Collapse may occur by 2033.
In the coming years, Russia will collapse or turn into a state that never existed. Almost half of the foreign policy experts polled by the Atlantic Council, an analytical center under NATO that specializes in relations with Europe and the Russian Federation, gave such a forecast.
Of the 167 participants in the survey, 46% believe that by 2033 Russia may collapse as a state or disintegrate into many smaller countries, reports the Financial Times.
At the same time, 40% of respondents named “revolution, civil war or political disintegration” as the reason for the possible disintegration of Russia.
The war against Ukraine put Russia on the path to the disaster of the country as a whole.
Western officials say that the invasion of Ukraine has already led to a significant weakening of Russia, the FT writes: sanctions, including a ban on the supply of high-tech goods, have hit the productive potential of the economy, promising it degradation and a decades-long rollback.
Although according to the results of 2022, Russian GDP will lose less than 3%, in 2023 the decline will continue. And the two-year recession will be Russia’s first in the first years after the collapse of the USSR.
The government makes optimistic forecasts, saying that in the new year the economy will shrink by only 0.9%, and from 2024 it will begin to accelerate and compensate for the entire decline in two years. But neither Western nor Russian economists share these estimates: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts a decline in the Russian economy in 2023 by 2.3%, the World Bank – by 3.6%. Experts of RANHiGS and the Gaidar Institute expect a decrease of more than 5%, Alfabank – by 6%.
Despite the threat of an internal explosion in Russia and the fact that Europe has become the scene of the largest military conflict since the Second World War, Atlantic Council experts do not expect Moscow and NATO to be in a state of direct military conflict. More than half of them – 58% – are also sure that nuclear weapons will not be used in the coming years.
However, the Atlantic Council urges to prepare for a turbulent decade: it is quite likely that Iran will get nuclear weapons (86%), China will launch a military operation to annex Taiwan (70%). At the same time, although most experts are confident that the US will remain the number one military power, only a third of them believe that the US will retain its leadership in the world economy (33%) and diplomacy (31%).
Earlier we wrote that Ukrainian intelligence explained whether it is realistic to end the war in Ukraine before the end of 2023.