

In Russian blood.

With the money of Russian taxpayers.

Through future budgets.

Through lost opportunities.

Through shattered international relations.

And through time that can never be recovered.

THE COUNTRY IS NOT DEAD. THAT IS PRECISELY WHY WE MUST SPEAK NOW

The title of this article is deliberately severe:

“Putin Has Finished Russia.”

But it must not be understood simplistically.

Russia exists.

It possesses enormous resources.

Millions of educated, talented, and hardworking people live there.

It possesses an extraordinary culture.

A scientific heritage.

An industrial base.

An enormous territory.

Natural wealth.

And it is precisely for this reason that what is happening is so tragic.

You cannot destroy what does not exist.

You can only squander what was created before you.

Russia inherited an enormous legacy from previous generations.

The question of the Putin era is what part of that legacy it will pass on to the generations that follow.

A state can win an individual battle and lose a decade.

It can acquire territory and lose a generation.

It can build a thousand missiles and fail to build a university.

It can make its neighbours fear it while simultaneously losing their trust for decades.

It can speak endlessly about sovereignty while gradually becoming increasingly dependent upon a limited circle of foreign markets, technologies, and political partners.

It can possess nuclear weapons while simultaneously fearing the free speech of one of its own citizens.

That is why the question before us today is much larger than the personality of Vladimir Putin.

What stands before us is the question of the historical choice of an enormous country.

Russia may yet survive the Putin era.

But every additional year of war increases the price of that future.

That is why the most frightening moment does not necessarily come when a state suddenly falls.

The most frightening moment comes when a country continues to live its ordinary life, gradually becoming accustomed to the fact that its tomorrow is being taken away.

Russia is still alive.

But its future is already being consumed.

And the bill continues to grow.

To be continued: PART TWO — “THE STATE OF ONE MAN: HOW THE VERTICAL OF POWER TRANSFORMED POLITICAL STABILITY INTO INSTITUTIONAL DEPENDENCE”

PART TWO

THE STATE OF ONE MAN

HOW THE VERTICAL OF POWER TRANSFORMED POLITICAL STABILITY INTO INSTITUTIONAL DEPENDENCE

Every powerful government faces one exceptionally dangerous illusion.

If a system is capable of making decisions quickly, if governors carry out the instructions of the centre, parliament passes the necessary laws, the security apparatus answers to the president, and the largest state corporations are integrated into a single political structure, an impression of almost absolute efficiency begins to emerge.

No prolonged disputes.

No agonizing coalition negotiations.

No governmental crises.

No parliamentary revolts.

No public conflicts between branches of government.

A decision is made at the top — and the machinery of the state begins to move.

At first sight, this looks like strength.

But there is a fundamental problem.

A state must be capable not only of rapidly implementing correct decisions.

It must also possess mechanisms capable of stopping a wrong decision.

This is precisely where the dividing line lies between a strong state and a state that merely has a strong ruler.

A strong institution is capable of telling the head of state: no.

An independent court is capable of overturning a decision of the executive branch.

A genuine parliament is capable of rejecting a government bill.

A free press is capable of discovering what an official has attempted to conceal.

An opposition is capable of publicly presenting an alternative.

A regional authority must be capable of explaining to the federal centre that its decision is impossible or destructive to implement in a particular territory.

A university must be capable of producing a conclusion that is politically inconvenient for the government.

An economist must be able to tell the president that his economic policy is mistaken.

A general must have the ability to inform the political leadership that a military operation does not correspond to the objectives assigned to it.

Intelligence services must report to those in power not what they wish to hear, but what is actually happening.

It is the combination of these mechanisms that makes a state resilient.

Not obedience.

But the capacity to correct an error.

A VERTICAL OF POWER THAT GRADUALLY LOST ITS COUNTERWEIGHTS

The Russian political system of the twenty-first century developed in the opposite direction.

Power gradually became concentrated.

Political competition narrowed.

The role of the regions changed.

The Federal Assembly was increasingly less likely to be perceived as an autonomous centre for shaping state policy.

Political life became increasingly organized around the presidential vertical of power.

This is not merely my political assessment.

In its 2026 report, Freedom House characterizes the Russian system as authoritarian, with power concentrated in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. The report points to the dependence of the judiciary, a controlled media environment, the dominance of the executive branch, and the limited nature of genuine political competition.

One may dispute the methodology employed by Freedom House.

One may disagree with particular assessments made by that organization.

But one cannot deny the underlying institutional reality: presidential power in contemporary Russia possesses a scale of political influence that is incomparable with the capacity of any other individual state institution.

And here a problem emerges that is considerably more serious than whether someone likes or dislikes Vladimir Putin.

The problem concerns the structure of the state itself.

What happens to an enormous country when its political stability begins to depend upon a single centre of decision-making?

What happens when a system spends decades learning not to challenge the supreme authority, but to anticipate its wishes?

What happens to the quality of information travelling from the bottom to the top?

THE MOST DANGEROUS LIE IS THE ONE THE BOSS WANTS TO HEAR

An authoritarian system does not necessarily mean that every official is constantly lying.

The mechanism is considerably more complicated.

No official needs to receive an order saying:

“Lie to the president.”

It is enough to create a system of career incentives in which bad news is more dangerous than good news.

The superior wants to hear that the task has been completed.

The subordinate knows this.

A regional leader wants to demonstrate growth.

The statistics begin to look better.

A minister wants to demonstrate that a programme has been successfully implemented.

Problems acquire more cautious formulations.

A military commander wants to report combat readiness.

Deficiencies become “isolated difficulties.”

Intelligence passes through several administrative levels.

At each level, there is a temptation to make it slightly less unpleasant.

No one needs to organize a grand conspiracy.

The system itself begins to filter reality.

And one day the first person in the state receives on his desk not the country that actually exists, but the country that the apparatus considers it safe to show him.

For a state, this is lethally dangerous.

Because it is impossible to make a correct decision on the basis of an incorrect picture of the world.

WHEN LOYALTY BECOMES MORE IMPORTANT THAN COMPETENCE

Every personalized political system eventually confronts the same dilemma.

Who should be appointed to the most important positions?

A person capable of objecting?

Or a person who can be trusted politically?

In a mature institutional state, this conflict should be resolved through rules.

An official's professionalism should not depend upon personal proximity to the country's leader.

A judge should not owe a judicial decision to the president.

A prosecutor should not have to consider the political consequences of an investigation.

A general should be evaluated according to professional competence in commanding the armed forces.

A university rector — according to the ability to develop a university.

The head of a state-owned enterprise — according to management effectiveness.

But the more personalized a political system becomes, the more costly independence becomes.

Because an independent professional is unpredictable.

Such a person may say:

No.

They may write:

Impossible.

They may warn:

Dangerous.

They may refuse to sign a document.

They may report corruption.

They may publicly acknowledge a mistake.

They may place the law above a telephone call.

These are precisely the people a state needs.

And these are precisely the people who are most inconvenient to a system built upon personal political loyalty.

THE CONSTITUTION AND THE PROBLEM OF POLITICAL TIME

A constitution exists not merely to define the powers of state institutions.

It establishes limits on power over time.

The purpose of presidential term limits is exceptionally simple.

The state must outlive any particular ruler.

In 2020, amendments were made to the Russian Constitution that created a legal possibility for Vladimir Putin to stand again in presidential elections despite the presidential terms he had already served. As a result, the current constitutional framework potentially allows him to remain president until 2036. This circumstance has been noted in international legal and political assessments of Russia's constitutional changes.

The legal mechanism of constitutional amendment is not, by itself, the whole problem.

The principal question is considerably broader:

what happens to the political culture of a country when an entire generation grows up with virtually no experience of genuine turnover at the highest level of power?

Political turnover is necessary not because every new leader will necessarily be better than the previous one.

The new leader may be worse.

Turnover is necessary because it prevents the psychological fusion of an individual with the state.

A president is a temporary holder of public authority.

Russia is not temporary.

A government is temporary.

The state remains.

A political party may lose an election.

The country does not disappear as a result.

This is one of the fundamental principles of a republican state.

A PARLIAMENT THAT IS SUPPOSED TO ARGUE

A genuine parliament is inconvenient for the executive branch.

That is exactly what it should be.

Parliament does not exist to provide an elegant legal form for a decision that has already been made.

It exists to argue.

To demand documents.

To summon ministers.

To establish commissions.

To refuse the government.

To amend legislation.

To investigate.

To doubt.

To ask uncomfortable questions.

And sometimes — to stop those in power.

A parliament that constantly obstructs the government may be irritating.

But that irritation is precisely what the separation of powers means.

Democracy is an exceptionally inconvenient system.

It is slow.

Noisy.

Conflict-ridden.

Politicians argue.

Journalists ask uncomfortable questions.

Courts overturn decisions.

The opposition accuses the government.

Citizens take to the streets.

But this entire inconvenient structure exists for one fundamental purpose:

to prevent a single political mistake from becoming a national catastrophe without resistance.

If parliament loses its capacity genuinely to resist the executive branch, the state becomes faster.

But at the same time, it becomes more dangerous.

A COURT THAT CANNOT SAY “NO” CEASES TO BE THE LAST LINE OF DEFENCE

A court is the place where a citizen must be able to confront the state.

Not stand beside the state.

Not act with the state's permission.

But stand directly against it.

A citizen against a ministry.

A journalist against an official.

An entrepreneur against a tax authority.

An opposition politician against an electoral commission.

An ordinary person against the police.

And if the state has violated the law, the court must possess the institutional capacity to tell the state:

you are wrong.

This is one of the greatest principles of modern civilization.

A judge is physically weaker than the state.

A judge has no army.

No police.

No intelligence service.

No federal government budget.

Judicial strength exists only for as long as the political system recognizes the independence of judicial decisions.

In its 2026 assessment, Freedom House characterizes the Russian judiciary as lacking genuine independence from the executive branch; it also notes that the constitutional changes of 2020 expanded presidential influence in relation to the senior judiciary.

Supporters of the Russian authorities, of course, reject such characterizations and point to the formal constitutional guarantees of judicial independence.

But a political article must raise a more fundamental question:

can a judicial system be genuinely independent if the entire political structure surrounding it becomes increasingly centralized?

Because judicial independence is not merely an article in a constitution.

It is a culture of government.

THE WAR ACCELERATED WHAT HAD BEEN DEVELOPING FOR YEARS

24 February 2022 did not create the Russian political system.

But the war radically intensified some of its characteristics.

In wartime, a state always demands greater secrecy.

Greater discipline.

Greater control over information.

Greater powers for security institutions.

This has occurred throughout the history of many different countries.

That is precisely why wartime is particularly dangerous for civil liberties.

Following the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russian legislation and law-enforcement practice significantly expanded restrictions on public anti-war expression.

Legal mechanisms concerning alleged “false information” about the armed forces, “discrediting” the military, “foreign agents,” “undesirable organizations,” and extremism have repeatedly become the subject of criticism by United Nations human-rights mechanisms.

In one official communication by UN Special Procedures concerning the criminal prosecution of Maria Ponomarenko, Article 207.3 of the Russian Criminal Code was directly considered in the context of restrictions on critical expression concerning the war. UN Special Procedures have warned about the danger of employing such provisions to suppress dissent and freedom of expression.

This is no longer a philosophical debate about democracy.

It is a question of what price a citizen may be forced to pay for publicly disagreeing with state policy.

A STATE THAT FEARS THE SPOKEN WORD

A strong state should not fear a sentence written on a sheet of paper.

It should not fear a placard.

It should not fear an article.

It should not fear a university lecture.

It should not fear a journalist's investigation.

It should not fear a political party.

It should not fear the mother of a dead soldier demanding an answer.

Because if a state possessing a nuclear arsenal feels threatened by a solitary citizen holding a placard, the problem does not lie with the citizen.

The problem lies with the state.

Freedom of speech is not necessary so that people can say pleasant things about those in power.

Pleasant words require no constitutional protection.

Freedom of speech exists precisely for unpleasant speech.

For mistaken speech.

For harsh speech.

For accusation.

For satire.

For political disagreement.

For the question the state would prefer not to hear.

CENSORSHIP DESTROYS MORE THAN FREEDOM. IT DESTROYS THE QUALITY OF GOVERNMENT

This point is frequently underestimated.

A free press is necessary not only for journalists.

It is necessary for the government itself.

An investigative journalist may uncover corruption before a prosecutor does.

A local newspaper may be the first to expose the catastrophic condition of a hospital.

An independent war correspondent may report deficiencies in military supplies.

An economic journalist may identify a problem before it becomes a crisis.

An opposition politician may draw attention to a flawed law.

Even information that is politically hostile to the government may be useful to the state.

Because it represents an additional sensor of reality.

By destroying independent sensors, a system does not become better informed.

It becomes blinder.

A person can be silenced.

But the problem that person described cannot be ordered out of existence.

A newspaper can be closed.

But that does not eliminate a hole in the budget.

An organization can be declared undesirable.

But the social problem does not cease to exist.

Statistics can be prohibited.

Reality does not obey censorship.

FEAR IS A BAD ADVISER TO A PRESIDENT

In a system where political disagreement becomes dangerous, self-censorship emerges.

And self-censorship is considerably more dangerous than official censorship.

An official censor must read a text and prohibit it.

Under self-censorship, the state no longer needs to prohibit anything.

The individual falls silent in advance.

The journalist removes the paragraph in advance.

The editor abandons the subject in advance.

The official omits the unpleasant figure in advance.

The scientist chooses a safe field of research in advance.

The entrepreneur refrains from criticizing the ministry in advance.

The member of parliament understands in advance how to vote.

Gradually, millions of small acts of caution create an enormous information environment in which those in power hear less and less of the truth.

This is dangerous for any state.

In wartime, it can be lethal.

THE MISTAKE THAT NO ONE IS LEFT TO STOP

Imagine a state in which the president makes a mistake.

This is not an accusation.

All presidents make mistakes.

All governments make mistakes.

All generals make mistakes.

All intelligence services make mistakes.

All economists make mistakes.

Every human being makes mistakes.

The quality of a political system is therefore not determined by the absence of mistakes.

No such system exists.

It is determined by its capacity to detect an error and stop its consequences.

In a democratic system, there are numerous points of resistance.

The opposition.

Parliament.

The courts.

The press.

Regional authorities.

Civil society.

Elections.

Independent experts.

Competing bureaucratic institutions.

All of them can obstruct.

But sometimes the person who obstructs is the person who saves the state.

A personalized system removes the obstacles.

And together with the obstacles, it gradually removes the safeguards.

A single wrong decision may then pass through the entire machinery of the state with virtually no institutional resistance.

That is why excessive concentration of power is not merely a problem of democracy.

It is a problem of national security.

WAR AS A TEST OF THE SYSTEM

And here we inevitably return to Ukraine.

The full-scale invasion was not merely a military decision.

It became the greatest test of the Russian decision-making system.

What information was presented to the president before the war?

What alternative assessments existed?

How freely could military commanders object to the political leadership?

How freely could the intelligence services deliver unwelcome conclusions?

What economic consequences were forecast?

Was the possibility of a multi-year war considered?

Was the potential scale of sanctions considered?

Were the long-term consequences for relations with Europe considered?

How was the reaction of Ukrainian society assessed?

Was there an institution within the system capable of saying:

“No. The price is too high. The risks are unacceptable. Another course must be taken”?

History will eventually have access to far more documents than are available today.

It would therefore be wrong to assert what cannot yet be proved.

But the institutional question can already be asked:

to what extent was a system that had concentrated power for decades even capable of generating effective resistance to a decision made at the very top?

POLITICAL STABILITY AND POLITICAL STAGNATION ARE NOT THE SAME THING

Stability has enormous value.

A society cannot live permanently in revolution.

An economy requires predictability.

Citizens want to know that tomorrow their school, hospital, bank, and police service will still function.

Investors need to understand the rules.

Stability itself is therefore not a negative phenomenon.

The problem begins when stability ceases to mean the resilience of institutions and begins to mean the permanence of individuals.

Genuine stability exists when a president can leave office and the state continues to function normally.

When a party loses an election and the economy does not collapse.

When a minister resigns and the ministry continues to perform its functions.

When a court rules against the government and the police enforce that ruling.

When a journalist publishes an investigation into a senior official and remains a journalist rather than becoming an enemy of the state.

That is stability.

Everything else may be nothing more than political immobility.

THE SYSTEM BEGINS TO PROTECT ITSELF

Every organization eventually develops an instinct for self-preservation.

The state apparatus is no exception.

But in a democratic system, there is a regular moment when citizens can say:

we want a different government.

A personalized system gradually begins to perceive that possibility not as a normal part of politics, but as a threat.

The language changes accordingly.

An opponent becomes not a competitor, but a destroyer.

A protest becomes not an expression of dissatisfaction, but a threat to stability.

Foreign financing of a civil organization becomes a security issue.

A critical journalist begins to be perceived not as part of public oversight, but as a potential instrument of foreign influence.

The logic of a besieged fortress emerges.

And a besieged fortress always possesses one convenient explanation for internal problems:

the enemy is outside.

THE EXTERNAL ENEMY AS A RESOURCE OF DOMESTIC POLITICS

History knows this mechanism all too well.

An external threat unites society.

In times of danger, people naturally rally around the state.

This is a normal human reaction.

But precisely for that reason, external confrontation can become an exceptionally powerful resource in domestic politics.

When a state exists permanently in a condition of struggle, many internal questions become secondary.

Why is the road in poor condition?

This is not the time.

Why are food prices rising?

There is a confrontation underway.

Why is social spending being reduced?

Security must be guaranteed.

Why is information being restricted?

The enemy is conducting information warfare.

Why are protests unacceptable?

The country must not be destabilized.

Why must the army not be criticized?

Because it helps the adversary.

Each individual argument may have a rational basis in a particular situation.

But taken together, they can create a system in which a state of emergency becomes the normal political environment.

At that point, war begins to serve more than foreign policy.

It begins to transform the internal architecture of power.

THE COUNTRY BECOMES A FORTRESS

A fortress has one problem.

It is a convenient place from which to defend oneself.

But it is a poor place in which to live.

A fortress requires discipline.

Hierarchy.

Secrecy.

Obedience.

Permanent readiness for threat.

In war, these qualities may be necessary.

But society is not a military barracks.

An economy requires risk.

Science requires doubt.

Art requires freedom.

Entrepreneurship requires initiative.

A university requires debate.

Journalism requires suspicion of power.

Law requires an independent judiciary.

Modern civilization develops precisely because human beings are permitted to disagree.

If military logic gradually spreads across the whole of public life, the state acquires discipline at the price of creativity.

Order at the price of initiative.

Loyalty at the price of truth.

And ultimately — political tranquillity at the price of the future.

A GREAT COUNTRY CANNOT BE BUILT ENTIRELY BY PEOPLE WHO AGREE

A great country needs inconvenient people.

A scientist who disproves an accepted theory.

A journalist who does not believe a ministry's press release.

A judge who refuses to comply with a political request.

A member of parliament who votes against their own party.

A general who tells the president an unpleasant truth.

A writer who mocks those in power.

A student who asks a professor a question to which the professor does not know the answer.

An entrepreneur who does not do what a ministry has planned, but instead does something no one has yet imagined.

Progress almost always begins with disagreement.

Because a person who agrees reproduces what already exists.

A person who disagrees may create something new.

THE PUTIN SYSTEM CREATED ITS OWN GREATEST VULNERABILITY

A quarter-century of concentrated power has given the Kremlin an enormous capacity to mobilize the state.

This cannot be denied.

When the centre makes a decision, the Russian state machinery is capable of directing colossal financial, administrative, informational, and security resources towards the designated objective.

This is the strength of the system.

But its weakness lies in exactly the same place.

Because the more decisions depend upon a single political centre, the greater the price of that centre's mistake.

The fewer independent institutions there are, the fewer mechanisms of correction remain.

The weaker the competition, the fewer the alternatives.

The more dangerous disagreement becomes, the poorer the quality of information.

The longer one person remains at the summit, the more difficult it becomes for those around that person to distinguish his opinion from the truth of the state.

And at a certain point, the vertical of power becomes a vertical of responsibility.

All roads begin to lead upward.

HISTORICAL RESPONSIBILITY CANNOT BE DELEGATED DOWNWARDS

An authoritarian system contains a peculiar paradox.

In moments of success, every achievement is attributed to the supreme authority.

Economic growth — the leader's achievement.

Stability — the leader's achievement.

Military victories — the leader's achievement.

International prestige — the leader's achievement.

But when serious consequences arrive, those responsible suddenly appear on the floors below.

A minister.

A general.

A governor.

An oligarch.

An official.

The West.

Sanctions.

Historical circumstances.

Traitors.

The fifth column.

But political responsibility cannot function in only one direction.

If the system was constructed for decades as a presidential vertical, if the principal strategic decisions were concentrated at the top, then the supreme authority bears primary political responsibility for the consequences of those decisions as well.

Success cannot be privatized while failure is nationalized.

RUSSIA DOES NOT NEED A WEAK STATE. IT NEEDS STRONG INSTITUTIONS

Criticism of personalized power is not a call for a weak Russia.

On the contrary.

Russia needs a strong state.

For a country with an enormous territory, a complex federal structure, numerous peoples, a nuclear arsenal, vast infrastructure, and a difficult history, a weak state could bring catastrophe.

But a strong state and a strong ruler are not synonymous.

A strong state is a state that outlives its leaders.

Where the law is stronger than the official.

Where the court is stronger than the telephone call.

Where parliament is capable of controlling the budget.

Where a governor is not a political vassal.

Where the armed forces serve the state rather than a political personality.

Where the police protect the law.

Where a university is capable of disagreement.

Where a journalist is capable of investigation.

Where a citizen can tell the president:

“You are wrong.”

— and then return home in peace.

That is a strong Russia.

Not the Russia of one man.

A Russia of institutions.

AFTER PUTIN

Sooner or later, the era of Vladimir Putin will end.

No political era lasts forever.

That is the nature of human life.

The principal question is not when it will happen.

The principal question is:

what will remain after it?

Strong institutions?

Or an apparatus accustomed to waiting for instructions from above?

An independent judiciary?

Or judges accustomed to anticipating the political context?

A responsible parliament?

Or a legislative machine accustomed to rapidly formalizing decisions?

Political competition?

Or a political arena that will have to be created almost from the beginning?

Free journalism?

Or an information culture of self-censorship?

A federation?

Or regions accustomed through decades to administrative dependence?

And most importantly:

who will be capable of assuming responsibility for decisions when the person around whom the system has been constructed for decades is no longer at its summit?

It is here that personalized power encounters its final paradox.

It is created in the name of stability.

But the longer it exists, the more difficult the problem of its own ending becomes.

THE STATE MUST BE GREATER THAN THE PRESIDENT

Russia is considerably greater than Vladimir Putin.

Greater than the Kremlin.

Greater than United Russia.

Greater than any government.

Greater than any political era.

A state whose history is measured in centuries cannot bind its destiny to the biography of one individual.

Because people are mortal.

Institutions must remain.

And if, after twenty-six years of rule, the question arises as to whether the political system is capable of functioning normally without a particular individual at its summit, this is no longer evidence of that individual's strength.

It is a diagnosis of institutional weakness.

In Part One of this article, I wrote:

Russia is still alive. But its future is already being consumed.

Now another point must be added:

it is not only money that is being consumed.

Institutional time is being consumed as well.

Every year in which parliament does not learn to function as an independent parliament is lost.

Every year in which the judiciary does not strengthen its independence is lost.

Every year without genuine political competition makes the restoration of competition more difficult.

Every year of censorship creates another habit of silence.

Every year of war strengthens the political logic of emergency.

And every subsequent decision becomes hostage to a system that is increasingly incapable of doubting itself.

That is why the tragedy of Putin's Russia lies not only in the fact that one man acquired too much power.

The tragedy lies in the fact that too many institutions of the state gradually forgot how to exist without that power.

And when a state forgets how to tell its leader “no,” one day that leader acquires the ability to tell the state:

we are going to war.

And there is no one left to stop him.

To be continued: PART THREE — “THE WAR THAT DEVOURS THE COUNTRY: THE WAR ECONOMY, THE BUDGET, OIL, DEBT, AND THE PRICE OF IMPERIAL AMBITION”

PART THREE

THE WAR THAT IS DEVOURING THE COUNTRY

THE WAR ECONOMY, THE BUDGET, OIL, DEBT, AND THE PRICE OF IMPERIAL AMBITION

War possesses one remarkable economic characteristic.

As long as a state remains capable of paying for it, an illusion may arise that the state can afford it.

These are not the same thing.

An individual, too, can maintain a familiar standard of living for years by drawing on savings, selling assets, and taking out loans.

The house is still standing.

The car still runs.

The bills are still being paid.

Outwardly, there is no catastrophe.

But the balance of that person's life has already changed.

They are consuming not only today's income, but yesterday's savings and tomorrow's opportunities.

It is through this lens that Russia's contemporary war economy must be viewed.

The central question is not whether the Kremlin has enough money for another year of war.

It does.

The question is different:

what must Russia surrender in exchange for that next year?

THE WAR ECONOMY CREATES A DANGEROUS ILLUSION OF PROSPERITY

War can increase production.

This sounds paradoxical only at first.

The state places enormous orders.

Factories receive money.

Enterprises operate multiple shifts.

Artillery shells must be manufactured.

Missiles.

Drones.

Military electronics.

Armoured vehicles.

Uniforms.

Communications equipment.

Military hardware must be repaired.

Defensive structures must be constructed.

Cargo must be transported.

Military personnel must be paid.

Compensation must be provided.

New workers must be hired.

All of this constitutes economic activity.

The wages of a defence-industry worker appear in economic statistics.

A tank that has been manufactured appears in industrial output.

State defence procurement increases corporate turnover.

The economy of a country at war can therefore demonstrate growth.

But a fundamental question arises:

what exactly is growing?

If a state produces a million refrigerators, those refrigerators will serve families for years.

If a railway is constructed, it can transport people and goods for decades.

If a medical technology is developed, it may save hundreds of thousands of lives.

If a university is built, it can educate several generations.

But if a million artillery shells are produced, their economic destiny is entirely different.

They are manufactured in order to disappear.

Military GDP can grow while the wealth of the future contracts.

That is why production indicators during a major war must be interpreted with exceptional caution.

A TANK ALSO COUNTS TOWARDS GDP

Consider the simplest possible example.

A state spends a billion on building a bridge.

The bridge contributes to economic output.

But once construction is complete, the bridge remains.

For twenty, thirty, or fifty years, people and goods move across it.

Businesses emerge around it.

Land values increase.

Transport times fall.

New economic activity is created.

Now imagine that the state spends a billion on weapons that are destroyed on the battlefield several months later.

In statistical terms, both billions may generate economic activity.

But from the standpoint of the country's future, their significance is entirely different.

One billion creates an asset.

The other finances the consumption of war.

This does not mean that a state has no need for armed forces.

Of course it does.

Every country has an obligation to finance its own defence.

But there is an enormous difference between maintaining armed forces to defend the state and turning military production into one of the central engines of the economy.

Once that line is crossed, the economy begins to work towards the destruction of its own output.

THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY DID NOT COLLAPSE. THAT IS PRECISELY WHY THE PROBLEM IS MORE COMPLEX

After February 2022, there were numerous predictions of a rapid Russian economic collapse.

They did not materialize.

This must be acknowledged directly.

The Russian economy proved more adaptable than many observers had expected.

Trade flows were redirected.

Some imports began arriving through third countries.

Russia retained substantial revenues from commodity exports.

The state sharply expanded fiscal stimulus.

The defence industry received enormous orders.

Companies developed new logistics chains.

The financial system survived the initial shock.

But the ability to adapt to a shock and the ability to develop indefinitely under altered conditions are two entirely different things.

A human being can survive a serious injury.

That does not mean the injury was beneficial to their health.

The same principle applies to an economy.

The absence of immediate collapse does not demonstrate the absence of long-term damage.

GROWTH THAT BEGAN TO SLOW

By 2026, signs of deceleration had become considerably more visible.

In its 2026 assessments, the International Monetary Fund projected Russian economic growth at approximately 1.1 per cent.

This is an important figure.

Not because 1.1 per cent represents a catastrophe.

It does not.

But because it reveals the limits of a simple formula:

more government spending equals more growth.

A military budget can stimulate production.

But constraints emerge at the same time.

Labour shortages.

Inflationary pressure.

High borrowing costs.

Shortages of particular technologies.

Rising costs.

Competition between the state and the civilian economy for workers and productive capacity.

An economy is not a bottomless reservoir.

If the state draws an engineer into a defence enterprise, that engineer is no longer working in civilian engineering.

If a bank finances a priority state project, capital becomes more expensive for another business.

If the budget directs trillions towards defence, additional revenues must be found or other expenditures reduced.

War gradually begins to crowd out the civilian economy.

17.1 TRILLION ROUBLES: THE REAL IDEOLOGY IS WRITTEN INTO THE BUDGET

Political speeches can say almost anything.

A budget is considerably more candid.

Russian budget documents presented at the end of September 2026 envisage total defence- and security-related expenditure for 2027 rising to approximately 17.1 trillion roubles, around 27 per cent above the level originally planned.

At the same time, the budget plans envisage reductions across a number of civilian areas, including social policy, healthcare, and education.

These figures carry enormous political significance.

Because a budget is ideology made material.

Not what the state says.

What the state pays for.

When more money is directed towards one function and less towards another, the state reveals the hierarchy of its priorities.

A government programme may contain a thousand pages devoted to developing human capital.

But when the moment of choice arrives and the money goes to war, war is the actual priority.

THE BUDGET BECOMES A BATTLEFIELD

Every additional year of war increases pressure on public finances.

Russia still possesses substantial resources.

It is not a country without revenues.

It exports oil.

Gas.

Metals.

Fertilizers.

Other commodities.

It possesses its own tax base.

The state can borrow domestically.

It would therefore be wrong to claim that the Russian budget is on the verge of immediate disappearance.

But a budget is a system of balances.

When one category of expenditure becomes exceptionally large, the rest of the system must adapt.

Taxes can be increased.

Debt can be expanded.

Civilian expenditure can be reduced.

Reserves can be used.

Higher revenues can be anticipated.

A larger deficit can be tolerated.

But expenditure cannot be increased indefinitely without consequences.

Eventually, the bill appears.

A DEFICIT IS A BILL TRANSFERRED INTO THE FUTURE

A budget deficit is not, in itself, a catastrophe.

Almost all modern states periodically operate with deficits.

The relevant questions are always why the deficit exists, how large it is, and how long it persists.

If a state borrows money to construct infrastructure that will generate economic growth twenty years from now, future generations inherit more than debt.

They inherit an asset.

If a state borrows money to finance a war, future generations inherit an obligation to service that debt, while much of what was purchased with the money has already been destroyed.

That is the fundamental difference.

According to 2026 budget estimates, Russia's deficit was revised upwards to approximately 3.2 per cent of GDP.

That figure does not, in itself, represent a financial catastrophe.

But the direction of travel matters.

Because borrowing is increasing at the same time.

Expenditure is rising.

The structure of the budget is changing.

And the cost of servicing debt is growing.

DEBT IS NOT DANGEROUS UNTIL IT BEGINS TO CONSUME THE BUDGET

Russian public debt remains relatively low as a share of GDP by international standards.

This is one of the strongest arguments advanced by those who maintain that Russia can continue financing the war for a long time.

That argument cannot simply be dismissed.

But the size of the debt is not the only consideration.

The cost of servicing it matters as well.

When interest rates are high, new debt becomes expensive.

The state borrows today.

Tomorrow, it repays not only the principal.

It pays interest.

The day after tomorrow, it borrows again.

Gradually, an enormous separate category of expenditure emerges — the cost of servicing past decisions.

According to published budget calculations, servicing Russia's public debt may require approximately 9.4 per cent of all federal expenditure in 2027, potentially approaching 10.6 per cent by 2029.

Consider the political significance of that figure.

Potentially, almost one rouble in every ten will be spent not on a new school.

Not on a hospital.

Not on a new road.

Not directly on today's defence.

But on servicing money borrowed in the past.

Debt begins to consume the budget even before the debt itself becomes enormous.

HIGH INTEREST RATES ARE A TAX ON THE FUTURE

Fighting inflation requires tight monetary policy.

But expensive money has consequences.

The state can create special conditions for a defence enterprise.

An ordinary entrepreneur faces a different economy.

A loan is needed.

Production must be expanded.

Equipment purchased.

A warehouse built.

A restaurant opened.

A technology start-up launched.

An apartment purchased.

A mortgage taken out.

The more expensive credit becomes, the more projects cease to be economically viable.

And here another paradox of the war economy emerges.

The public sector can continue spending enormous sums.

At the same time, the private sector begins to suffocate under the cost of money.

A two-speed economy emerges.

One part receives government orders.

The other must survive in the market.

The longer such a structure persists, the more strongly the state begins to determine where money exists within the economy.

OIL — RUSSIA'S LAST GREAT WALLET

For decades, hydrocarbons have been one of the fundamental sources of Russian state power.

Oil financed the budget.

Gas provided not only money, but geopolitical influence.

The European market provided enormous and relatively stable demand.

Pipeline infrastructure connected Russia with Europe's largest economies.

This model generated colossal revenues for the state.

But the war radically altered the geography of energy.

Europe began reducing its dependence on Russian energy supplies.

Russia redirected a substantial share of its flows towards Asia.

China and India acquired a far more important place in Russian energy exports.

Russian oil did not disappear from the world market.

But the crucial element changed:

the seller's position.

When a seller loses part of its customer base and becomes increasingly dependent on a limited number of remaining major buyers, bargaining power gradually shifts towards the buyer.

This is no longer the energy model upon which Russia built its position during the first decades of the twenty-first century.

THE GAS EMPIRE LOST ITS BEST MARKET

The fate of natural gas is particularly revealing.

A pipeline cannot simply be redirected like an oil tanker.

Pipeline infrastructure creates rigid geographical dependence.

For decades, Russia constructed a supply system oriented towards Europe.

Gazprom possessed more than a market.

It possessed a market anchored by infrastructure.

After 2022, this model was broken.

Even if political relations change in the future, the economic reality of 2021 cannot simply be restored at the press of a button.

Europe has already invested in alternative sources.

It has built new infrastructure.

Expanded its capacity to import liquefied natural gas.

Changed its energy policy.

Changed the very way in which dependence on a single supplier is perceived.

Russia has lost more than part of today's revenue.

It has lost decades of energy architecture.

CHINA IS NOT A CHARITY

Russia's turn towards the East is often presented as a simple replacement of Europe with China.

But international economics does not work like replacing one shop with another.

China is an enormous economic power.

It needs Russian resources.

Russia needs the Chinese market.

Such cooperation is entirely rational.

But partnership between states does not imply equality of economic capabilities.

China's economy is many times larger than Russia's.

Its market is considerably larger.

Its industrial base is deeper.

Its technological ecosystem is more diverse.

And if Russia becomes increasingly dependent upon China as a buyer and as a supplier of equipment, vehicles, electronics, and industrial products, a new strategic question arises:

does the struggle against dependence on the West merely replace one dependence with another?

Sovereignty is not measured by the number of anti-Western speeches.

It is measured by the number of genuine alternatives.

The fewer alternatives a state possesses, the weaker its bargaining position becomes.

SANCTIONS DID NOT KILL THE ECONOMY. THEY CHANGED THE COST OF KEEPING IT RUNNING

Sanctions are often discussed in excessively simplistic terms.

Either:

“Sanctions have destroyed Russia.”

Or:

“Sanctions do not work at all.”

Both propositions are too crude.

A sanction does not necessarily close a factory.

It may make operating that factory more expensive.

A product may still be purchased through an intermediary.

But at a higher price.

A technology may still be obtained through a third country.

But with greater difficulty.

A payment may still be processed.

But through a longer chain.

Oil may still be sold.

But with additional logistics costs and price concessions.

Equipment may be replaced.

But not always with equipment of equivalent quality.

An aircraft may continue operating.

But maintenance becomes more difficult.

This is how cumulative economic erosion works.

It is not necessary to switch off an entire economy.

It is enough gradually to increase the cost of its normal operation.

IMPORT SUBSTITUTION HAS LIMITS

No major country should be completely dependent on imports.

Developing domestic production is a normal and rational objective of state policy.

But the modern technological economy is so complex that absolute autarky is virtually impossible.

A modern aircraft consists of thousands of components.

The semiconductor industry depends upon a global network of equipment, materials, patents, and knowledge.

Modern medicine relies on international scientific developments.

Software is developed globally.

Scientific laboratories use equipment created across dozens of countries.

Genuine technological sovereignty therefore does not mean isolation.

It means the ability to participate in the global technological system from a position of domestic strength.

Isolation may compel a country to produce more for itself.

But it may also force that country to spend enormous resources recreating what already exists elsewhere in the world.

WAR COMPETES FOR PEOPLE

The scarcest resource in contemporary Russia is not oil.

Not gas.

Not gold.

People.

The war economy needs workers.

The armed forces need people.

Defence plants need engineers.

State projects need specialists.

The civilian economy needs the very same people.

And here the state begins to compete with itself.

The same young man cannot simultaneously serve in the armed forces and work as an engineer in a civilian enterprise.

One specialist cannot simultaneously design a missile and a medical device.

One programmer cannot simultaneously create a military system and develop a commercial start-up.

Human resources are finite.

And the longer the war continues, the more intense this competition becomes.

MONEY FOR DEATH

The war has created another disturbing economic phenomenon in Russia.

In some poorer regions, payments to military personnel, contract soldiers, and the families of those killed may vastly exceed ordinary local incomes.

For a family, this is real money.

Sometimes an amount of money it has never possessed before.

The state pays for risk.

It pays for service.

It pays for injury.

It pays the family for death.

From the perspective of the budget, these are social obligations of a state at war.

From the human perspective, a disturbing moral economy emerges.

Regional poverty begins to interact with military recruitment.

The fewer civilian economic opportunities a person possesses, the more attractive a military contract may appear.

This does not mean that every Russian serviceman goes to war for money.

People's motives differ.

Patriotism.

Conviction.

Duty.

Pressure of circumstances.

The desire to earn money.

Social status.

But the economic factor cannot be ignored.

And when a person's death can bring their family a sum they could not have earned during years of peaceful work, the state must confront a terrible question:

why was the living citizen worth less to the economy than the dead soldier?

MILITARY PAY IS NOT NEW WEALTH

High payments to military personnel and defence-industry workers support consumer demand.

People buy cars.

Apartments.

Household appliances.

They renovate their homes.

They help relatives.

The money returns to the economy.

But the source of that money must be understood.

A substantial share arises through state redistribution.

The state collects taxes.

Receives commodity revenues.

Borrows.

And directs money towards the military sector.

Rising incomes among particular groups therefore do not necessarily mean that the productivity of the economy as a whole has increased.

They may instead reflect a change in whom the state pays more.

INFLATION — THE SILENT TAX OF WAR

When enormous amounts of public money compete for a limited supply of goods, services, and workers, inflationary pressure emerges.

Inflation is particularly unfair because it does not arrive in a separate letter from the tax authorities.

It simply changes the price tag.

Bread becomes more expensive.

Milk.

Medicine.

Repairs.

Services.

Housing.

Credit.

A citizen may never see a line marked:

“war tax.”

But they pay it through changes in the cost of their own life.

And inflation does not hit the wealthy hardest.

It hits those who spend the largest share of their income on basic necessities.

TAXES: WAR ENTERS THE WALLET

The state cannot indefinitely finance rising expenditure solely through oil revenues.

Pressure therefore gradually spreads to the tax system.

Russia has already altered a number of tax parameters, including a shift towards a more progressive personal income tax structure and an increase in corporate profit tax.

There are independent economic arguments for reforms of this kind, so it would be wrong to attribute every tax change exclusively to the war.

But the broader fiscal context cannot be ignored.

The state requires more money.

And the longer exceptionally high expenditure persists, the greater the incentive to seek new sources of revenue within the domestic economy.

Ultimately, war reaches the citizen through more than television news.

It reaches them through taxes.

Through prices.

Through interest rates.

Through the municipal budget.

Through the cost of a mortgage.

Through the quality of the hospital.

Through their child's school.

THE MOST EXPENSIVE TANK IS THE ONE THAT PREVENTED A HOSPITAL FROM BEING BUILT

Economists call this opportunity cost.

I call it the bill for invisible losses.

We see the tank that was built.

We do not see the hospital that could have been built instead.

We see the missile.

We do not see the laboratory that was denied funding.

We see the new military plant.

We do not see the technology company that might have emerged from the same labour market.

We see the military contract payment.

We do not see the enterprise in that soldier's hometown that might have offered a decent civilian wage.

Invisible things are extraordinarily difficult to photograph.

That is why state propaganda favours material symbols of power.

A missile can be shown.

A tank can be shown.

A parade can be shown.

A future that never happened cannot be shown.

Yet that may prove to be the greatest loss of all.

RUSSIA IS NOT CONSUMING MONEY. IT IS CONSUMING TIME

Money can still be earned.

The price of oil may rise.

Sanctions may one day change.

Trade relations can be restored.

A factory can be built.

A road can be repaired.

But the year 2022 cannot be lived again.

Nor can 2023.

2024.

2025.

2026.

Every year of war is a year Russia could have used for a different form of development.

Five years constitute a complete university cycle for enormous numbers of students.

Five years can take a technology start-up from an idea to an international company.

Five years mean thousands of scientific studies.

Five years allow infrastructure to be built.

Five years mean children who entered school and have already begun growing up in an atmosphere of war.

That is why war is not merely a financial catastrophe.

It is a catastrophe of time.

EMPIRES ALWAYS PRESENT THEIR BILL LATER

Imperial policy possesses a seductive characteristic.

Victory is visible immediately.

The cost arrives later.

Territory can be displayed on a map today.

Interest on debt must be paid for years.

A military plant can be opened today.

Technological backwardness may become apparent a decade later.

A young specialist can be lost today.

Statistics will notice the child who was never born in Russia much later.

A European market can be lost within a few years.

Rebuilding trust may take a generation.

That is why it is considerably easier for political leadership to embark upon a great historical adventure than it is for society subsequently to finish paying its bills.

THE WAR MAY END. THE WAR ECONOMY WILL REMAIN

There is another problem that receives considerably less attention.

Suppose the war ends tomorrow.

What happens to the enormous enterprises expanded to fulfil state defence orders?

What happens to workers whose high incomes depend upon military production?

What happens to regions whose economies received a powerful stimulus from defence industries?

What happens to the contracts?

What happens to a budgetary system accustomed to enormous state demand?

The transition from a war economy back to a peacetime economy also costs money.

A military plant cannot be transformed by decree into a manufacturer of medical equipment.

It requires equipment.

Technology.

New markets.

Engineering solutions.

Investment.

War therefore creates its own economic inertia.

The longer it continues, the more people and enterprises become economically dependent upon its continuation.

This is one of the most dangerous mechanisms of militarization.

War gradually creates groups for whom peace itself becomes an economic problem.

WHEN PEACE BECOMES MORE EXPENSIVE THAN WAR FOR THE SYSTEM

This is where a disturbing political paradox emerges.

For society, peace is almost always cheaper than war.

But for particular institutions within a wartime state, the end of war may mean the loss of budgets, influence, contracts, and status.

A defence enterprise does not want to lose its orders.

A bureaucratic institution does not want to lose its powers.

The security apparatus does not want to lose an expanded budget.

Political propaganda does not want to lose a mobilizing theme.

And the longer the war continues, the more deeply these interests become embedded in the state system.

This does not mean that there is a single conspiracy of people who desire endless war.

Historical mechanisms are considerably more complicated.

A system may continue through inertia even when no individual actor deliberately intended to create that inertia.

THE CENTRAL ECONOMIC ERROR OF THE PUTIN ERA

In my view, the central economic error lies not even in the number of trillions spent on the war.

It lies in the model of greatness that was chosen.

Russia had the opportunity to become great through quality of life.

Through universities.

Science.

Medicine.

Technology.

Culture.

Infrastructure.

Law.

Entrepreneurship.

Russia could have compelled the world to respect it not because the world feared its missiles,

but because people around the world wanted to study at its universities.

Work for its companies.

Use its technologies.

Invest in its economy.

Receive treatment in its hospitals.

Live in its cities.

That is what a modern great power can be.

Military strength is necessary for a state.

But it is the shield of civilization.

It must not become the purpose of civilization.

A MISSILE CANNOT BE A NATIONAL IDEA

A missile is an instrument.

A tank is an instrument.

The armed forces are an institution for protecting the state.

But the state does not exist for the armed forces.

The armed forces exist for the state.

And the state exists for its people.

When that sequence is reversed, a militarized political culture emerges in which the individual gradually becomes a resource.

A tax resource.

A mobilization resource.

A production resource.

A demographic resource.

But a citizen is not a resource.

The citizen is the very purpose of the state.

If a state forgets this simple truth, it can become extraordinarily powerful and profoundly unhappy at the same time.

THE PRICE OF IMPERIAL AMBITION

Vladimir Putin sought to restore Russia's historical greatness.

That, at least, is how many supporters and critics interpret his political project.

But the greatness of a state cannot be measured exclusively by territory.

The Mongol Empire once controlled immense territories.

The British Empire ruled lands across several continents.

The Soviet Union possessed a geopolitical sphere of influence far greater than that of Russia today.

History changes.

Borders change.

Empires disappear.

What remains is determined by the quality of institutions, science, education, and culture.

Twenty-first-century Russia could have created a new model of greatness.

Not an empire.

A civilization of development.

Instead of struggling for the past — competing for the future.

Instead of territory — human capital.

Instead of fear — attraction.

Instead of the political dependence of neighbouring states — economic interdependence.

Instead of the missile as an argument — technology as an argument.

That opportunity has not necessarily been lost forever.

But its price rises with every passing year.

A BUDGET IS A MORAL DOCUMENT

Ultimately, a state budget is more than a financial document.

It is a moral document.

It answers the question:

what matters most to us?

A child or a missile?

A hospital or a tank?

A university or another year of war?

A pensioner or a geopolitical ambition?

A scientific laboratory or a destroyed Ukrainian city?

Of course, a real budget is never composed of alternatives this simplistic.

A state simultaneously needs schools and an army.

Hospitals and security.

Social policy and defence.

But when the proportions change radically, the figures begin to speak for themselves.

That is why the budget of contemporary Russia is one of the most important historical documents of the Putin era.

It shows what the state truly believes in.

RUSSIA CAN PAY. THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT CAN AFFORD THE PRICE

This is the central conclusion of Part Three.

Russia is still capable of financing the war.

It possesses commodities.

Tax revenues.

Domestic borrowing capacity.

Industry.

Reserves.

A state apparatus.

The ability to redistribute resources.

I therefore do not predict its immediate economic collapse.

Such a prediction would be intellectually irresponsible.

But there is an enormous difference between two statements:

“I still have enough money to pay.”

and

“I can afford this purchase.”

The first describes the balance of an account today.

The second describes the consequences for an entire life tomorrow.

Russia can still pay.

But it is paying with more than roubles.

It is paying interest on future debt.

It is paying through more expensive credit.

It is paying through lost markets.

It is paying through technological constraints.

It is paying through foregone civilian investment.

It is paying through human labour.

It is paying with time.

And most terribly of all —

it is paying with people.

In Part One of this article, I wrote:

Russia is still alive. But its future is already being consumed.

In Part Two:

a state that has forgotten how to tell its leader “no” may one day find itself unable to stop his decision.

Now a third proposition must be added:

war does not have to bankrupt Russia in order to make it poorer.

It merely has to continue.

One year.

Another year.

And another.

Because great countries are not ruined only when they run out of money.

Sometimes they are ruined while the money is still there —

but the future has already been bought with it and sent to the front.

To be continued: PART FOUR — “THE COUNTRY THAT IS LOSING ITS PEOPLE: DEMOGRAPHY, EMIGRATION, SCIENCE, EDUCATION, AND THE DRAINING AWAY OF THE FUTURE”

PART FOUR

THE COUNTRY THAT IS LOSING ITS PEOPLE

DEMOGRAPHY, EMIGRATION, SCIENCE, EDUCATION, AND THE DRAINING AWAY OF THE FUTURE

There is one resource a state cannot extract from the earth.

It cannot be purchased on an international exchange.

It cannot be replaced by imports.

It cannot be printed.

It cannot be borrowed from a bank.

No new deposit can be discovered and brought into production.

That resource is the human being.

A new factory can be built.

But an engineer capable of designing complex machinery takes decades to develop.

Medical equipment can be purchased.

But a doctor cannot be produced on an assembly line.

A university building can be constructed.

But a scientific school does not come into existence when a government decree is signed.

Childbirth allowances can be increased.

But society cannot be ordered to have children.

Capital can be brought back.

Bringing back a lost generation is considerably more difficult.

That is why the deepest threat confronting contemporary Russia may lie neither on the front line, nor in the state budget, nor even in the energy market.

It lies in the demographic pyramid.

In the university lecture hall where there are fewer young people.

In the laboratory from which a scientist has departed.

In the district hospital that cannot find a doctor.

In the design bureau unable to recruit an engineer.

In the family that decides not to have a second child.

In the suitcase of the young professional leaving the country.

A state can survive the loss of money.

But a state that begins to lose its people gradually loses the very capacity to create a future.

DEMOGRAPHY DOES NOT OBEY ORDERS

Politics is accustomed to thinking in short periods.

A year.

A budget cycle.

A presidential term.

An election.

A five-year programme.

Demography operates on an entirely different timescale.

A child born today will become a fully qualified professional roughly two decades from now.

Tomorrow's surgeon must first be born.

Go to school.

Graduate.

Enter university.

Complete medical training.

Acquire clinical experience.

Only then does the state gain a qualified physician.

The same applies to an engineer.

A scientist.

A teacher.

An architect.

A programmer.

Demographic mistakes therefore operate with a delayed effect.

Today, they may be almost invisible.

Twenty years later, they can no longer be corrected quickly.

RUSSIA IS AGEING

Russia's demographic problems began long before the war against Ukraine.

It would be dishonest to attribute them exclusively to Vladimir Putin.

The country continues to bear the consequences of the demographic shocks of the twentieth century.

Revolution.

Civil war.

Collectivization.

Repression.

The Second World War.

Post-war demographic fluctuations.

The crisis of the 1990s.

Every historical catastrophe left its mark on the age structure of subsequent generations.

But that is precisely why responsible state policy should have treated Russia's human capital as its most precious national resource.

Because when a country already possesses a difficult demographic structure, another large-scale loss of people becomes considerably more dangerous.

Russia entered the twenty-first century without an inexhaustible population reserve.

And the war did not begin in a demographic vacuum.

It was superimposed upon a problem that already existed.

THE BIRTH RATE IS A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE IN THE FUTURE

Why do people have children?

There is no single economic formula capable of answering that question.

People have children in poor countries.

And people refrain from having children in wealthy ones.

High income alone does not guarantee a high birth rate.

But the decision to create a family is closely connected to one's perception of the future.

Is housing available?

Is there employment?

Will there be stability tomorrow?

Can the next ten years be planned?

What will the school be like?

Will a doctor be available?

What will happen to the country?

Will we have to leave?

Will there be another mobilization?

Will the war expand?

Having a child is one of the greatest acts of confidence in the future.

A person is, in effect, saying:

I believe there will be a tomorrow, and therefore I am bringing another human being into it.

That is why an atmosphere of historical uncertainty is exceptionally dangerous for demography.

The state can pay benefits.

Create maternity-capital programmes.

Subsidize mortgages.

But it cannot administratively manufacture the most important thing of all — a sense of a secure future.

A CHILD CANNOT BE COMPENSATED FOR WITH MONEY

Social support for families is necessary.

Especially for young families.

But demographic policy becomes misguided when a child is treated almost as the product of a financial incentive.

Human life is not an investment instrument.

A family does not decide to have a child solely after examining a table of government benefits.

It evaluates the entire world around it.

Quality of life.

Housing affordability.

Healthcare.

Education.

Security.

Prospects for professional development.

The political atmosphere.

And its own understanding of what the child's life may look like twenty years from now.

That is why demography is one of the most honest indicators of the condition of a society.

A person may tell a pollster that they are completely confident about the future.

But the decision not to have a child can sometimes say considerably more.

WAR KILLS DEMOGRAPHY TWICE

The first mechanism is obvious.

People die.

Russian servicemen die at the front.

Ukrainian servicemen die.

Civilians die.

Every death is a human tragedy.

But in demographic terms, the death of a young person has another consequence.

It is not only that person's own life that disappears.

Their future children may never be born.

And later — their grandchildren.

Demographic loss propagates through time.

But there is a second mechanism.

War changes the behaviour of those who remain alive.

People postpone starting families.

They leave.

They change their life plans.

They postpone buying a home.

They become reluctant to tie their children's future to uncertainty.

War therefore affects demography not only through the cemetery.

It affects demography through the decisions of the living.

EMIGRATION: A PERSON LEAVES ONCE, BUT THE COUNTRY LOSES THEM MANY TIMES OVER

Since 2022, a substantial number of Russian citizens have left the country.

Estimates vary.

And great caution is necessary here.

Not everyone who left after the beginning of the war emigrated permanently.

Some returned.

Some divide their lives between several countries.

Some left for economic reasons.

Others for political reasons.

Some feared mobilization.

Some lost their jobs.

Others received offers from foreign companies.

It would therefore be wrong to transform any single estimate of the number who left into an absolute truth.

But for strategic analysis, the total number is not the only thing that matters.

The composition of the migration flow matters.

When a young professional leaves the country, the state loses considerably more than one resident.

It loses an investment that has already been made.

That person attended a Russian school.

Perhaps a Russian university.

Their education was partly financed by society.

Their family invested in them.

Teachers invested in them.

Professors.

The state.

And the result of that long-term investment begins generating added value in another economy.

This is one of the most expensive forms of national loss.

A PROGRAMMER'S SUITCASE MAY BE WORTH MORE THAN AN OIL WELL

Oil can be extracted only once.

A human being can create new value for decades.

A talented programmer can create a company.

That company can create jobs.

Technology.

Exports.

Tax revenues.

New knowledge.

An engineer can design a product that will remain in production for twenty years.

A scientist can make a discovery.

A doctor can save thousands of patients.

A professor can educate hundreds of specialists.

That is why the economy of the twenty-first century competes above all not for territory.

It competes for people.

The United States competes for specialists.

Germany competes.

Canada.

The United Kingdom.

Israel.

Singapore.

The Gulf states.

European countries.

They create visa programmes.

Recruit scientists.

Facilitate the relocation of engineers.

Offer research grants.

Because the modern world has understood something fundamental:

the most valuable resource deposit lies inside the human mind.

And when Russia pushes part of its own educated population abroad, other countries receive that resource almost fully developed.

BRAIN DRAIN DOES NOT BEGIN AT THE AIRPORT

A person emigrates long before boarding an aircraft.

First, they cease to see a professional future.

Then they begin reading job advertisements.

Comparing salaries.

Researching universities.

Looking for laboratories.

Learning another language.

Contacting colleagues.

Receiving an invitation.

The airline ticket is merely the final stage.

That is why combating brain drain cannot be reduced to the slogan:

“Do not leave Russia.”

A different question must be answered:

why does the person want to leave?

If a scientist lacks equipment, they look for a laboratory.

If an entrepreneur does not trust the protection of property rights, they look for another jurisdiction.

If a journalist is afraid to write, they look for another newsroom.

If a programmer sees no access to an international market, they look for another company.

If a young person does not trust the future, they look for another country.

Emigration is often not the cause of a crisis.

It is its diagnosis.

THE COUNTRY LOSES MORE THAN THOSE WHO LEAVE

Suppose a thirty-year-old engineer leaves Russia.

Several years later, a child is born.

That child grows up in another country.

Speaks another language.

Attends another school.

Enters a foreign university.

Begins working in another economy.

Formally, Russia has lost one emigrant.

Historically, it may lose an entire family line.

That is why migration processes must be evaluated across generations.

A state that loses young citizens exports more than today's labour force.

It exports part of its future demography.

SCIENCE CANNOT LIVE BEHIND BARBED WIRE

Science is international by its very nature.

A physicist reads the work of a colleague from another country.

A biologist uses foreign equipment.

A mathematician attends an international conference.

A medical researcher works with international databases.

Scientists publish in international journals.

Research teams form across borders.

This is not a lack of patriotism.

It is how modern science works.

Newton does not belong only to England.

Einstein only to Germany or the United States.

Mendeleev only to Russia.

Scientific knowledge becomes part of a common human civilization.

That is why international isolation is particularly damaging to science.

An imported commodity can sometimes be replaced.

A scientific environment is considerably more difficult to replace.

A SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL TAKES DECADES TO BUILD AND CAN DISAPPEAR WITHIN YEARS

A great scientist is not an isolated individual.

A school exists around that scientist.

Students.

A laboratory.

A methodology.

A professional culture.

Networks.

A tradition of debate.

When a leading scientist leaves, the consequences are not confined to one vacant position.

A project may leave with them.

A team.

Professional connections.

Future grants.

Young researchers.

But an even more dangerous situation arises when nobody physically leaves and the scientific school gradually deteriorates inside the country.

Equipment ages.

International contacts diminish.

Young specialists choose more profitable careers.

Researchers choose safe subjects rather than important ones.

Universities become oriented towards reporting requirements rather than discovery.

Science can die this way without a single dramatic event.

The laboratory will still exist.

The sign will remain on the door.

But the discoveries will stop.

A GREAT SCIENTIFIC POWER CANNOT FEAR FREE THOUGHT

Science begins with the proposition:

“What if the accepted explanation is wrong?”

That is why science and authoritarian culture exist in profound intellectual tension.

The scientific method demands doubt.

Political dogma demands certainty.

Science demands evidence.

Propaganda demands repetition.

Science acknowledges error.

Ideology fears admitting it.

A researcher must be capable of questioning authority.

Otherwise, that person ceases to be a researcher.

A physicist cannot be expected to display intellectual courage in the laboratory while simultaneously being trained never to challenge authority in public life.

Free thought has no off switch.

A person either learns to ask questions or learns not to ask them.

RUSSIA ALREADY KNOWS THE PRICE OF EXILING THE MIND

Russian history is tragically rich in examples.

The Revolution and Civil War drove a vast segment of the intellectual elite out of the country.

The “Philosophers' Ships” became a symbol of the state's expulsion of thought.

Later, repression destroyed scientists, engineers, writers, and military specialists.

Others worked in an atmosphere of fear.

In subsequent decades, the Soviet Union lost dissidents, scientists, and cultural figures through emigration.

At the same time, the country created outstanding scientific schools.

This is one of the great paradoxes of Russian history.

Russia repeatedly produced exceptional intellect —

and periodically created conditions in which part of that intellect became inconvenient to the state.

The twenty-first century offered an opportunity finally to break that cycle.

It did not happen.

A UNIVERSITY MUST NOT BECOME A BARRACKS

A university exists for more than transferring a body of professional knowledge to a student.

It teaches people to think.

To argue.

To doubt.

To verify a source.

To distinguish fact from opinion.

To formulate a hypothesis.

To challenge a professor with evidence.

That is why a free university is one of the most important institutions of a strong state.

A poor state needs an obedient graduate.

A successful state needs an intelligent graduate.

And intelligent people are sometimes inconvenient.

They ask questions.

But it is precisely such inconvenient people who create technologies, companies, scientific schools, and reforms of government.

If a university becomes a place of ideological discipline, a country reduces political risk today at the cost of intellectual scarcity tomorrow.

A SCHOOL MUST NOT TEACH CHILDREN THAT WAR IS NORMAL

Schools carry a special responsibility.

An adult can distinguish state rhetoric from their own system of beliefs.

A child is only beginning to form an understanding of the world.

If a generation grows up in an environment in which war is constantly present in language, symbols, school activities, and public culture, a profound transformation of social consciousness takes place.

War ceases to be perceived as an extraordinary tragedy.

It becomes part of normality.

That is dangerous for any country.

Because the purpose of a school is not to prepare a child for perpetual war.

Its purpose is to prepare that child for life.

To teach them to create.

Not destroy.

To investigate.

To heal.

To build.

To write.

To invent.

To think.

And if a state wants a great future, it must first teach its children to value life.

THE TEACHER IS A STRATEGIC RESOURCE OF THE STATE

A country can purchase a modern computer.

But a computer cannot replace a good teacher.

A teacher can change the trajectory of a human life through a single conversation.

Recognize talent.

Offer support.

Explain.

Inspire curiosity.

Develop disciplined thought.

That is why the status of the teacher says no less about a state than the size of its armed forces.

If a talented university graduate does not regard teaching as a worthy professional career, the state will face the consequences twenty years later.

Because today's mathematics teacher is educating tomorrow's engineer.

The biology teacher — the future doctor.

The literature teacher — the future writer.

The history teacher — the future citizen.

Saving money on teachers means borrowing from the next generation.

A DOCTOR CANNOT BE REPLACED BY A PATRIOTIC SLOGAN

Human scarcity is particularly unforgiving in healthcare.

In a large city, the absence of one specialist may be an inconvenience.

In a small town, it can become a tragedy.

If there is no cardiologist, the patient must travel.

If there is no oncologist, time is lost.

If there is no surgeon, the very accessibility of medical care changes.

Russia possesses a strong medical tradition and a vast number of talented doctors.

But healthcare requires continuous investment in more than buildings.

It requires people.

Education.

Equipment.

Science.

International exchange of knowledge.

Decent working conditions.

And no geopolitical victory can comfort a person who, at the moment of illness, cannot find a doctor.

For the citizen, the state does not begin with a map of the world.

Sometimes it begins at the door of the local clinic.

THE PROVINCES PAY A HEAVIER DEMOGRAPHIC PRICE

Moscow can attract people.

St Petersburg can attract people.

Large regional centres also concentrate education, healthcare, culture, and employment.

But there is another Russia.

Small towns.

Settlements.

Villages.

Remote territories.

There, the loss of ten young families means considerably more than it does in a metropolis.

A school class closes.

Then the school itself.

A shop disappears.

A bus route is reduced.

The doctor leaves.

More families follow.

A demographic spiral begins.

People leave because infrastructure deteriorates.

Infrastructure deteriorates because there are fewer people.

For a country as territorially vast as Russia, this is more than a social problem.

It is a question of preserving the inhabited space of the country itself.

TERRITORY MUST BE POPULATED, NOT MERELY CONTROLLED

Russia likes to think geographically.

The largest country in the world.

Eleven time zones.

The Arctic.

Siberia.

The Far East.

Immense natural wealth.

But territory has national meaning only when human life exists upon it.

Cities.

Roads.

Schools.

Hospitals.

Businesses.

Universities.

Families.

Culture.

The presence of the state cannot be reduced to a border post.

If the population becomes concentrated in a handful of major metropolitan areas while enormous territories gradually lose inhabitants, a strategic imbalance emerges.

And once again the paradox of imperial thinking becomes visible.

A state can struggle for additional square kilometres —

while simultaneously losing people across the millions of square kilometres it already possesses.

THE MOST IMPORTANT TERRITORY OF RUSSIA IS NOT ON THE MAP

It is inside the mind of a child.

That is where the future state exists.

What does that child know?

What can they do?

What do they fear?

What do they dream about?

Can they argue?

Can they create?

Do they want to remain in Russia?

Do they want to build a family there?

Do they believe their abilities will be valued?

Or, at fifteen, are they already dreaming about how to leave?

A state can control millions of square kilometres and lose this small territory of human consciousness.

Then one day it may discover that its borders remain where they were —

but its future has left.

HUMAN CAPITAL CANNOT BE MOBILIZED BY DECREE

This is a fundamental error of bureaucratic thinking.

If money is lacking, a budget can be changed.

If soldiers are lacking, recruitment can be expanded.

If a particular commodity is scarce, production can be increased.

But no decree can declare:

“From 1 January, create one hundred thousand outstanding engineers.”

No order can command:

“By 2030, produce one thousand world-class scientists.”

Money can be allocated.

Conditions can be created.

Laboratories can be built.

But talent develops within a complex ecosystem.

Family.

School.

Teacher.

University.

Freedom of thought.

Competition.

An international environment.

Professional dignity.

Time.

That is why human capital is far easier to destroy than to rebuild.

TRUST IS ALSO CAPITAL

A person remains in a country for more than a salary.

They remain where they feel part of the future.

Where they trust the rules.

Where they can build a career.

Where they believe their child will receive a good education.

Where their property is protected.

Where professional success does not depend upon political proximity.

Where life can be planned.

Trust cannot be measured in a single budget line.

But without it, long-term development cannot exist.

When trust disappears, people begin to create contingency plans.

A second passport.

An account abroad.

A foreign university for a child.

Property in another country.

Remote employment.

An emigration plan.

Physically, they may still be in Russia.

But part of their future has already left.

BRINGING PEOPLE BACK WILL BE HARDER THAN LOSING THEM

Suppose the war ends one day.

The political atmosphere changes.

Russia says to those who left:

Come back.

Some will return.

Love of one's homeland can be extraordinarily powerful.

Language.

Family.

Culture.

Memories.

Childhood.

The graves of ancestors.

All these bind a person to a country far more deeply than any political regime.

But many will already have built another life.

They will have acquired citizenship.

Bought a home.

Created a company.

Their children will attend local schools.

A spouse will have a career.

There will be friends.

Professional networks.

Returning will require abandoning a reality that has already been built.

A specialist can therefore be lost for the price of a single airline ticket.

Bringing that person back may prove impossible at any price.

ONE CANNOT LOVE RUSSIA WHILE DESPISING THE RUSSIAN CITIZEN

Political rhetoric often invokes grand words.

Russia.

Civilization.

Historical mission.

Statehood.

Sovereignty.

Empire.

Victory.

But behind every one of these words there must stand an actual human being.

Not an abstract “people.”

A living person.

With a home.

A family.

Illnesses.

Work.

Fears.

Dreams.

A child.

Ageing parents.

A state that speaks of loving Russia must first value the life of the Russian citizen.

Because Russia does not exist without Russians.

GREATNESS IS WHEN PEOPLE WANT TO STAY

There is an exceptionally simple measure of a successful state.

Not the number of missiles.

Not the size of its territory.

Not the number of speeches about sovereignty.

But the answer a young, talented person gives to the question:

“Where do you want to spend your life?”

If the answer is:

Here,

the state has succeeded.

If the best graduates want to stay.

If scientists want to return.

If foreign specialists want to come.

If families want to raise children there.

If entrepreneurs want to keep their capital inside the country.

If professors want to work at national universities.

If doctors see a future in regional hospitals.

That is one of the most convincing forms of national greatness.

People cannot be ordered to dream.

PUTIN'S RUSSIA IS FIGHTING FOR LAND WHEN IT SHOULD BE FIGHTING FOR PEOPLE

Here, in my view, lies one of the greatest historical paradoxes of the present era.

The Russian leadership explains enormous sacrifices in terms of security, history, territory, and geopolitics.

But the principal strategic competition of the twenty-first century is taking place in an entirely different arena.

For the engineer.

For the scientist.

For the doctor.

For the entrepreneur.

For the child.

For the family.

For the confidence of the younger generation.

For the ability of a human being to bind their own future to the future of the state.

Territory can be gained while population is lost.

A city can be brought under control while a thousand specialists are lost.

A line on a map can be changed while the demographic pyramid is damaged for decades.

A geopolitical victory can be proclaimed while the most talented children of the victors dream of living somewhere else.

Then the question becomes unavoidable:

what exactly has been won?

A COUNTRY DOES NOT BEGIN TO DIE WHEN ITS LAST PERSON DIES

It begins much earlier.

When too few children are born.

When young people cease to see a future.

When a scientist closes a laboratory.

When a doctor leaves.

When a teacher becomes exhausted.

When a provincial town empties.

When a family sends a child abroad to study already expecting that the child will never return.

When talent begins to regard emigration not as an adventure, but as the rescue of a professional future.

This is not a spectacular collapse.

There is no explosion.

No date of surrender.

No final day of the state.

There is only the slow disappearance of possibilities.

And that is precisely what makes it so dangerous.

RUSSIA MUST RETURN TO THE HUMAN BEING

If Russia ever chooses to escape its present historical trap, it will have to begin not with another imperial project.

Not with another doctrine of spheres of influence.

Not with another map of historical lands.

It will have to begin with the human being.

The child.

The family.

The teacher.

The doctor.

The engineer.

The scientist.

The entrepreneur.

The worker.

The pensioner.

The small town.

The university.

The right of the individual to think freely and build a life freely.

Because the human being is the only resource for whose sake the state has any reason to exist at all.

RUSSIA'S MOST TERRIBLE EXPORT IS ITS OWN FUTURE

Russia has exported oil.

Gas.

Metals.

Grain.

Fertilizers.

Weapons.

But there is another export that will never appear proudly in a government report.

The scientist who left.

The engineer who left.

The programmer who left.

The entrepreneur who left.

The young family that left.

Their children.

Their future companies.

Their future discoveries.

Their taxes.

Their books.

Their music.

Their inventions.

Their descendants who have not yet been born.

This is an export no country can afford indefinitely.

Because one day the oil will run out.

Gas may lose part of its importance.

Technologies will change.

Political eras will pass.

But the human being will remain the principal source of national wealth.

Part One of this article examined a future being consumed by war.

Part Two examined institutions that had lost their capacity to restrain political will.

Part Three examined an economy capable of paying for war at the cost of its own development.

Now the most important point must be made:

all these losses are ultimately measured in human beings.

Not in roubles.

Not in barrels.

Not in percentages of GDP.

Not in square kilometres.

In human beings.

And if a state, in pursuit of greatness, begins consuming people faster than it creates a future for them, one day it will be left with magnificent symbols —

and fewer and fewer people for whose sake those symbols were ever supposed to exist.

To be continued: PART FIVE — “THE LONELINESS OF A GREAT POWER: EUROPE, CHINA, SANCTIONS, AND THE GEOPOLITICAL PRICE OF WAR”

PART FIVE

THE LONELINESS OF A GREAT POWER

EUROPE, UKRAINE, NATO, CHINA, THE GLOBAL SOUTH, AND THE GEOPOLITICAL PRICE OF WAR

A great power differs from a merely powerful state not by the number of missiles it possesses.

Nor even by the number of nuclear warheads.

A true great power is capable of shaping the space around it.

People want to come to it.

Other countries want to trade with it.

Students want to attend its universities.

People want to hold wealth in its currency.

Its diplomacy is trusted.

Its culture is perceived as attractive.

Its allies regard their relationship with it as an asset rather than an inevitability.

Its adversaries are forced to reckon not only with its capacity to destroy, but also with its capacity to create.

That is why a state's influence cannot be measured solely by the fear it inspires.

Fear is also a form of influence.

But it is the most expensive and unstable form.

A person may fear you while simultaneously waiting for the moment when they can free themselves from you.

A state can force a neighbour to reckon with its power.

But it cannot force that neighbour to trust it.

Since February 2022, Russia has demonstrated to the world that it remains capable of waging a vast war, mobilizing resources, withstanding international pressure, and inflicting immense destruction.

But another question arose at the same time:

did this demonstration actually make Russia stronger?

Or did Russia prove its capacity to wage war at the cost of gradually losing its capacity to attract?

GEOPOLITICAL POWER IS NOT MERELY THE ABILITY TO SAY “NO”

In Russian political culture over recent decades, sovereignty has increasingly been interpreted as the ability to resist external pressure.

Not to submit.

Not to concede.

Not to allow others to dictate terms.

To make decisions independently.

All of these are indeed elements of state sovereignty.

But only elements.

True sovereignty also means the ability to choose among alternatives.

If a state can trade only with a limited circle of partners, its freedom of choice diminishes.

If it depends on one principal market, that freedom diminishes.

If critically important technologies can be obtained only through a handful of channels, that freedom diminishes.

If diplomatic relations with an entire continent are shattered, room for manoeuvre diminishes.

Sovereignty is not isolation.

Sovereignty is the number of doors a state is capable of opening for itself.

Since 2022, Russia has loudly slammed several of the largest doors shut.

It is now compelled to enter far more often through those that remain.

EUROPE WAS MORE THAN A MARKET

For centuries, Russia's relationship with Europe was contradictory.

Russia fought European powers.

Formed alliances.

Borrowed technologies.

Competed.

Learned.

Influenced European culture.

And was itself influenced by it.

St Petersburg was built as a window onto Europe for a reason.

Russian literature became part of European civilization.

Russian music.

Ballet.

Science.

Philosophy.

Diplomacy.

Even when Russia argued with Europe, it argued within a shared historical space.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a unique opportunity emerged to create a new model of relations.

Not relations between an empire and a bloc confronting it.

But between an enormous state and an enormous economic space with substantial interests in one another.

Russia possessed raw materials.

Europe possessed technology, capital, and a vast market.

There were cultural ties.

Scientific ties.

Tourism.

Educational exchanges.

Millions of human connections.

It was not an idyll.

There were conflicts.

Disagreements.

NATO enlargement.

The war in Georgia.

Crimea.

Sanctions.

Mutual distrust.

Yet even amid those conflicts, an infrastructure of relations existed that created interdependence.

Since 2022, a substantial part of that architecture has been destroyed.

This is one of Russia's greatest geopolitical losses since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A MARKET CAN BE LOST. LOSING A GENERATION IS FAR MORE SERIOUS

Trade relations can, in principle, be restored.

Political relations can be restored as well.

History contains many examples of former enemies becoming partners.

But human perceptions recover much more slowly.

Before the war, entire generations of Europeans perceived Russia first through Tolstoy.

Dostoevsky.

Tchaikovsky.

Russian ballet.

St Petersburg.

The Hermitage.

Space exploration.

Science.

The victory over Nazism.

Yes, there were fears and political conflicts.

But Russia remained a complex phenomenon — simultaneously European, Eurasian, culturally immense, and politically contradictory.

Since 2022, for vast numbers of younger Europeans, the word “Russia” has become associated above all with war.

With Bucha.

Mariupol.

Missiles.

Destroyed Ukrainian cities.

Refugees.

Nuclear threats.

This represents an enormous loss of soft power.

Because a state may one day sign a peace treaty.

But it cannot sign a decree ordering:

“Beginning tomorrow, trust Russia again.”

UKRAINE HAS BECOME THE GREATEST FAILURE OF RUSSIAN SOFT POWER

The geopolitical price of the war cannot be discussed without confronting its central paradox.

For decades, Russia maintained that Russians and Ukrainians were historically close peoples.

A shared history.

Family ties.

Linguistic proximity.

A shared cultural space.

Economic relations.

Millions of relatives on both sides of the border.

If that is indeed true, then it is precisely why the war has been even more destructive to Russia's long-term interests.

Military force can seize territory.

Artillery cannot create fraternity.

State infrastructure can be destroyed.

A missile cannot create loyalty.

A person can be forced to flee their home.

They cannot be forced to love those whom they hold responsible for destroying it.

Russian influence in Ukraine once rested on language, culture, economics, family relationships, shared history, and an immense number of personal ties.

The war transformed a substantial part of that capital into hostility.

From a geopolitical perspective, it is difficult to imagine a more costly result.

YOU CANNOT BOMB YOUR NEIGHBOUR AND SIMULTANEOUSLY DEMAND THAT IT REMAIN WITHIN YOUR SPHERE OF INFLUENCE

A sphere of influence exists only for as long as a state within it regards relations with the centre as at least partly beneficial.

An empire can hold its periphery through coercion.

But doing so is extraordinarily expensive.

Modern influence is built differently.

Through markets.

Investment.

Culture.

Infrastructure.

Education.

Language.

Security.

Diplomacy.

Successful powers therefore create a space of attraction around themselves.

People should want to move towards you.

Companies should want access to your market.

Students should want to attend your universities.

Neighbouring states should want good relations with you.

If maintaining influence continually requires the threat of force, that is no longer evidence of the strength of influence.

It is evidence of its disappearance.

NATO: THE WAR THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HALT ENLARGEMENT ENLARGED THE ALLIANCE

For many years, the Russian leadership identified NATO enlargement as one of the principal threats to national security.

One can debate how justified Russian concerns were.

One can criticize Western decisions after the end of the Cold War.

One can discuss failures of European and American diplomacy.

But one fact cannot be eliminated through political rhetoric.

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden made historic decisions to join NATO.

Finland became a member of the Alliance in 2023.

Sweden followed in 2024.

Two countries with long traditions of military non-alignment changed their strategic orientation.

Finland is particularly significant.

It shares an extensive border with Russia.

What Russian policy was, according to the Kremlin's stated logic, supposed to prevent occurred as a consequence of the war itself.

NATO moved geographically closer to Russia.

This is one of the clearest strategic paradoxes of the entire war.

EUROPE BEGAN TO REARM

Not long ago, Russia faced a Europe in which many states had spent decades reducing military expenditure.

Much of Europe proceeded on the assumption that another major continental war had become virtually impossible.

February 2022 destroyed that assumption.

European countries began reassessing defence budgets.

Expanding weapons production.

Strengthening NATO's eastern flank.

Investing in air defence.

Ammunition.

Military infrastructure.

Russia wanted a more secure strategic environment.

Instead, it found itself facing a far more apprehensive and militarized Europe.

One may argue that Europe had already been moving in this direction.

But the war gave the process historic acceleration.

In geopolitics, intention matters less than outcome.

And the outcome is that Russia's western frontier has become considerably more militarized than it was before February 2022.

RUSSIA HELPED REVIVE WHAT IT WANTED TO WEAKEN

Before 2022, NATO was experiencing serious internal disputes.

Europeans argued with the United States.

In 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of NATO's “brain death.”

European strategic autonomy was being debated.

The question of the Alliance's future was genuine.

The war transformed the political atmosphere.

NATO once again acquired an obvious adversary.

The Alliance regained a clear rationale.

Countries that had maintained neutrality for decades joined it.

Others began demanding a stronger American presence.

The historical paradox is unmistakable:

a policy intended to resist NATO helped restore its internal legitimacy.

AMERICA BECAME INDISPENSABLE TO EUROPE ONCE AGAIN

For many years, Russia had an interest in a more autonomous Europe.

A Europe capable of conducting foreign policy independently of Washington.

From Moscow's perspective, this was rational.

The more centres of power that existed within the West, the greater Russia's opportunities for diplomatic manoeuvre.

But the war pushed much of Europe back towards the American security system.

When a state feels threatened, it seeks the strongest available guarantee.

For most European members of NATO, that guarantee remains the United States.

Thus, Moscow's policy of reducing American influence near Russia's borders has, in many respects, reinforced the perceived necessity of that influence.

Geopolitics sometimes possesses a cruel irony.

CHINA: THE PARTNER THAT BECAME INDISPENSABLE

Having lost much of its relationship with the West, Russia accelerated its turn towards China.

That turn is not, in itself, a mistake.

Russia and China are neighbours.

Major powers.

Economic cooperation between them is natural.

China represents an enormous market.

Russia possesses resources.

There are infrastructure, political, and strategic interests.

The problem does not begin when Russia cooperates with China.

It begins when Russia has too few comparable alternatives.

Relations between partners are most balanced when each can say:

“If these terms do not suit me, I have another option.”

The fewer the alternatives, the smaller the freedom to negotiate.

Strategic dependence can therefore emerge even between states that officially describe their relationship as a partnership.

BEIJING DOES NOT NEED A WEAK RUSSIA. BUT NEITHER DOES IT NEED AN EXCESSIVELY INDEPENDENT ONE

China has an interest in a stable Russia.

It does not need chaos along its enormous northern frontier.

It needs Russian resources.

Political coordination on a range of international issues.

Transport routes.

Stability across Eurasia.

But China acts according to Chinese national interests.

And it should.

It has no obligation to rescue Russian ambitions.

No obligation to pay for Russian geopolitical decisions.

No obligation to offer Moscow the best commercial terms out of a sense of historical friendship.

In international politics, friendship exists for as long as interests coincide.

Russia's dependence on the Chinese market must therefore be assessed without romanticism.

Beijing will use its bargaining position just as Moscow would in its place.

“JUNIOR PARTNER” IS NOT AN INSULT. IT IS A STRUCTURE OF POWER

The phrase “China's junior partner” is often used as a political insult.

That obstructs serious analysis.

What matters is not the emotional label but the structure of the relationship.

Whose economy is larger?

Whose market matters more to the other?

Who has a wider range of alternative suppliers?

Who possesses the deeper industrial base?

Whose technological ecosystem is stronger?

Which side can replace the other more easily?

Which side is more dependent on bilateral trade?

The answers reveal the real balance far better than diplomatic formulas.

Russia remains a nuclear superpower.

A permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

An enormous state.

A major commodity supplier.

A military power.

It is not a Chinese vassal.

But the structural asymmetry between the two states has increased.

And that is a direct consequence of the contraction of Russia's alternatives.

INDIA HAS NOT BECOME RUSSIA'S ALLY AGAINST THE WEST

Russia has preserved important relations with India.

India has purchased substantial volumes of Russian oil.

The two countries share decades of military-technical cooperation.

Moscow and New Delhi possess their own history of strategic relations.

But India is demonstrating precisely what Russia itself once sought to practise:

a multi-vector foreign policy.

India cooperates with Russia.

At the same time, it deepens relations with the United States.

Participates in the Quad.

Develops ties with Europe.

Competes with China.

Protects its own interests.

This is neither a “pro-Russian” nor an “anti-Russian” policy.

It is an Indian policy.

That is why pointing to relations with India as evidence of the formation of a unified anti-Western bloc is misleading.

No such unified bloc exists.

THE GLOBAL SOUTH IS NOT A NEW WARSAW PACT

The term “Global South” is convenient.

But it conceals extraordinarily diverse states.

Brazil.

India.

South Africa.

Saudi Arabia.

The United Arab Emirates.

Indonesia.

Countries across Africa.

Latin America.

Asia.

They possess different political systems.

Different interests.

Different relationships with the United States.

China.

Russia.

Europe.

Many did not join the Western sanctions regime against Russia.

That is an important fact.

It demonstrates the limits of the West's ability to isolate Moscow globally.

But it does not follow that these countries support Russia's war or wish to enter a Russian sphere of influence.

In many cases, they simply refuse to choose somebody else's side.

They want to trade with everyone.

Receive investment from everyone.

Purchase Russian resources.

American technology.

Chinese infrastructure.

European equipment.

Perhaps they have understood contemporary sovereignty better than anyone:

do not close doors; keep as many of them open as possible.

BRICS MATTERS, BUT IT IS NOT A NEW SOVIET BLOC

The expansion of BRICS reflects a genuine transformation of the international system.

The West no longer possesses the relative economic dominance it enjoyed after the end of the Cold War.

China has grown.

India has grown.

New centres of capital have emerged in the Middle East and Asia.

The world is indeed becoming more multipolar.

Russia has a place in this process.

But multipolarity does not automatically mean Russian leadership.

And BRICS is not a military-political bloc led by Moscow.

Its members possess their own interests.

Some of those interests conflict.

China and India have serious disagreements.

The Gulf states maintain close relations with the West.

Brazil pursues its own foreign policy.

Russia can therefore use BRICS as an important diplomatic platform.

But treating it as proof of a new world organized around Moscow would amount to self-deception.

SANCTIONS HAVE CREATED NOT ONLY AN ECONOMIC BUT ALSO A DIPLOMATIC BARRIER

In Part Three, I addressed the economic dimension of sanctions.

Something else matters here.

Sanctions alter the architecture of international relations.

A company thinks twice before signing a contract.

A bank assesses additional risks.

An investor asks what the future may bring.

A university examines legal restrictions.

A government evaluates the secondary consequences of cooperation.

Even where relations with Russia remain possible, they often become more complicated.

Additional friction emerges.

Geopolitical influence is determined not only by whether a transaction is formally possible.

It is also determined by how easy it is to interact with you.

A great power should function as a centre of attraction for flows.

Capital.

People.

Ideas.

Technology.

Goods.

When a growing number of legal and political barriers surround a state, its gravitational field weakens.

THE POST-SOVIET SPACE IS WATCHING AND DRAWING CONCLUSIONS

The war carries particular significance for the states of the former Soviet Union.

Kazakhstan.

Armenia.

Azerbaijan.

Georgia.

Moldova.

Central Asia.

Belarus occupies a special position because of its deep dependence on Russia.

But other states view the war through the prism of their own sovereignty.

If Moscow asserts a right to intervene in the fate of a neighbouring state on the basis of history, security, language, or cultural proximity, other former Soviet republics inevitably ask:

could this logic one day be applied to us?

Even if the Russian leadership has no such intentions, the precedent itself changes perceptions.

And international politics is shaped not only by intentions.

It is also shaped by perceptions of intentions.

ARMENIA BECAME A WARNING

For many years, Armenia was regarded as one of Russia's closest partners in the South Caucasus.

A Russian military base.

Membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

Economic ties.

Historical proximity.

But the crises surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh and Yerevan's subsequent disappointment with the effectiveness of Russian security guarantees produced a serious deterioration in relations.

Armenia began expanding contacts with Europe and the United States.

The causes of this process are complex and cannot be reduced solely to the war in Ukraine.

But the Ukrainian war constrained Russian capabilities and altered the regional balance.

For a great power, this offers a fundamental lesson:

an alliance does not exist merely because a treaty was once signed.

It exists while the ally continues to believe that the guarantee is real.

CENTRAL ASIA HAS BECOME MORE AUTONOMOUS

For decades, Russia possessed enormous influence in Central Asia.

The Russian language.

Labour migration.

A shared Soviet history.

Security.

Economics.

But the states of the region have gradually broadened their external relations.

China.

Turkey.

The European Union.

The Gulf states.

The United States.

This is a natural process in the maturation of independent states.

But the weakening of Russia's near-monopoly on regional influence accelerates it.

Kazakhstan is particularly revealing.

It maintains deep relations with Russia.

At the same time, it emphasizes its own sovereignty and develops alternative routes and partnerships.

Here Moscow encounters the same fundamental rule:

a neighbour can be held by fear only for a limited time.

Partnership requires attraction.

DIPLOMACY BEGINS WHERE THE ULTIMATUM ENDS

Strong diplomacy does not mean weakness.

Quite the opposite.

Real diplomacy allows a state to achieve results without war.

If every strategic conflict ultimately requires military force, the diplomatic system has failed.

The highest form of statecraft is to make the use of force unnecessary.

Build a coalition.

Offer a compromise.

Divide adversaries.

Attract neutral states.

Create economic interdependence.

Offer guarantees.

Gain time.

Change the other side's incentives.

Russia possesses one of the world's oldest diplomatic traditions.

Gorchakov.

The Soviet diplomatic school.

Immense negotiating experience.

But diplomacy becomes useless when political leadership treats compromise itself as defeat.

Compromise is not always capitulation.

Sometimes it is the most economical form of victory.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROVIDE SECURITY — AND AT THE SAME TIME CREATE ISOLATION

Russia possesses one of the world's two largest nuclear arsenals, alongside the United States.

This guarantees it a unique status.

No rational state can regard a direct major war with Russia as an ordinary military scenario.

Nuclear deterrence works.

But nuclear weapons have limits as instruments of political power.

They can deter invasion.

They cannot persuade a foreign investor to build a factory.

They cannot persuade a scientist to work at a Russian university.

They cannot make a neighbouring state feel trust.

They cannot create technology.

They cannot restore a reputation.

The nuclear bomb is the ultimate argument for the survival of the state.

It is an extraordinarily poor instrument for creating an attractive world around that state.

FEAR CREATES COALITIONS AGAINST THOSE WHO INSPIRE IT

This is one of the oldest laws of international politics.

If one state becomes excessively threatening, others begin to unite.

Not necessarily because they like one another.

Because they fear a third party.

European history is filled with such balancing coalitions.

A wise great power therefore seeks to be strong enough to command respect without becoming so threatening that every neighbour regards coalition-building against it as a matter of survival.

Since 2022, Russia has dramatically increased the perception of threat across much of Europe.

And it has received a predictable response.

More NATO.

More American presence.

More European armament.

More defence planning.

In other words, more of precisely what Russian policy had described for decades as a threat.

THE CENTRAL PARADOX OF PUTIN'S GEOPOLITICS

If the outcome is reduced to a single formula, it is a harsh one.

Russia began the war while explaining it as necessary to strengthen its security.

But it received:

an enlarged NATO;

the accession of Finland and Sweden;

a more militarized Europe;

relations with Ukraine damaged for a generation;

reduced energy interdependence with Europe;

greater dependence on China;

more autonomous behaviour among parts of the post-Soviet space;

extensive sanctions restrictions;

reduced Western investment and technological ties;

and a reputation as a state from which many neighbours now seek additional protection.

Every one of these points can be debated.

The mistakes of the West can be identified.

And there were mistakes.

One can discuss American policy.

NATO enlargement.

Iraq.

Yugoslavia.

Libya.

Double standards.

All of these deserve serious analysis in their own right.

But the mistakes of other states do not eliminate the responsibility of the Russian leadership for the consequences of its own decisions.

Geopolitics is not a courtroom in which proving the guilt of another party is enough.

It is the art of securing the national interest.

The relevant question is therefore not:

“Was the West always right?”

Of course not.

The question is different:

“Did the Kremlin's decisions make Russia safer, freer in its choices, and more influential?”

It is becoming increasingly difficult to answer in the affirmative.

ANTI-WESTERNISM IS NOT A FOREIGN POLICY

A state cannot define itself solely through opposition to another state or civilization.

If political identity is built around the principle:

we are whatever the West is not,

then the West paradoxically becomes the centre of that identity.

Every decision is evaluated through it.

Every partner is assessed in relation to it.

Every conflict is interpreted through it.

Genuine independence looks different.

Russia should be Russia not because it is anti-American.

Not because it is anti-British.

Not because it is anti-European.

But because it possesses its own positive model of development.

Its own science.

Its own law.

Its own culture.

Its own economy.

Its own conception of a dignified life.

A civilization that constantly explains itself through its enemy becomes psychologically dependent upon that enemy.

RUSSIA DOES NOT HAVE TO BECOME THE WEST

This, too, must be stated clearly.

Criticism of current Russian policy does not mean demanding that Russia become a copy of the United States, Germany, or France.

Russia possesses its own history.

Its own culture.

Its own scale.

Its own tradition of statehood.

Its own interests.

It has every right to disagree with Washington.

With Brussels.

With London.

With anyone.

A sovereign Russia is necessary both for Russia itself and for the international system.

But there is an enormous difference between autonomy and self-isolation.

Between sovereignty and loneliness.

Between independence and the absence of alternatives.

Between defending the national interest and making conflict with the outside world the foundation of national identity.

RUSSIA COULD HAVE BEEN A BRIDGE

Geography gave Russia a unique position.

Europe to the west.

China to the east.

Central Asia to the south.

The Arctic to the north.

The Pacific Ocean.

The Black Sea.

The Caspian.

An immense territory between the planet's largest economic centres.

Russia could have become one of Eurasia's principal bridges.

A transport bridge.

An energy bridge.

A scientific bridge.

A cultural bridge.

A diplomatic bridge.

It could simultaneously have maintained deep relations with Germany and China.

With India and France.

With Central Asia and Japan.

With the Middle East and the United States.

That is what a truly multi-vector great power would look like.

Not choosing between East and West.

But compelling East and West to compete for cooperation with Russia.

That would have been sovereignty in its most complete form.

INSTEAD OF A BRIDGE, RUSSIA BUILT A WALL — AND FOUND ITSELF ON ONE SIDE OF IT

A wall creates a sense of security.

It separates.

Protects.

Creates a clear boundary between “us” and “them.”

But a wall has another side.

It restricts the movement of the person who built it.

Russia sought to reduce Western influence over itself.

But at the same time, it reduced its own influence over the West.

It sought to diminish Western leverage.

But lost part of its own leverage.

It sought to demonstrate independence.

But increased China's importance.

It sought to halt NATO.

But acquired new NATO members.

It sought to preserve Ukraine within its historical orbit.

But contributed to the formation of a Ukrainian identity in which resistance to Russia became one of the central elements.

That is the tragedy of a mistaken geopolitical strategy:

a state can win an individual tactical episode and lose the architecture of an entire generation.

REPUTATION IS ALSO A STRATEGIC ASSET

States, like individuals, possess reputations.

One may consider this unfair.

One may point out that other states have also waged wars and committed grave wrongs.

That is true.

But international politics offers no exemption from consequences on the principle that:

“others did it too.”

Reputation affects decisions.

Where to invest.

Where to send a child to study.

With which state to sign a defence agreement.

Where to establish a regional office.

How to assess long-term political risk.

Russian culture remains great.

The Russian language has not disappeared.

Russian literature has not become less valuable.

Russian scientists have not lost their talent.

The Russian people cannot be equated with the decisions of one political leadership.

This distinction is fundamental.

But the international reputation of the Russian state has suffered immense damage.

Restoring it will take far longer than signing any future peace agreement.

AFTER THE WAR, ANOTHER STRUGGLE WILL BEGIN — THE STRUGGLE FOR TRUST

One day, the present war will end.

All wars end.

On the battlefield.

At the negotiating table.

Through an armistice.

Through an agreement.

Through exhaustion.

Through political change.

History will find its form.

But the following day, a much longer task will begin.

Restoring the trust of neighbours.

Rebuilding relations with Europe.

Defining a new model of relations with Ukraine.

Reducing excessive dependence on any single external partner.

Bringing back investment.

Restoring scientific contacts.

Bringing back students.

Bringing back tourists.

Bringing back normality.

This will take years.

Perhaps decades.

And no missile can perform this work.

It will have to be done by diplomats.

Entrepreneurs.

Scientists.

Writers.

Musicians.

Teachers.

A new generation of politicians.

And ordinary people.

RUSSIA IS NOT CONDEMNED TO LONELINESS

History does not end with Vladimir Putin.

Just as it did not end with Stalin.

Brezhnev.

Gorbachev.

Yeltsin.

Political eras appear eternal only to those living inside them.

Later, they become chapters in textbooks.

Russia has survived catastrophes far more terrible than the present crisis.

And it has returned.

It possesses immense cultural capital.

Natural resources.

An educated population.

A scientific tradition.

A geographical position that no sanctions regime can abolish.

Nuclear status.

A permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

An immense historical legacy.

The question, therefore, is not whether Russia can once again become one of the world's major centres of power.

It can.

The question is at what price, and after what degree of political reconsideration.

A GREAT POWER IS NOT ONE THAT IS FEARED

Fear is sometimes necessary.

Potential aggressors must understand the price of aggression.

Military deterrence is part of national security.

But if fear becomes the state's principal export, that is a sign of strategic poverty.

A great power is one with which cooperation itself possesses value.

One whose relationships others fear losing not because of missiles —

but because they would lose a market.

Technology.

Investment.

Science.

Culture.

Security.

Diplomatic support.

Opportunity.

Real power exists when a state does not have to keep reminding everyone that it is powerful.

They already know.

THE MOST DANGEROUS OUTCOME OF WAR IS NEITHER DEFEAT NOR VICTORY

The most dangerous outcome is the strategic diminution of Russia.

Russia may remain territorially immense.

Nuclear-armed.

Militarily powerful.

Rich in resources.

A permanent member of the Security Council.

And simultaneously become a state with fewer foreign-policy options.

Less trust.

Less soft power.

Less presence in the European space.

Greater dependence on a small number of partners.

More anxious neighbours.

More heavily armed borders.

That is geopolitical diminution.

Not the disappearance of the state.

Not capitulation.

Not disintegration.

But a contraction of freedom of action.

For a great power, that is particularly dangerous.

PUTIN WANTED TO RETURN RUSSIA TO HISTORY — BUT RUSSIA HAD NEVER LEFT IT

Russia did not need a war to prove its historical significance.

The country of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky does not need artillery to prove its greatness.

The country of Mendeleev and Korolev does not need missile strikes to prove its importance.

A country that defeated Nazism at an unimaginable human cost should not turn the memory of that victory into permission for another endless war.

Russia was already part of world history.

The question was never whether the world would notice it.

The question was what Russia would offer the world in the twenty-first century.

A new fear?

Or a new idea of development?

THE GREATEST GEOPOLITICAL LOSS IS FREEDOM OF CHOICE

Ultimately, this is the central conclusion of Part Five.

A strong state possesses choices.

Between East and West — it does not choose one; it works with both.

Between China and Europe — it cooperates with both.

Between India and the United States — it maintains relations with both.

Between competing centres of power — it manoeuvres.

That is the space in which great diplomacy operates.

A weak state is forced to choose from among those still willing to work with it.

Russia has not become a weak state.

But its room for choice has narrowed.

And that is what makes the current course historically dangerous.

Because a state may possess thousands of nuclear warheads —

and fewer diplomatic opportunities.

It may control an immense territory —

and possess fewer economic routes.

It may speak endlessly about sovereignty —

while becoming more dependent on a single market.

It may demand recognition as a great power —

while simultaneously driving its neighbours to unite against it.

In Part One of this article, I wrote about a country consuming its own future.

In Part Two — about a political system that had lost its ability to restrain the decisions of a single centre of power.

In Part Three — about an economy capable of financing war while paying for it with its own development.

In Part Four — about the people without whom no future can exist at all.

Part Five adds another dimension:

Russia is consuming the space of its own freedom in the outside world.

Not every form of isolation is independence.

Not every act of defiance is sovereignty.

Not every form of fear is respect.

Not every territory represents influence.

And the ability to continue a war does not prove that beginning that war was strategically wise.

A great power begins not where others are forced to fear it.

It begins where others understand:

without cooperation with this country, the world becomes poorer.

Russia once possessed an extraordinary opportunity to become precisely such a power.

And it still possesses the resources to become one again.

But first it will have to escape the historical trap in which greatness is measured by the number of enemies, territory by blood, security by the fear of neighbours, and independence by the number of bridges burned.

Because a country that has destroyed every bridge truly does become independent of the opposite shore.

There is only one problem:

it can no longer cross to the other side.

To be continued: PART SIX — “AFTER PUTIN: WHAT WILL BE LEFT TO RUSSIA, AND CAN ITS FUTURE BE RESTORED?”

PART SIX. FINAL

AFTER PUTIN

WHAT WILL BE LEFT TO RUSSIA, AND CAN ITS FUTURE BE RESTORED?

Every political era eventually comes to an end.

Governments end.

Presidents leave.

Dictators die.

Cabinets collapse.

Parties disappear.

State doctrines change.

What seemed eternal yesterday becomes a paragraph in a history textbook several decades later.

Vladimir Putin, too, will one day cease to govern Russia.

It does not matter precisely how his political era will end.

Through a constitutional transition.

An internal transformation of the system.

His biological departure.

A political crisis.

A decision by the elite itself.

History does not announce the date of its next chapter in advance.

But inevitably, it opens one.

And then Russia will confront a question far more difficult than the question of who will become the next president.

What will remain after Putin?

Not who will inherit the office in the Kremlin.

Not who will head the government.

Not what surname will appear on the ballot paper.

But what kind of country the next generation will inherit.

With what boundaries of trust.

With what economy.

With what demography.

With what institutions.

With what society.

With what relationship with Ukraine.

With Europe.

With the world.

And, finally, with what memory of itself.

AFTER PUTIN, THERE WILL BE NO MORNING ON WHICH EVERYTHING SIMPLY DISAPPEARS

Authoritarian systems create a dangerous illusion.

Because so much of politics becomes associated with one person, the impression arises that removing that person is enough for the system itself to disappear.

That is almost never the case.

A political regime is considerably larger than its leader.

It exists within institutions.

Within the personnel system.

Within legislation.

Within the courts.

Within the security apparatus.

Within bureaucratic habits.

Within television.

Within language.

Within public fears.

Within mechanisms of self-censorship.

Within economic interests.

Within the careers of millions of people who have learned how to exist inside a particular system.

Post-Putin Russia will therefore not be born overnight.

It will inherit Putin even after Putin.

And this will be one of the principal difficulties of transition.

THE MOST DANGEROUS MISTAKE WOULD BE TO SEARCH FOR ANOTHER PUTIN WITHOUT PUTIN

After a prolonged period of personalized rule, society becomes accustomed to searching for salvation in the next individual.

A good tsar is needed.

An honest president.

A strong leader.

A genuine patriot.

Someone who will finally restore order.

Psychologically, this is understandable.

But this is precisely where reproduction of the old system begins.

Russia's problem is not merely that Vladimir Putin has remained in power for too long.

The problem is that the architecture of the state allowed one person to remain in power for so long and to concentrate so much authority.

The task of the future is therefore not to find the ideal ruler.

It is to create a system in which even a bad ruler cannot become a national catastrophe.

That is considerably more difficult.

But that is precisely what institutions are for.

A GOOD CONSTITUTION IS NOT NEEDED FOR A GOOD PRESIDENT

To a good president, restrictions may appear unnecessary.

He does not intend to abuse power anyway.

The real value of constitutional restraints becomes apparent when the president is bad.

When he makes mistakes.

When he becomes suspicious.

When he surrounds himself with loyalists.

When he stops listening to criticism.

When he makes a dangerous decision.

When he wants to remain for yet another term.

It is precisely then that institutions capable of saying:

must exist.

Parliament.

The courts.

A free press.

The opposition.

Regional authorities.

Civil society.

A professional civil service.

The Constitution.

Not decorative institutions.

Real ones.

A state becomes resilient not when it happens to be fortunate in its leader.

It becomes resilient when its future does not depend upon good fortune.

RUSSIA NEEDS NOT A NEW MASTER, BUT A NEW RULE

For centuries, Russian political tradition has too often focused on the question:

who governs?

A far more important question is:

under what rules does that person govern?

An emperor may be enlightened.

A General Secretary may be moderate.

A president may be talented.

But if institutions depend upon personality, the next ruler can destroy what the previous one built.

Post-Putin Russia must therefore make a serious transition from the politics of personality to the politics of procedure.

No matter how great the president may be,

the president leaves.

The procedure remains.

No matter how popular a minister may be,

the minister is replaced.

The law remains.

No matter how powerful a party may be,

it can lose an election.

The state remains.

That is political maturity.

THE FIRST REFORM MUST BE TO RESTORE MEANING TO THE WORD “ELECTION”

Elections matter only when there is a possibility of losing them.

If the result is known in advance, this is not a political institution.

It is an administrative ritual.

Real elections always create risk for those in power.

That risk is precisely what makes them useful.

A politician knows:

if I make serious mistakes, I can be replaced.

If I steal, it can destroy my career.

If I begin an unpopular war, society can punish me politically.

If I stop listening to people, someone else can take my place.

Rotation of power is not a weakness of the state.

It is a mechanism for repairing the state without revolution.

A country in which power can be changed through the ballot box is far less likely to be forced to change it at the barricades.

RUSSIA WILL HAVE TO REBUILD THE JUDICIARY

Without an independent judiciary, no political reform will be durable.

Elections can be held.

Political parties can be permitted.

Television channels can be opened.

But if property, liberty, and human dignity are not protected by the courts, the new system will remain fragile.

A judge should not fear the governor.

The minister.

The prosecutor.

The security service.

A telephone call from above.

A judge should fear only one thing:

issuing a judgment that cannot be justified by law.

This will require enormous reform.

Personnel reform.

Procedural reform.

Cultural reform.

Professional reform.

And it will take years.

But it is with the judiciary that the transformation of the state from a master into an arbiter begins.

THE SECURITY SERVICES MUST PROTECT THE STATE, NOT THE POLITICAL REGIME

Russia needs strong security services.

A country of such scale cannot exist without professional intelligence.

Counterintelligence.

Counterterrorism.

Cybersecurity.

Protection of strategic infrastructure.

But there is a fundamental boundary between protecting the state and protecting the government of the day.

The president is not the state.

A political party is not the state.

The government is not the state.

The state survives all of them.

When the security apparatus begins treating political criticism as a threat to statehood, it ceases to defend the constitutional order and begins defending a particular configuration of power.

In a future Russia, this boundary must become legally inviolable.

A FREE PRESS IS NEEDED BY GOVERNMENT EVEN MORE THAN BY THE OPPOSITION

Politicians rarely like journalists.

That is normal.

A journalist asks uncomfortable questions.

Searches for documents.

Finds contradictions.

Talks to dissatisfied citizens.

Publishes what an official would prefer to conceal.

But this is precisely why a free press functions as the state's early-warning system.

Corruption is detected earlier.

Mistakes become visible.

Public dissatisfaction acquires a voice before it becomes an explosion.

A minister learns what subordinates are afraid to report.

A president sees the country through more than reports prepared by his own administration.

By silencing the journalist, the government sometimes closes its own eyes.

Post-Putin Russia will not need a loyal press.

It will need an irritating press.

And that will itself be a sign of recovery.

BUT FREEDOM MUST NOT MEAN REVENGE

After authoritarian periods, an enormous temptation emerges.

Now punish everyone.

Officials.

Judges.

Police officers.

Propagandists.

Members of parliament.

Businesspeople.

Everyone who worked within the previous system.

That is a dangerous path.

Responsibility must be individual.

Based upon evidence.

Established by law.

Confirmed by an independent court.

A state governed by law cannot be built through collective vengeance.

If a new government begins punishing people merely for belonging to the old system, it reproduces the very logic it claimed to oppose.

The transition to the rule of law begins precisely when the law is applied even to those whom society despises.

THERE IS NO COLLECTIVE CRIMINAL GUILT OF A PEOPLE

This is one of the most important principles for the future.

Russian society is not homogeneous.

Some supported the war.

Some remained silent.

Some were afraid.

Some protested.

Some emigrated.

Some fought.

Some rescued people.

Some denounced others.

Some lost relatives.

Some believed television.

Some never believed it.

It is impossible to transform more than a hundred million different human lives into a single criminal indictment.

The collective historical responsibility of a society may be discussed.

The political responsibility of institutions must be discussed.

The moral responsibility of particular individuals may be immense.

But criminal guilt is always individual.

A person is responsible for what that person did.

This is not leniency.

It is a foundation of law.

THAT IS PRECISELY WHY ACCOUNTABILITY MUST BE REAL

Rejecting collective guilt does not mean rejecting accountability.

Quite the opposite.

When everyone is accused, ultimately no one is held responsible.

Specific decisions must be established.

Specific orders.

Specific actions.

Specific crimes.

Specific chains of command.

Specific evidence.

War crimes must be investigated.

Torture must be investigated.

Killings of civilians must be investigated.

Unlawful appropriation of property must be investigated.

And this applies to any perpetrator, regardless of nationality, office, or political camp.

Justice differs from revenge precisely because of procedure.

Revenge says:

“I know whom I hate.”

Justice asks:

“What has been proved?”

UKRAINE WILL BE THE PRINCIPAL MORAL AND POLITICAL TEST OF POST-PUTIN RUSSIA

It will not be possible simply to say:

Putin is gone — let us forget the past.

For a Ukrainian, a destroyed home will not disappear when Russia changes presidents.

A dead relative will not return to life.

A landmine will not disappear from the soil.

A child's trauma will not end with a decree from a new Kremlin.

Future Russian leaders will therefore have to speak to Ukraine not in the language of historical lectures.

Not in the language of imperial nostalgia.

Not in the language of demands for gratitude because of a shared past.

But in the language of reality.

Ukraine is a separate sovereign state.

Ukrainians themselves determine their political destiny.

That must become the starting point.

Without this simple truth, no lasting peace will be possible.

PEACE IS NOT A PHOTOGRAPH OF A SIGNED DOCUMENT

A treaty can be signed in a single day.

Creating peace may take more than a generation.

Real peace between Russia and Ukraine will require far more.

Security.

Agreements.

Reconstruction.

Truth about the dead.

The return of people.

Resolution of humanitarian questions.

Work with historical memory.

Economic relations where they once again become possible.

And, above all, time.

There will be Ukrainians who will never forgive Russia.

That must be accepted.

Forgiveness cannot be demanded through a diplomatic note.

But the next Russia can do something else.

It can stop creating new reasons for hatred.

Sometimes reconciliation begins precisely there.

A STATE DOES NOT HUMILIATE ITSELF BY APOLOGIZING

There is a belief that admitting an error means displaying weakness.

In reality, the ability to acknowledge error is a sign of maturity.

Germany did not become weaker by acknowledging the crimes of Nazism.

On the contrary.

A profound reckoning with the past helped it return to the international community as one of Europe's central democracies.

Russia has its own history and does not need to copy the German model.

But the principle is universal:

a state capable of calling its own mistake a mistake is stronger than a state compelled endlessly to prove that it has never been wrong.

National dignity does not require national infallibility.

THE FUTURE CANNOT BE BUILT UPON THE HUMILIATION OF RUSSIA

But there is another side.

The post-war order must not be built upon the idea of Russia's permanent punishment.

Humiliating an enormous nuclear power is not a strategy for security.

An attempt to transform Russian society into a population carrying hereditary guilt would be both politically dangerous and morally wrong.

Russia must answer for violations of law wherever responsibility is established.

It must comply with future international obligations.

But it must simultaneously be offered a path back towards normal international relations under clear conditions.

Without the prospect of an exit, punishment ceases to be an instrument for changing behaviour and becomes a factory for revanchism.

Peace must be sufficiently just for Ukraine —

and sufficiently wise not to manufacture the next war.

RUSSIA WILL NEED A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT

For a long time, Russia's social contract could be described, in simplified terms, as follows:

the state provides relative stability and rising living standards;

society does not interfere too actively in politics.

That contract gradually changed.

Stability began to demand increasing political passivity.

Then loyalty.

Then acceptance of war as the new normal.

A future Russia will require a different contract.

The state guarantees law.

The citizen obeys the law.

The state honours its obligations.

The citizen pays taxes.

The state does not interfere in private life without lawful grounds.

The citizen does not treat public property as belonging to no one.

Government is accountable.

Society participates.

Presidents change.

Russia remains.

THE FEDERATION MUST BECOME A FEDERATION

The Russian Federation is enormous.

It cannot be effectively governed as though it were a single administrative province directed from a Moscow office.

Its regions differ.

Economically.

Geographically.

Culturally.

Climatically.

Historically.

A strong federation does not mean a weak centre.

It means a rational distribution of authority.

A municipality should decide what a municipality is capable of deciding.

A region should decide what a region can decide.

The federal centre should handle what genuinely requires federal scale.

The closer a decision is made to the citizen, the easier it is for the citizen to hold the decision-maker accountable.

Russia does not need disintegration.

It needs functioning federalism.

CORRUPTION IS NOT MERELY STOLEN MONEY

Corruption damages the state far more deeply.

It changes the system by which people are selected.

If the most loyal person receives the position rather than the most competent, the state loses quality.

If a contract goes to an associate rather than the best contractor, the state receives a worse road.

If justice can be bought, the law ceases to be common to everyone.

If advancement depends upon connections, talented people stop believing in careers based on merit.

Corruption steals more than the budget.

It steals the principle of fair competition.

The anti-corruption reform of a future Russia must therefore not become another campaign launched by another powerful president.

It must become a system.

Transparency of assets.

Independent auditing.

Parliamentary oversight.

A free press.

Competitive public procurement.

An independent judiciary.

And the inevitability of investigation.

THOSE WHO LEFT MUST BE BROUGHT BACK — BUT NOT BY COMMAND

Russia after the war will need people.

Engineers.

Scientists.

Programmers.

Doctors.

Entrepreneurs.

Journalists.

Teachers.

Artists.

Students.

Many of them have left.

There is only one way to bring them back:

create a country to which people want to return.

Do not accuse them.

Do not demand patriotism.

Do not lecture them.

Offer law.

Security.

Work.

Science.

Freedom.

Predictability.

The possibility of raising children.

Then some will return voluntarily.

Not everyone.

But even the return of part of the intellectual diaspora could become one of the greatest resources for national recovery.

THE FUTURE MUST BE BROUGHT BACK TO RUSSIA

The most difficult task will be psychological.

People must begin planning again.

Five years ahead.

Ten years.

Twenty.

Buy an apartment without wondering whether they will have to flee.

Start a company without fearing that the rules may suddenly change.

Enter postgraduate study believing that science will still matter.

Have a child believing that the child will live in peace.

The future does not exist because a government publishes a strategy extending to 2040.

It exists when an ordinary person makes their own plans extending to 2040.

That will be the real measure of recovery.

RUSSIA WILL HAVE TO REORIENT ITS ECONOMY FROM WAR TO LIFE

A wartime economy can mobilize resources rapidly.

But a peacetime economy must create quality of life.

Factories working for war cannot constitute the sole model of industrial development.

An engineer should design more than weapons.

Medical equipment.

Transport.

Robotics.

Energy systems.

Civil aviation.

Machine tools.

New materials.

Housing.

Russia possesses an immense engineering tradition.

It will need to redirect that capacity from the production of destruction towards the production of complexity.

That will be one of the principal forms of demobilizing the state.

OIL MUST FINANCE A POST-OIL RUSSIA

Russia will remain a major energy power for a long time.

There is nothing shameful about that.

Natural resources are a national advantage.

The mistake is not extracting oil.

The mistake is failing to use oil wealth to create an economy that can one day live without dependence on oil.

Resource rents should finance education.

Science.

Infrastructure.

New technologies.

Healthcare.

Industrial diversification.

The next generation should not inherit from the present one merely an exhausted well.

It should inherit a university, a laboratory, and a company built with the revenues generated by that well.

RUSSIA MUST OPEN ITSELF TO THE WORLD AGAIN

Not capitulate to the world.

Not dissolve into it.

Open itself.

These are different things.

Students should once again participate freely in international programmes.

Scientists should work in joint projects.

Entrepreneurs should enter global markets.

Artists should exhibit.

Musicians should perform.

Tourists should travel.

Foreigners should be able to visit Russia without feeling that they are crossing the frontier of a hostile civilization.

Openness does not destroy national identity.

A strong culture does not fear contact.

It is enriched by it.

EUROPE MUST NOT BE AN ENEMY. CHINA MUST NOT BE A MASTER

A future Russian foreign policy must reject this false choice.

Either the West.

Or China.

Why?

Russia is large enough to pursue its own policy.

Cooperate with China.

Rebuild relations with Europe.

Develop relations with India.

Work with Central Asia.

The Middle East.

Africa.

Latin America.

The United States.

Japan.

Korea.

True sovereignty does not consist of choosing a new patron after a conflict with the old one.

It consists of having no need for a patron at all.

THE MEMORY OF THE WAR MUST NOT BE SURRENDERED TO PROPAGANDA

When the war ends, a struggle over its history will begin.

That will be inevitable.

Who began it?

Why?

Could it have been avoided?

Who made the decisions?

What happened on the battlefield?

What happened to civilians?

How many people died?

What crimes were committed?

What myths were created?

The answers must not be determined by another political directive.

Archives must gradually be opened.

Historians must work.

Journalists must investigate.

Courts must establish legal facts.

Families must receive information about the dead.

Memory built upon lies becomes a mine buried beneath the next generation.

THE DEAD MUST NOT BECOME FUEL FOR THE NEXT WAR

Every state honours its dead.

And it should.

But there is a dangerous political technology:

turning the deaths of one generation into an obligation for the next generation to fight again.

Then memory ceases to be memory.

It becomes a mechanism of mobilization.

Russian families have the right to mourn their dead.

Ukrainian families have the right to mourn theirs.

These two forms of grief do not have to annihilate one another.

Perhaps one day the recognition of a shared human tragedy will become the first bridge between the two societies.

Not soon.

But history is longer than a single human life.

PATRIOTISM WILL HAVE TO BE SEPARATED FROM LOYALTY TO GOVERNMENT

Loving one's country and supporting its government are not the same thing.

Governments are temporary.

The country remains.

Presidents are temporary.

The people remain.

Criticizing a state's mistake can sometimes be far more patriotic than applauding it.

The patriotism of a mature society does not say:

“My country is always right.”

It says:

“This is my country, and therefore I will not allow it to destroy itself through its own mistakes.”

That is the kind of patriotism a future Russia will need.

Not loud.

Not theatrical.

Not compulsory.

Responsible.

RUSSIAN SOCIETY WILL HAVE TO LEARN TO DISAGREE WITHOUT BECOMING ENEMIES

This may prove one of the most difficult tasks.

After years of polarization, society is divided.

Those who supported the war.

Those who opposed it.

Those who left.

Those who stayed.

Soldiers.

Civilians.

The opposition.

Loyalists.

The diaspora.

The bureaucracy.

Different generations.

Different Russias.

If every group declares the others traitors, the country may enter another cycle of internal destruction.

Democracy does not mean the absence of conflict.

It means having procedures for conflict.

We may despise your idea —

and recognize your right to express it.

We may lose an election —

and not destroy the state.

We may win —

and not destroy those who lost.

This will have to be learned.

AUTHORITARIANISM CANNOT BE CURED WITH ANOTHER AUTHORITARIANISM

After a crisis, there is always a temptation to say:

democracy later.

First, restore order.

First, implement the reforms.

First, punish the guilty.

First, stabilize the country.

Then freedom can be allowed.

History knows this formula all too well.

“Later” often never arrives.

And a new strongman appears, explaining that just a little more emergency power is necessary in order to save democracy.

The circle closes.

A future Russia will have to accept an uncomfortable truth:

freedom is not a reward granted to society after successful reforms.

Freedom is one of the mechanisms that prevent reformers themselves from becoming the next problem.

REFORMS MUST NOT REPEAT THE TRAUMA OF THE 1990s

Post-Putin Russia will face an enormous risk.

The desire to change everything quickly.

At once.

The economy.

Politics.

Property relations.

The courts.

Regional government.

International relations.

But society already carries a historical memory of the 1990s.

For some, it was a period of freedom.

For others, a period of poverty, humiliation, crime, and the destruction of familiar life.

That memory cannot be ignored.

A reform that looks perfect in a textbook but leaves millions of people without a sense of security creates political demand for another authoritarian saviour.

Freedom must therefore be accompanied by social responsibility.

Law by protection of the vulnerable.

Markets by rules.

Reform by explanation.

Speed by caution.

A NEW RUSSIA MUST NOT REJECT THE OLD RUSSIA IN ITS ENTIRETY

A country's history does not begin when a new government comes to power.

A thousand years of history cannot be discarded because some of its chapters are tragic.

Russia is not only Ivan the Terrible.

Not only the Empire.

Not only Stalin.

Not only Putin.

It is Pushkin.

Tolstoy.

Chekhov.

Dostoevsky.

Mendeleev.

Pavlov.

Korolev.

Shostakovich.

Sakharov.

Millions of teachers.

Doctors.

Engineers.

Workers.

Soldiers.

Mothers.

People who never made political decisions but created the country through their lives.

A future Russia will not need to destroy national memory.

It will need to make that memory more truthful.

A PEOPLE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN PRIDE AND TRUTH

That is a false choice.

One can love Russia and acknowledge crimes committed by the Russian state.

One can take pride in the victory over Nazism while speaking openly about Stalinist repression.

One can admire Russian culture and criticize Russian political power.

One can respect a soldier while asking the political leader why that soldier was sent to war.

A mature national identity can withstand complexity.

Only a fragile identity requires a perfect past.

The history of every major state contains both greatness and wrongdoing.

Truth does not destroy a country.

It destroys a myth.

And a country is far more important than a myth.

AFTER PUTIN, RUSSIA WILL NEED NOT REVENGE, BUT REHABILITATION

Revenge asks:

whom shall we punish?

Rehabilitation asks:

what shall we restore?

The judiciary.

The school.

The university.

Healthcare.

The regions.

Municipal government.

Trust.

Relations with neighbours.

Reputation.

The economy.

Human dignity.

That should become the national idea of the next era.

Not to restore the past.

To restore the future.

RUSSIA IS BIGGER THAN PUTIN

This may be the central thesis of this entire article.

Vladimir Putin has been in power for a substantial part of an entire generation's lifetime.

For younger Russians, Russia without Putin may seem almost abstract.

But the state existed before him.

And it will exist after him.

Russia does not belong to Putin.

Just as it did not belong to Yeltsin.

Gorbachev.

Brezhnev.

Stalin.

Nicholas II.

Rulers receive the state temporarily.

The people inherit it from previous generations and pass it to the next.

And in that sense, no president has the moral right to consume the country's future as though it were his personal property.

PUTIN MAY LEAVE BEHIND A GRAVELY WOUNDED RUSSIA

A country exhausted by war.

With damaged demographics.

With people lost.

With a militarized economy.

With weakened institutions.

With profound international conflicts.

With its relationship with Ukraine shattered.

With severely damaged relations with Europe.

With increased dependence on a limited circle of partners.

With a society accustomed to permanent emergency.

With an immense memory of the dead.

This is a heavy inheritance.

But a heavy inheritance is not a death sentence.

States have recovered from catastrophes far more terrible.

Germany after 1945.

Japan after the war.

Europe after two world wars.

South Korea after poverty and authoritarianism.

Spain after Franco.

History does not guarantee success.

But it demonstrates that change is possible.

THE FIRST CONDITION OF RECOVERY IS TO STOP LYING TO OURSELVES

Not to the West.

Not to Ukraine.

Not to television audiences.

To ourselves.

Acknowledge the country's actual condition.

Without hysteria.

Without self-humiliation.

Without the myth of eternal victimhood.

Without the myth of eternal invincibility.

Where the economy is strong — say that it is strong.

Where it is weak — say that it is weak.

Where the West made mistakes — say that it made mistakes.

Where Russia made a mistake — call it a Russian mistake.

Where there is a crime — investigate it.

Where there is an achievement — preserve it.

Where there is talent — allow it to work.

A state begins to recover at the moment reality becomes more important than propaganda.

RUSSIA DOES NOT NEED TO BE “SAVED” FROM RUSSIA

It is not a historical mistake.

It is not a country condemned to dictatorship.

It is not a people genetically incapable of freedom.

Such ideas are intellectually primitive.

Russian history has known zemstvo self-government.

Parliamentary experiments.

A human-rights movement.

Independent journalism.

Mass civic initiatives.

Outstanding legal thought.

People who defended freedom at the cost of their own lives.

Authoritarianism has a Russian history.

But freedom has a Russian history as well.

And it is upon that history that the future can build.

NO ONE WILL COME AND BUILD RUSSIA INSTEAD OF RUSSIANS

Not America.

Not Europe.

Not China.

Not the diaspora.

Not any new president.

The outside world can help.

Invest.

Lift restrictions when agreed conditions are met.

Restore scientific programmes.

Open markets.

Support peace.

But political culture cannot be imported in a shipping container.

An independent judiciary must be created by Russian lawmakers.

Free elections must be defended by Russian citizens.

An honest university must be built by Russian professors.

Professional journalism by Russian journalists.

Responsible government by Russian public servants.

Russia's future will ultimately remain a Russian responsibility.

AND HERE WE RETURN TO THE TITLE OF THIS ARTICLE

“PUTIN HAS FINISHED RUSSIA: THE COUNTRY IS PAINFULLY DYING AND DECAYING.”

The title is deliberately harsh.

Because the era itself is harsh.

But after six parts, its meaning must be clarified.

Russia is not dead.

And I do not consider it doomed.

I am saying something different.

Vladimir Putin's political system has pushed to the limit processes that for years have undermined the country's ability to build a long-term future.

The war accelerated those processes.

It took lives.

Changed economic priorities.

Increased the repressive character of the state.

Damaged demography.

Drove part of the country's human capital abroad.

Destroyed relations with Ukraine.

Dramatically worsened relations with Europe.

Narrowed the space for foreign-policy manoeuvre.

And placed the next generation in the position of one day having to pay for the consequences of decisions it did not make.

In this sense, the phrase “has finished Russia” does not refer to Russia's physical disappearance.

It refers to the exhaustion of a political model that promised stability and ended in an era of historic instability.

PUTIN IS NOT RUSSIA

These two concepts must finally be separated.

Criticism of Putin is not hatred of Russia.

Criticism of the war is not hatred of Russians.

Criticism of the state is not a rejection of Russian culture.

Quite the opposite.

It is precisely because Russia possesses immense historical and human value that destructive decisions by its government deserve especially severe criticism.

A small mistake by a small state may remain regional.

A mistake by a nuclear power with immense territory and a great culture changes the lives of millions.

The standards applied to Russian statecraft should therefore be extraordinarily high.

VLADIMIR PUTIN WILL ONE DAY BECOME HISTORY

Thousands of books will be written.

Archives will open.

Documents will emerge.

Conversations that we cannot hear today will become known.

Historians will argue.

Some will see him as the man who restored the state after the chaos of the 1990s.

Others as the politician who destroyed Russia's chance for normal European modernization.

Others as the leader who challenged American hegemony.

Still others as the man who led the country into a destructive war and a strategic dead end.

History is rarely one-dimensional.

But one criterion will survive the political propaganda of every side:

in what condition did a leader receive the country — and in what condition did he hand it to the next generation?

It is by this standard that political eras ultimately acquire their historical price.

AND AFTER HISTORY, PEOPLE WILL REMAIN

A mother who lost her son.

A child who lost a father.

A Ukrainian family that lost its home.

A Russian family that received a death notice.

An engineer who left for another country.

A teacher who remained in a small town.

A doctor who continued to treat patients.

A journalist who continued to write.

A soldier who returned from the war.

A person who supported the war.

A person who opposed it.

All of them will live within the same historical reality.

And the state will have to help them become a society again.

Not an army of supporters and opponents.

Not a collection of political labels.

A society.

THE FUTURE DOES NOT BEGIN WITH VICTORY

It begins with a question:

what do we want to build?

Not whom to defeat.

Not whom to punish.

Not whom to prove something to.

What do we want to build?

A country people do not want to leave.

A country people want to return to.

A country where a scientist does science.

An entrepreneur does business.

A judge administers law.

A journalist practises journalism.

A soldier defends the country.

A politician performs temporary public service.

And a child does not think about politics at all, because that child is occupied with far more important things:

learning,

falling in love,

dreaming,

creating,

living.

Perhaps that is the highest form of successful government.

RUSSIA DOES NOT NEED ANOTHER HISTORICAL MISSION

It needs a normal twenty-first century.

Good roads.

Modern hospitals.

Strong universities.

Independent courts.

Safe cities.

Honest elections.

Successful companies.

Longer lives.

Children.

Science.

Culture.

Peaceful borders.

A respected military that does not have to fight constantly.

Neighbours who do not fear Russia.

Citizens who do not fear their own state.

Sometimes normality is far greater than empire.

AND THEREFORE THE FINAL WORD OF THIS ARTICLE IS NOT “PUTIN”

Nor is it “WAR.”

The final word must belong to the very thing for which politics exists at all.

THE FUTURE.

Russia has spent too much time talking about the past.

The territories of the past.

The victories of the past.

The humiliations of the past.

The borders of the past.

The enemies of the past.

But a state cannot move forward while constantly staring into the rear-view mirror.

History must be known.

The dead must be remembered.

Crimes must be investigated.

Achievements must be preserved.

But life must be lived forward.

Vladimir Putin will one day leave.

The present war will one day end.

The present political system will one day change.

And then the central question Russia has postponed for far too long will remain:

what kind of country does it want to be not yesterday — but tomorrow?

If the answer is another imperial grievance, Russia will repeat the cycle.

If the answer is revenge, it will lose another generation.

If the answer is another “strong man,” history will merely change the surname.

But if the answer is the rule of law, human life, education, science, free thought, governmental accountability, and peace with its neighbours —

then it will turn out that Putin did not finish Russia.

He merely pushed to its historical limit a political system that the next generation will have to leave behind.

Russia may then accomplish perhaps the most difficult achievement in its history:

not conquer another territory,

not defeat another external enemy,

not prove its greatness to the world,

but overcome its own inability to live without permanent mobilization, a permanent enemy, and a permanent leader.

And if that ever happens, the greatest monument to the new era will not be a palace.

Not a missile.

Not a military parade.

Not a gigantic monument to another ruler.

It will be an ordinary human life —

long,

free,

safe,

dignified.

The life of a human being whom the state has finally stopped preventing from having a future.

That is where Russia can begin again.

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