This is kind of a garbage article. The link to the actual interview provided by Yahoo only gives a brief summary focused on the attempted assassination of Budanov and one vague byline about how he believes Russia is ready for civil war.
Further detail shows that these assumptions are couched in the context of 4-5 years, which isn’t really “on the edge” - so I’m rating this link clickbait.
That being said, as other commenters have mentioned, this is pretty obvious to everyone that the Russian Federation is headed towards a major economic collapse, which will be the best driver of political change. If sanctions continue to impact their economy for that long, they’ll reach a critical mass point where they won’t be able to support their war machine, which will fragment into regional power bases, similar to what we’ve seen with Wagner. This could happen quickly with Putin’s absence, or it could be drawn out depending on how much longer Putin lives and what lengths he goes to to maintain control. It’s very clear that without his presence or a similar dictatorial figure, Russia will collapse into infighting as its economy implodes. The only figure I can think of, that has that kind of clout in Russia after Wagner’s disgrace is Kadyrov, but his power base is entirely regional, Moscow would never accept him due to Russian racism and cultural biases, and he just doesn’t have the intellectual capacity or political savvy that Putin does.
This is kind of a garbage article. The link to the actual interview provided by Yahoo only gives a brief summary focused on the attempted assassination of Budanov and one vague byline about how he believes Russia is ready for civil war.
Further detail shows that these assumptions are couched in the context of 4-5 years, which isn’t really “on the edge” - so I’m rating this link clickbait.
That being said, as other commenters have mentioned, this is pretty obvious to everyone that the Russian Federation is headed towards a major economic collapse, which will be the best driver of political change. If sanctions continue to impact their economy for that long, they’ll reach a critical mass point where they won’t be able to support their war machine, which will fragment into regional power bases, similar to what we’ve seen with Wagner. This could happen quickly with Putin’s absence, or it could be drawn out depending on how much longer Putin lives and what lengths he goes to to maintain control. It’s very clear that without his presence or a similar dictatorial figure, Russia will collapse into infighting as its economy implodes. The only figure I can think of, that has that kind of clout in Russia after Wagner’s disgrace is Kadyrov, but his power base is entirely regional, Moscow would never accept him due to Russian racism and cultural biases, and he just doesn’t have the intellectual capacity or political savvy that Putin does.