Will Russia fracture? That is what a man supporting independent East Karelia believes

Translation by DeepL

Article by Justas Stasevskij

Activists in exile from Russia believe that Russia will fall apart as a result of the war in Ukraine.

The break-up of Russia is now being pursued by a group of activists in different parts of the country, and they are closing ranks.

The League of Free Peoples of Russia, among others, is calling for the break-up. It has brought together Russian opposition forces and those calling for independence or at least greater autonomy for their own regions. On the map drawn by the League, today's Russia is divided into dozens of independent parts.

One of the parts to be chopped up, according to the League, would be Dagestan, which is the subject of the video above. The video, shot last autumn, shows Dagestanis protesting against Russian mobilisation.

Some activists within the union have organised internet debates in their own regions on whether or not their region should secede from Russia. There have been polls in five regions, all of which have voted yes to secession. Yle has not been able to verify the reliability of the votes.

In the map below, you can see the League of Free Peoples' outline of a possible break-up of Russia. Russia is divided into two parts on the map.

The break-up of Russia is possible

According to a growing number of experts, the break-up of Russia as a result of war is indeed a possible scenario, although not the most likely.

• A year ago, I would have been sceptical about such an idea. But now the question of what is possible and what is not is moving towards increasingly absurd scenarios, says Margarita Zavadskaya.

Zavadskaya is a senior researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute and an expert on Russian domestic politics.

The longer the war goes on, the more unpredictable the consequences for Russia could be, according to Zavadskaya. One of the main messages of Putin's propaganda is that "the West wants Russia to fall apart" and that "Russia's existence is in danger". Russians dreaming of independence fit this narrative perfectly.

But Putin's constant talk of the West's intentions to break up Russia could turn against his ambitions and become a self-fulfilling prophecy, Zavadskaya says.

In a report published early this year, the Atlantic Council, a US think-tank, estimated that Russia will not survive the next ten years. Another US think tank, Stratfor, published a forecast back in 2015 that predicted Russia would break up in the first half of the 2020s. It predicted that Karelia would eventually join Finland.

Paul Goble, an American researcher on Russia, believes that Russia could break up as a result of war in the near future.

• Putin is not restoring the Soviet Union, he is restoring the conditions that made the Soviet Union's demise possible," Mr Goble said in an interview with Lithuanian broadcaster Lithuanian Radio last June.

Russia has kept its war machine running by sending its ethnic minorities to the front line.

The fact that Russia has kept its war machine running by sending its ethnic minorities to the front line is also a factor in its dreams of independence.

• People are angry that they are there and their nations are suffering disproportionately," Goble said. Could East Karelia become independent?

One of the parts drawn on maps by activists that is breaking away from Russia is right on Finland's eastern border, East Karelia. That's the dream of Dmitry Kuznetsov. He comes from East Karelia and has lived in Finland since last February.

Kuznetsov, 48, fled Russia in the early part of the last decade and was granted asylum in Spain in 2016. Yle has seen Kuznetsov's asylum decision.

• Russia has always tried to make Karelia Russian. Everything has been done to destroy Karelian culture, historical facts and events. Even the names have been changed," Kuznetsov says.

Kuznetsov wants to organise a meeting in Finland, a congress of Karelians, to discuss whether Karelians have the right to their own state. He wants people with ties to Karelia to attend.

There was supposed to be a congress already, but the money is missing. Kuznetsov has a handful of people in Finland and Estonia involved in his project.

The researchers point to two major reasons why Kuznetsov's dream cannot be realised. First, the Republic of Karelia has a population of just over half a million people, of whom no more than one in ten is ethnically Karelian or speaks Karelian.

So there are probably only a few tens of thousands of people with an East Karelian identity.

• Unfortunately, the Soviet Union was very successful in weakening the Karelian language," says Zavatskaya of the Institute of Foreign Policy.

According to Kuznetsov, this would not be an insurmountable problem. In his view, people are not so much in favour of Russia as of authority in general.

• When power changes, they want to become Karelians, Vepsians and so on. This is how everything works in Russia, because people are used to supporting those in power," he says.

Secondly, East Karelia is crossed by a land link between Moscow and the main base of the Russian Northern Fleet. The base is located in the Murmansk region. The Northern Fleet is one of Russia's two ocean fleets equipped with strategic nuclear weapons mounted on submarines.

So sparsely populated Eastern Karelia would hardly be the first place to be pinched by Russia, says Marko Eklund.

Mr Eklund is a former deputy defence attaché at the Finnish embassy in Moscow and works as a background journalist for Yle.

• The North Sea region has been a key focus of Russian geopolitics in recent years," says Eklund.

According to Eklund, the idea of isolating this important region from the rest of Russia would certainly not appeal to Moscow.

As for Kuznetsov, one has to wonder whether he could be part of Russia's information influence. Could Russia be using him to show that there is a desire in Finland to move the border?

Kuznetsov vehemently denies this. He insists that he is not seeking to put pressure on Finland in the debate on the Karelian Isthmus, i.e. whether Finland should demand the return of the territory it lost to the Soviet Union in the last war. East Karelia is more than a isthmus, Kuznetsov stresses.

According to the Finnish Security Police, Finland "is not currently subject to information interference that would endanger national security". Supo does not comment on individual persons such as Kuznetsov.

Researcher highlights the troubled North Caucasus and Tatarstan

Foreign Policy Institute researcher Zavadskaya would draw attention to the North Caucasus region. Its population is a patchwork of ethnic groups. People there have a strong sense of their national identity, she says.

Zavadskaya also highlights Tatarstan, which is rich in natural resources. Most of the four million Tatars in Tatarstan are of Turkic origin.

Tatarstan voted for the sovereignty of the region in 1992, with more than 60% of the vote. A large proportion of Tatars then interpreted the vote as a declaration of independence. However, Russia did not welcome the region's independence.

Today, independent Tatarstan is led by the exiled Rafis Kashapov. He fled to Ukraine after serving a three-year prison sentence in Russia. He had criticised the invasion of Crimea in 2014.

Kashapov tells Yle in an email that his movement is already preparing for Tatarstan's independence.

• Our soldiers who served in the Soviet Union and Russia are already training in Turkey and Kazakhstan," Kashapov writes.

In Kashapov's view, the West pays too much attention to opposition politicians like Navalny, Kasparov and Khodorskovsky.

• They are imperialists. When Russia sent troops to Georgia, Syria and Ukraine, none of them condemned the military invasion. That means that if they come to power, they will continue Putin's policies," Kashapov argues.

Kashapov and Kuznetsov, who are planning new states for Russia, say that the goal of independence will only succeed if all indigenous peoples pull together.

• Until the criminal empire collapses, we will not be able to create our own independent state," Kashapov said in an email.

Zavadskaya of the Foreign Policy Institute is of the same opinion.

• Most activists live in exile abroad and have little ability to influence Russia's development.

Zavadskaya points out that the break-up of Russia would be an unpredictable process.

• It is worth being careful what you wish for. No empire has broken up peacefully.