Two Novel Ideas about the future Russia

July 28, 2022

Novel idea #1: Force Russia to be a reliable supplier of oil and gas to European countries.

Novel idea #2: Just wait and see how many of Russia’s “republics” go their own way.

Given that Russia is already counting on most of its revenue coming from oil and gas, it makes sense that Putin could end the attempted cut off of Germany on his own. This is far from certain but it’s a bigger probability than it might seem given the repeated revelations of Russia’s truly poor state, economically and militarily. Right now the European Union and the NATO members in Europe have most if not all of the bargaining chips. And China may decide to accumulate some chips of its own.

In addition there’s the newly found oil fields in the Ukraine which Russia is now struggling to conquer. The West is strongly supporting the Ukrainians in their resistance of Russian aggression and three major U.S. oil companies already have stakes in this Ukrainian huge reserve. Why not support the Ukraine because rebuilding will cost another huge sum. The Ukraine will easily replace the Russian supply, leaving only China as a likely customer for Russian oil and gas.

So one might also propose the possibility of some or all of Russia’s republics deciding they’d be better off by going elsewhere for their economic and political welfare. This won’t all be in Europe’s and the United States’ favor but could well include some migration toward Turkey, Syria or Iran. But the end result would be a geographical Russia losing a lot of land area.

It also doesn’t take a college degree in geo politics to conclude that Red China already sees that taking all of Eastern Russia is easier than taking Taiwan.

Loss of land area on an unprecedented scale is looking even more possible when you take into account that Russia’s population is concentrated in just three or four cities- about 20 million true Russians live in Moscow, St Petersburg (~17 to 18 million). Novosibirks has only 1.6 million population and is the farthest East of Central Russia. And lets not forget that with a small land army using mostly outdated stock, Putin’s Russia doesn’t even have the manpower to guard or retake about 75% of it’s 6.6 million square mile territory.

But China has 9.72 times the population of Russia and would have the manpower to guard a new, expanded Chinese border.

I had already been thinking about the many weaknesses and the load of overestimated abilities of Russia when I found a map of today’s Russia on which I drew its probable future borders.

And isn’t it just a little bit of fun to think about President Vladimir Putin presiding over this catastrophic future? As I’ve been saying, Russia is well and truly cursed.