The Future Of Russia
And the future of the rest of the world
Part one — The Nightmare
The year is 2023. That shouldn’t be that difficult to imagine. If you look up Russia in the CIA World Factbook, and take a look at the Government section, you will see the Chief of State is not President Vladimir Vladimirovich PUTIN. I am afraid, the text will read President Yevgeny Viktorovich PRIGOZHIN.
Of course, a look on the map over Russia will still not include Crimea, and surely not Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. And if we are lucky, no Russian soldier is staying in Ukraine, at least not alive and in freedom. Perhaps, both NATO and the European Union are negotiating the details before Ukraine becomes a member of the two organizations. I guess Volodymyr Zelensky still is President of Ukraine. Denis Pushilin fled, just like Viktor Yanukovich, to Russia, and is living a life under the radar.
Novaya Gazeta has begun writing again, but is still heavily redacted and suppressed by Rozkomnadzor. Somewhere, in a prison, about 150 miles from Moscow, Alexei Navalny still sits in his cell.
Even though there will be no active war, no missiles, no tanks, no machine guns, no land - or sea mines, no warships, it will be not the peace, we need. Despite the many billions of dollars, The United States has spend on Ukraine to supply them with weapons, aids, ammunition, intelligence and whatnot, Europe and USA are still on the same page as they were in 2022. Gaz, coal and oil from Russia will perhaps be a little bit cheaper, at least in the summer months, but with Putin’s chef as president, or whichever crony won the internal battle of United Russia (not Dmitry Medvedev, I reckon), Russia will be the same danger as it always has been. “Always” as in “since 2000”.
Russia will be licking it’s wounds, and silently thinking about how to get revenge. Because revenge will be taken by Russia. Not this year (remember, we are in 2023), and probably neither next year. It might take a few years. Just like it took 8 years between Putin taking Crimea and trying (and failing) to take the rest of Ukraine.
What are we going to do about it? Nothing, I guess. “Wait and see”, like we always did. Remember the words we said last year, when Russia invaded Ukraine? “How did we not see this would happen?” Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but we did not WANT to see it. We’ve been accepting the status quo called Vladimir Putin. Germany and many other countries in Europe were heavily dependent of Russia. Putin tried to use that fact, and slowly closed the gaz pipes from Russia to Germany. Europe survived, barily. And now, we are making the same mistake again. “Yay”, we shout, “Putin is gone”. Dead and buried, or perhaps in jail, or in exile somewhere in Venezuela, playing chess with Nicolás Maduro. But that doesn’t change a bit. Not for “The West”, not for the common people of Russia. Not for Ukraine, not for Navalny.
Let’s not make the same mistake again. Let’s not celebrate when Putin is being removed from the public scene, and exchanged by another “United Russia” ideologist. Another criminal, another terrorist.
Part two — The Dream
The year is 2023. That shouldn’t be that difficult to imagine. If you look up Russia in the CIA World Factbook, and take a look at the Government section, you will see the Chief of State is not President Vladimir Vladimirovich PUTIN. I am glad to see President Alexei Anatolievich NAVALNY.
The biggest newspaper in Russia is called Novaya Gazeta. And even though many Ukrainians still have a grudge against Russians (like many Europeans had against Germans after World War II — in many years actually), Russians are welcome again in Ukraine. Sure, they will be treated like vermin, especially in the first many years. Europe won’t start buying energy products from Russia right away. Slowly, the people in Russia will accept, they’ve been lying to in many years. They will realize, Boris Yeltsins progressive views were shot down by one man — a man they trusted. They will realize, Gorbachev really did some good work by launching his perestrojka and glasnost.
Russia will have a huge debt. Their biggest deptor will be Ukraine, and next to Ukraine, there is the United States of America, followed by European Union.
President Navalny will be able to visit President Zelensky, even though a fair deal of Ukrainians will protest against an official visit of a Russian President to Ukraine. The Disarmament Agreement will not be continued. Both USA and Russia will keep nuclear weapons. Fortunately, because we still have enemies like Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei and some street criminals like Maduro. But with Russia as an ally, the world will be a better place than it has been in many years.
The second part of this story is my hope for the future. But I am not that naive: without a revolution, where the people of Russia demand and claim a new government, a complete turn-around, this second part is just a dream. Without having the Russian people to take action, we will live in a nightmare — as depicted in the first part of this story.
So, what will it be: the nightmare or the dream? It’s up to you …
