I found this one to be interesting for the following points:Tom Mazanec wrote: ↑Mon Oct 17, 2022 12:59 pm
Russia’s Inevitable Border Crisis
By The Jamestown Foundation - Oct 15, 2022, 4:00 PM CDT
https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/Intern ... risis.html
Who would come out on top in such a conflict? Mil bloggers and other extreme nationalists are useful to Putin in pushing the war, but it's the generals and others in the military actually doing to fighting. If it comes to a head, I'm thinking Putin has to support the generals and would crush Kadyrov and Prigozhin.However, Kadyrov has a number of supporters among the professional military. Publications on the website Military Review, which is close to the Russian Ministry of Defense, clearly show that a split has occurred not only between the regular army and other paramilitary formations but also within the Russian army itself. Thus, a number of authors on the site have sharply criticized the Ministry of Defense, accusing it of “strange and illogical actions against the backdrop of deathly silence” (Topwar.ru, October 3). Some publications directly accuse the generals of incompetence in that they “draw beautiful reports and put them on the Supreme Commander’s table” but do not tell the real story (Topwar.ru, October 4).
and:
Of the four provinces "annexed", Russia doesn't completely control any of them. Of two it barely controls more than half. That means that Russia would have fight to control its "own" territory. And if regions can vote to become a part of Russia, they can also vote to leave Russia. How about Chechnya? Or Dagestan? Or other non-Russian ethnic regions? Maybe Karelia would like to join with Finland? After all, Putin has said that people of a region can decide what country they want to be a part of.However, these difficulties pale compared to the long-term problems caused by annexing the occupied territories in Ukraine. After the capture of Crimea, Russia became a state without internationally recognized borders. Now, these boundaries have become completely blurred. Moscow announced that the new territories would become part of Russia within their existing borders on the day of their formation and annexation (RBC, October 2). According to this logic, Krasny Liman, recently liberated by Ukrainian troops, is also considered a “Russian” city (Pravda.com.ua, October 1). This fact testifies to several points.
First, what the Kremlin calls “Russia” today has become a territory of war, since formally, according to Russian law, there is no difference between Liman and, say, Belgorod. The liberation of Liman also became a clear signal to other Russian regions that Moscow can easily lose control over its “territory,” and the federal government is in no way able to interfere with this process. Indeed, Russian military analysts are already expressing their indignation at the fact that “for the first time since the end of the Great Patriotic War, a Russian city has been handed over to the enemy,” revealing the “deepest crisis” of the Russian army (Topwar.ru, October 2).
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian opposition politician and former head of Yukos, expressed similar thoughts. According to him, with the annexation of Ukrainian territories, Putin formalized the collapse of his own state, since the peoples of Russia can also exercise the right to self-determination, to which the Russian leader so insistently appeals. Khodorkovsky expressed confidence that, after Putin loses the war in Ukraine, similar referendums will be held “all over Russia” (YouTube, October 4).