West Must Prepare for Total ‘Collapse’ and Fragmentation of Russia, Warns Ukrainian Security Chief

TOPSHOT - Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a conference as part of a summit called
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Kurt Zindulka

A top national security advisor in Ukraine has warned that the West must prepare for the total collapse and fragmentation of Russia in a similar fashion to the failed Soviet Union.

The complete breakdown of one of the world’s two nuclear superpowers, the Russian Federation, is already “underway” and within the coming years will split apart, creating a multitude of geopolitical ramifications, Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council told The Times of London this week.

“The West doesn’t know Russia and the West is afraid of fragmentation in Russia,” Danilov told the British paper. “But this process is already underway.”

Warning that the “spectacular” collapse would occur within the next three to seven years, the top Ukrainian security chief said: “It is a historic process and you can’t stop history.”

Danilov said that, like the fall of the Soviet Union, the dissolution of the Vladimir Putin-led state would see further territorial departures from Mother Russia, predicting Moscow would not only lose control over parts of Eastern Ukraine, but its land in the Caucasus and the pro-Russia breakaway Georgian republic of Abkhazia as well.

Perhaps more concerning for Western observers, the Ukrainian security boss went on to warn that Communist China would likely try to seize upon the fallout to expand its borders into Siberia, which despite being Russian-controlled has large populations of ethnic Chinese living in the area. The Siberian region is also rich in natural gas and oil reserves, something which China is severely lacking.

“Letting China take Russian territory will be dangerous for the West because by unlocking one problem they will create another,” Danilov said. “There needs to be initial steps by the West now.”

Russia’s weakness has not only been demonstrated by Putin’s failed attempts at capturing the Ukrainian capital Kyiv last year, but was further exposed during the meeting last month with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, Danilov claimed, explaining that it showed the world who is the real boss over Moscow now.

“China is a big country and will be a mighty rival to the Anglo-Saxon world,” he said. “Now it’s the owner of Russia. Russia will no longer undertake any important action without them. Russia fully lost its sovereignty. That’s a fact.”

When pressed on whether he thought Putin would deploy nuclear weapons if a collapse was imminent, Danilov stated: “If the Chinese let Russia use nuclear weapons, they will use them,” Danilov said. “If not, they won’t. So you have to ask China that.”

Warnings of the war in Ukraine going nuclear have ramped up in recent weeks, with Vladimir Putin announcing that Russia would be sending nuclear weapons into its neighbouring ally pupet state of Belarus. On Tuesday, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu revealed that Belarusian fighter jets are already equipt to carry nuclear warheads.

While threats of using nuclear weapons from the Kremlin have ramped up following the announcment of an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin from the International Criminal Court, a collapse of the Putin regime could present an even greater threat in terms of nuclear weapons.

Should the Russian Federation break apart, there would likely be a quick scramble to secure Russia’s roughly 5,977 nuclear warheads — 1,588 of which are considered to be actively deployed — in order to prevent them falling into the hands of non-state actors or terrorists.

A collapse of the Russian Federation would also likely see millions, if not tens of millions, of refugees from the failed state flood into Europe, which has already been struggling under the weight of mass migration for nearly a decade, and more recently a huge influx of Ukrainian refugees.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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