Seven and a half years ago, in 2015, Stratfor released a 10-year forecast that saw Russia falling apart by 2025. When the think tank updated its forecast five years later, it no longer mentioned Russia’s disintegration. But I’ve never stopped thinking – or rather feeling? – that the 2015 scenario is sensible and realistic.
Nowadays it looks more viable than ever. Dictatorships grow critically vulnerable not only after failed military campaigns but after any wars that do not end in a complete and resounding victory. In Russia, the current regime might still yield to a classic fascist one drawing on the war veterans’ support – but that would be the last stage before the country’s collapse.
In the meantime, The New York Times reports on the recent municipal elections in Russia as if their official results had any meaning or value other than as evidence of massive election fraud. Online voting, as we learned from earlier elections, allows the regime to “claim whatever Internet voting results it likes.”