The vast territory of 17.1 million square kilometers, significant natural resources, and a nuclear arsenal are traditionally considered the main arguments supporting the viability of russia. However, in a war of attrition, this same scale is turning from an advantage into its greatest vulnerability. The Kremlin is forced to finance the war, maintain a vast repressive apparatus, subsidize poorer regions, repair gaps in civilian infrastructure, and buy the loyalty of the elites simultaneously.
Today, an irreversible chain reaction has formed inside russia:
War economy → resource absorption → degradation of the civilian sector → growing regional imbalances → increased coercive control → loss of flexibility at the center.
The adversary’s problem is not the absence of resources as such, but the rapidly increasing cost of mobilizing and distributing them.
Economic Overheating and the Loss of the Rear
The conversion of industry to a war footing has given Russia’s defense industry a temporary boost, but has pushed the civilian economy into stagnation.
The situation in oil refining is particularly indicative. Systematic strikes on oil refineries and logistics hubs deep inside the adversary’s territory have resulted in fuel shortages on the domestic market and restrictions at gas stations in central regions. For a country that presents itself as an energy superpower, this is not merely a local crisis, but a symptomatic indicator of the erosion of its economic foundation.
Ukrainian precision strikes against critical infrastructure hundreds and thousands of kilometers from the frontline have changed the strategic geography of the war.
Moscow now faces a choice:
- Disperse air-defense and electronic-warfare systems across the country to protect industrial facilities, thereby exposing the front.
- Spend enormous budgetary resources restoring destroyed capacity instead of investing in development.
Demographic pressure is further exhausting the country. The aggressor’s intention to recruit hundreds of thousands of additional personnel is draining the remaining human reserves from regional economies.
A paradox has emerged: the more people and resources the periphery gives to the war, the more rational grounds local communities have to demand greater autonomy at the slightest weakening of the center.
Geopolitical Crossroads: Ukraine’s Goals and the West’s Calculations
When assessing the prospects for destabilizing the adversary, it is necessary to consider not only the Kremlin’s internal balances of power, resources, and politics, but also the position of international partners.
This is where the key strategic divergence lies.
For Ukraine, the objective is absolutely clear: to deprive the adversary of its military potential as much as possible and dismantle the imperial system that poses a permanent threat to the existence of the Ukrainian state.
Western capitals, by contrast, clearly distinguish between weakening an adversary and the uncontrolled collapse of a nuclear-armed state.
- Strategic objective: Ukraine seeks the complete elimination of the aggressor’s military and political threat. The West focuses on forcing peace, deterrence, and controlled attrition.
- Assessment of russia’s collapse: For Kyiv, this would mean the ultimate neutralization of the source of aggression. For Washington and Brussels, it represents a high risk of losing control over nuclear weapons and missile technologies.
- Regional priority: For Ukraine, the objective is the restoration of justice and secure borders. For Western partners, it is the avoidance of chaos in the Arctic and Asian regions and preventing a shift in the balance of power in favor of China.
As long as the United States and its allies consider a controlled but weakened autocracy a lesser risk than the emergence of dozens of new conflict actors possessing nuclear weapons, Western pressure will focus on attrition and containment rather than deliberately dismantling russia.
However, if the full spectrum of sanctions, an absolute technology ban, and the loss of export revenues are applied, the adversary’s internal system risks entering a phase of hyperinflation and systemic breakdown.
The “Siberian Scenario” and the Transformation of Identity
If the central government loses its coercive and financial control, processes of disintegration could extend far beyond the traditional national republics of the Caucasus or Volga region.
Particular attention should be paid to economically powerful macro-regions, especially Siberia.
The historical basis of Siberian regionalism, or oblastnichestvo, rests on a perception of economic colonialism by Moscow.
The transformation of regional affiliation into a political nation follows a clear social dynamic:
Regional identity → Demand for financial autonomy → Formation of local institutions → Political nation
In the event of a deep crisis, centrifugal forces could push resource-rich regions to retain tax revenues locally and establish their own security structures to protect property.
Over the course of several generations, this could lead to the emergence of new political nations and sovereign states based on territories that are currently part of russia.
Three Scenarios for the Adversary’s Future
An analysis of the existing factors allows three key trajectories to be identified:
- Inertial Decline (Slow Degradation): The center retains territorial control through comprehensive coercion. The country becomes a poor, technologically backward autocracy, fully dependent on Asian partners, but remains a single institutional entity.
- Systemic Paralysis (Cascading Crisis): The simultaneous combination of military defeats, infrastructure collapse, fuel shortages, and a budget deficit deprives the Kremlin of the ability to maintain control over the regions. An acute struggle begins within the ruling elite over the redistribution of the remaining resources.
- Regionalization and Collapse: The center loses its monopoly over violence and financial flows. Governors and local elites shift toward independent survival. Autonomization ultimately leads to the emergence of new state entities.
Ukraine will be able to protect its own security only by understanding that the future of the adversary is determined not simply by the question of “whether it will collapse,” but by who and when will define the limits of its weakening.
If the adversary’s internal crisis crosses a critical threshold, even the restraint of external actors may be unable to stop the irreversible emergence of new geopolitical realities on the territory of the former Russian state.
Andromeda Information and Analytical Center