Could a Russian Revolution End the Ukraine War?

A Russian revolution ending the Russo-Ukraine war? Oh, that would be so wonderful. As Zeihan explains in a short video, it's complicated. Any sort of palace coup is a non-starter, apparently. The people Putin has surrounded himself with generally view the world no differently from him, and they come from the same KGB/FSB background. So, don't expect the elites to necessarily change stripes and turn on Putin. A mass uprising that becomes a revolution? Zeihan doesn't see that as a prospect in the short term. I don't either. Yes, the sanctions are causing some discomfort, but not to the extent that a critical mass would very violently demand a change. Will the regime crumble? Eventually. In the meantime, Ukrainians must continue to fight for their existence, and anyone living in the nations that successfully declared their independence when the USSR crumbled at the start of the 1990s need to keep a watchful eye for what might be lurking on their borders. Regrettably, we live in interesting times.

If I were looking for the possible seeds of a revolution, I would be looking at factors that make basic survival for Russian citizens damned difficult to nearly impossible. Depending on the source, my impression is that Russia does have an inflation problem and is running through its cash reserves in order to fund its war with Ukraine. Russia exports of oil and natural gas are way down, and refineries are increasingly being taken offline by Ukrainian drones and Russian saboteurs. So, filling up at the local fuel station is looking less convenient. Empty shelves in stores and markets would also be a marker for a potential set of uprisings that could spark a revolution. Are we there yet? Probably not. A spectacular military collapse precipitated the Russian Revolution of February 1917, setting the stage for the October Revolution later that year. Russia's military is struggling in its war against a nation with a smaller military, smaller population, and smaller economy, and is stuck in what I would call a quagmire. But so far, there aren't the mass defections/surrenders or just a wholesale loss of conquered territory. 

I mention this not to be a downer, but a realist. Don't go expecting miracles just yet. Then again, for all I know, I could wake up one fine morning and read that Putin has fled the country or been overthrown. In such turmoil Ukraine would quickly be the farthest thing from anyone's mind in Moscow or elsewhere in what we know as Russia. I'd be a bit surprised, to be sure. Keep in mind that the collapse of the USSR caught a lot of us by surprise in 1991. There were certainly serious problems with the Soviet system. The USSR had stagnated economically, and that was even before the price of oil plunged during the 1980s. The war in Afghanistan was going badly, but the USSR military was far from coming unglued. The Moscow regime was still projecting power as the 1980s ended, even as its grip on eastern Europe and central Asia was loosening. And then, like that, suddenly the USSR was no more. 

Zeihan hints at what might await the world in the eventuality of the current Russian Federation regime's collapse. He is among those who think that the end of the current Russian order will be the end of Russia as we know it, and it will break up into multiple republics. That almost happened in the early 1990s, when a number of former Soviet republics successfully declared independence, and parts of Russia appeared plunged into civil war as the Kremlin tried to hang on to any territory it could. The economy was a mess, and it looked like Yeltsin's regime was hanging on by a thread. 

The leaders of the major Western powers of the time did not want to see a complete collapse of the USSR leading to a breakup into multiple independent republics. I can't retrospectively read the minds of the Western leaders of the time (nor would I have been able to in the moment back then), but I am guessing that there was a lot of fear of the implications of a complete breakup of the old empire. The obvious concern was what to do about all of the nuclear weapons, and how much more complicated and dangerous it would be if a republic governed by religious or ideological zealots got the final say on what to do with their nukes. Since a collapse of the Russian Federation might be on the table at some point in the future (we won't know until right about when it happens). Like bankruptcy, collapse first happens gradually and then suddenly. The difference now as hurtle toward the middle decades of the 21st century is that the Russian Federation is far weaker economically and demographically than was the Soviet Union when it very quickly gave way to what turned into a warmed over empire with a Soviet mindset but without the Marxist rhetoric. I tend to be among those skeptical that yet another Moscow central government could hold on to all of the current Russian Federation republics, if any. The money isn't there. Oil and natural gas facilities are difficult to start back up once they are shut down, and it's not clear that there will be the Western money, technology, and personnel to revive that industry. Nor would there necessarily be the willpower in an era where the allure of globalism is fading and the demand for oil and natural gas are close to reaching their peak. The human resources needed to rebuild a decaying infrastructure are long gone. The military is a shadow of what it once was. There just aren't the horses and men needed to put Humpty together again, so to speak. Am I really worried about the outcome of a Russian Federation collapse? I wasn't all that worried about the potential for what had been known as Russia for centuries (and I include the USSR in that regard) to simply cease to be. Political leaders and their diplomats would have done what was needed to deal with the nukes and to get local and regional economies on the road to recovery. The US was still going to be the most dominant economic and political player for the 1990s and early 2000s. Somehow, that region of far eastern Europe and northern Asia would continue to trade commodities. Life would have gone on. Our conditions now are different than what existed in the 1980s/1990s. Somehow, we would all manage to adjust. And who knows. The collapse of the last empire might even bring us a bit closer to a tentative peace. One can hope.