Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s national security adviser, has issued a stark warning
The West must prepare for the collapse and break-up of Russia, having failed to do so with the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s national security adviser has said.
In an interview with The Times, Oleksiy Danilov said President Putin’s summit in March with President Xi of China confirmed what Ukraine long believed: that Russia was weak and at risk of falling apart.
“The West doesn’t know Russia and the West is afraid of fragmentation in Russia,” Danilov said. “But this process is already under way.”
He said the collapse would be “spectacular” and would happen within three, five or seven years. “It is a historic process and you can’t stop history,” Danilov added.
Fighting since the anniversary of the invasion has centred on the small city of Bakhmut, in Donetsk, the “oblast” or county that Russia and its local allies have been trying to take since 2014.
However, with few gains on either side, the war on the ground has been overshadowed by diplomatic developments: Xi’s visit to Moscow, an attempt to shore up Putin’s position in the two nations’ confrontation with the US, and Putin’s announcement that he would return nuclear weapons to Belarus.
Danilov said that these should be seen as signs of Russia’s weakness, not strength, and that Putin’s failure to capture Kyiv and Kharkiv in the initial invasion was a death blow to Russian unity.
Just as the Soviet Union fell apart more rapidly than the West expected, so Russia would lose control not only of the parts of eastern Ukraine it occupies but also Abkhazia, the pro-Russia breakaway Georgian republic, and its possessions in the Caucasus, he claimed.
Russia has already lost its power over once-loyal allies in central Asia, he said. China has its eyes on the fallout for Russia’s Siberian far east, where there are already big Chinese populations.
“Letting China take Russian territory will be dangerous for the West because by unlocking one problem they will create another,” Danilov said. “There needs to be initial steps by the West now.”
The Xi-Putin summit set clear ideological dividing lines between the US and its allies on one hand and, on the other, a rising “axis of autocracies” — comprising Beijing, Moscow and a raft of dictators, absolute monarchs and populist leaders who are seeking their embrace.
Saudi Arabia, once America’s closest friend in the Arab world, announced last week that it intended to join the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a loose alliance mostly of Asian countries, as well as Russia, set up by Beijing to shadow Nato at a political level.
China is now “the owner of Russia”, Danilov said
On his visit to Moscow, Xi pointedly said nothing about providing weapons or military support to Russia. Wording in previous declarations that the two states’ friendship was “without limits” was notably absent.
“China is a big country and will be a mighty rival to the Anglo-Saxon world,” Danilov said. “Now it’s the owner of Russia. Russia will no longer undertake any important action without them. Russia fully lost its sovereignty. That’s a fact.”
While China has come to Russia’s rescue by refusing to go along with western sanctions and buying Russian oil and gas, that is to its own benefit. Few analysts would agree that Putin is in Xi’s pocket to the degree that Danilov argues but there is little doubt that Russia’s failure to successfully prosecute its war in Ukraine so far has strengthened China’s hand in the relationship.
China’s Ukraine peace plan was rejected out of hand by President Biden but received more favourably by Kyiv. President Zelensky has invited Xi to visit Kyiv and said he was willing to discuss the proposals.
Although China’s peace plan made no explicit demand for Russian troops to withdraw, it contained pointed digs at Putin, emphasising respect for national sovereignty and demanding an end to nuclear threats.
On the ground, a key moment is approaching: Ukraine’s much-vaunted “spring counteroffensive”.
Western observers fear that the counteroffensive is “make or break” for Ukrainians, given that Europe is running low on equipment to provide Ukraine after this year. If Ukraine does manage to inflict a major defeat, even pushing back Russian troops to its borders, the threat remains that in the last resort Putin could turn to nuclear weapons.
“The West created the Russian monopoly over past Soviet terrorism, thinking it was possible to build democracy with them,” Danilov said.
Would Putin use nuclear weapons if the Russian state was at risk of the collapse? “If the Chinese let Russia use nuclear weapons, they will use them,” Danilov said. “If not, they won’t. So you have to ask China that.”
Source: The Times
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