If tomorrow the war comes: What will happen to Russia after the "victory" over Ukraine

"Novye Izvestia" turned with this question to the experts of various political spectrum and received very different answers.

Yelena Ivanova, Natalia Seibil

The cheerful speech of the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Vladimir Zhirinovsky about the attack on Ukraine exactly on New Year's Eve spurred talks about the possibility of a new war with the Ukrainian brothers. Of course, Zhirinovsky has long ceased to be one of the country's super-influential politicians, and false starts happened quite often in his political career - he will call for the capture of Tbilisi, or he will swing at washing his boots in the Indian Ocean. As political scientist Sergey Markov says, as a politician he can do anything - he reflects the opinion of his voters. It seems that Zhirinovsky does not so much catch the people's vibes as the wind blowing from the Kremlin. And now it is cold and piercing.

What could be a war with Ukraine

According to Sergey Markov, President Vladimir Putin is the “dove” in the Russian establishment. He occupies "overly moderate positions", and his voters want "a small operation to be carried out to eliminate the threat of a major war by eliminating the terrorist regime". And there are a lot of options.

Unlike 2014, experts do not think about a full-scale operation with the capture of Kiev. This is, first of all, about the Donbass.

Director of the Center for Political Analysis, political scientist Pavel Danilin believes that the tension that Washington and Ukraine are stirring up may lead to "the need to resolve the Ukrainian issue". The analyst is not confused by the rhetoric of the times of the Third Reich, which solved the "Jewish question". He also agrees with the editor-in-chief of the Republic of Tatarstan Margarita Simonyan, who recently called for the return of Donbass home:

- Ukraine and Donbass are two different things. Donbass has long been not a part of Ukraine. Formally, yes. There is a war going on there, and these regions are not de facto Ukraine. De jure, they can be Ukraine as much as they want. In the event of Ukrainian aggression against the population of Donetsk and Lugansk, where a million of our fellow citizens live, Russia will have to react. But I did not say a word about the occupation of Ukraine.

Pavel Danilin sees the solution of the "Ukrainian question" before tanks and Russian infantry enter it in three stages: stop all exports, include the DPR and LPR in Russia, which will lead to an internal political crisis and, perhaps, even a coup in Ukraine. and support "those comrades who are ready to stage this coup." However, the political scientist himself admits that after the annexation of the DPR and LPR, the world will change - he will have to live under the most severe sanctions and in enmity with the Ukrainian people:

- But there are pluses here. The masks will be dropped, and there will be no need to experience any illusions. The absence of these illusions will allow the elites to behave in a more popular way. Paris is worth mass. If these comrades so want to get a reaction from Russia to such actions... We will pay for this mass, and we will fight for Ukraine. Yes, we will pay economically, we have to figure out where to go.

Political analyst Sergey Markov is convinced that the vast majority of Ukrainian regions want to live within Russia, so what is there to talk about Donetsk and Lugansk at all. In the event of the annexation of the DPR and LPR to Russia, a situation is possible when hostilities begin:

- There is an option according to which Russia recognizes the DPR and LPR, then hostilities begin, in response to this, Russia inflicts a powerful missile strike on the grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, destroys about 10 thousand Ukrainian servicemen, and after that the DPR-LPR corps, closely integrated with the troops Russian army, they are cleaning this territory, reaching the border of the Donetsk-Luhansk region, and Russia recognizes them as part of Russia.

Sergey Markov says that if Russia introduces troops, then about 70% of the soldiers of the Ukrainian army will go over to the side of the Russian army - "there is no hatred, except for representatives of ultra-right neo-Nazi organizations, who are separately fed, overfed with propaganda, integrated into the Ukrainian army".

There are several scenarios for "taming" Ukraine, the political scientist says. Along the way, it will be possible to seize the North Crimean Canal with Mariupol, then go to Nikolaev and Odessa and "unblock" Transnistria, as they say, solve this issue along the way. At the next stage, you can take Kharkov, Zaporozhye, and then Dnepropetrovsk.

- In Kiev, the Russian army will not be welcomed. The majority of Kievans are now opposed to Russia. "Anti-Russia" will be formed from the western regions plus Kiev, - Sergey Markov admits.

This whole blitzkrieg is possible because Ukrainians want to live in Russia, Markov argues. 7 years of war and 30 thousand dead and another 2.5 million refugees, the home-grown "Clausewitz" does not take into account:

- These are pro-Russian cities, 80% will vote for joining. These are Russian cities, they hate the Bandera regime there. A narrow layer of neo-Nazi gangs and war criminals who support the current terrorist regime, she will flee, and the city will be free, and the Russian army will be greeted there with flowers, applause and kisses.

It is obvious that the ideas of the blitzkrieg excite the minds of the Russian elite. Sergey Markov cites the example of the Anschluss of Austria. In his opinion, the absolute majority of Austrians wanted to live as part of Nazi Germany:

- If Hitler then finished the reunification of Germany with Austria and would not have waged any European war, would not have created concentration camps, would not have made a decision on the genocide of the Slavs, Russians, Jews, then Germany would have been in such a volume together with Austria now. Another thing is that after Hitler started the genocide, the European war, the monstrous massacre, he became, without a doubt, a monstrous war criminal. And before that there was reunification with Austria at the request of the absolute majority of the Austrian population. Hitler is a monster, and the roads were not built monstrous. Don't lump everything together.

Such historical examples do not inspire optimism about the state of mind of the Russian elite, especially since Hitler never intended to stop.

What will happen after the end of hostilities

There are some experts who argue in Orwell's logic "peace is war." State Duma deputy from "Fair Russia", deputy chairman of the committee on economic policy Mikhail Delyagin, for example, believes that the annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk regions is a way to avoid war. If you fight, it makes sense to reunite New Russia, he says, although his words sound skeptical:

- In 2014, there was no one to govern, and now and even more so, after all, 7 years of degradation have passed. Compare those people who were in management in 2014 and the current young, God forgive me, technocrats. Governor Osipov, for example, of the Trans-Baikal Territory, he needed to go on a business trip. He just kicked people off the plane and took off. And then the other day he said: vaccinate as you want, at least surround with troops, and no one said a bad word to him, as I understand it. Well, what kind of troops will conquer something when they surround residential areas in Transbaikalia?

Those who like to bomb Ukraine on New Year's Eve will not be in the trenches, as well as their children, relatives or acquaintances. For everything, ordinary guys, saturated with state propaganda, will answer, says economist and entrepreneur Dmitry Potapenko. Moreover, joining does not mean that the country will get richer. On the contrary, Russia will have to pay in full:

- If tomorrow, God forbid, we join in this way any part of Ukraine - Donbass or LPR, then all social obligations, the obligation to feed the population will be with the occupation troops. At an average cost, this is comparable to thirty - forty Crimea. Joining does not mean that you will receive income. You will receive expenses. The last thing in the 21st century is to honestly believe that the territory will generate income. Someone, of course, will earn money from robbery and looting. But no one has yet succeeded in building a working economy under occupation.

Director of the Institute for Strategic Analysis of the company "Financial and Accounting Consultants", Doctor of Economics Igor Nikolayev considers the war extremely unlikely, however, hypothetically, there is no doubt that the same hellish sanctions will come:

- The economic consequences will be devastating for the Russian economy. Yes, it won't happen the next day. Even an accelerated transition to green energy and the adoption of some measures will take some time, but the consequences will be devastating.

There is no need to hope that this will never happen, because it is not beneficial for the West, that they themselves will experience a rise in prices, inflation. They will go for the fact that they will suffer serious losses and price increases. They are ready to go. I'm not talking about the content of the annexed territories. It can be analyzed from different angles, but from the point of view of sanctions and an accelerated transition to new types of energy, I believe that it will be much more difficult.

Historian Aleksey Malashenko is convinced that if a war breaks out, tomorrow there will be "emptiness" - Russia will be completely isolated:

- I think that even the Chinese will not be particularly happy about this. An ally who likes to take risks is dangerous. As for the former post-Soviet space, except for Lukashenka, everyone will be against it. The same Kazakhstan will have a question - what if I'm next? Anti-Russian sentiments have already started there. What remains of Ukraine after the "victory" will already be NATO.

Inside Russia, foreign agents will immediately turn into traitor collaborators. No cooperation with China and no "Power of Siberia" will compensate for economic losses:

- Russia will look like an aggressive power with unpredictable behavior. This is the worst option. But I think that not even the mind, but the instinct of self-preservation will play a role. In addition, this war, in spite of Solovyov and other Caudles, which shouts on TV, will not be popular.

Georgy Satarov, a political scientist and president of the INDEM Foundation for Applied Political Research , predicts that the iron curtain will fall, and NATO armed forces will stand on Russia's western borders. He calls the possible sanctions serious:

- The option of a complete economic shutdown and seizure of Putin's accounts. I think they are known, and he knows that they are known. He thinks they are weak. But they always track such things very carefully. It is clear that not only Putin. But these are not our problems.

In the event of war, many trade and economic relations will be interrupted, which will hit the population. However, the reaction of the elite remains unpredictable, says Georgy Satarov:

- A fairly large number of senior officials have many business interests. They will have to solve a large number of problems associated with this. It is not very easy to deal with us at the same time, but perhaps they will find someone to entrust. But I don't think it can happen as easily as they think.

Mikhail Delyagin has his own version of what is happening. If you look at the dynamics of international reserves and the dynamics of the well-being of the population in 2014 and now, it turns out that just as then mere pennies were spent on Crimea, and in the case of the annexation of Donbass, no one is going to spend money later. In 2014, the NWF was 7.3 trillion rubles, now it is 19.5:

- Who will restore Donbass and why? Why? Are they investing a lot in the Ivanovo region? Or do they invest a lot in Kostroma? Why will there be a recovery? If the state wants to arrange a devaluation and a catastrophe, and nullify its social obligations under a plausible pretext, but so far it nullifies its social obligations under the pretext of coronavirus, and this is not bad at all.

The most optimistic scenario of what will happen after the "victorious" war was drawn by Sergey Markov. There will be no devastation in the "liberated" territories, because most of the armed forces of Ukraine will go over to the side of the Russian army. There will be no ban on the export of hydrocarbons either, because "now Putin will go to China and sign an agreement on the Power of Siberia-2":

- Then the EU will begin a process of rethinking, because the blame for the Russian military operation lies entirely with the United States and the EU, which supported the terrorist junta, so the sanctions will be very tough at first, and then they will abruptly decline, decline.

Well, what can you say ...

Of course, both our question and the experts' answers are from the field of "mind games". Of course, anything is possible, but everyone hopes that it will not come to war, although the propaganda hysteria is off the charts. The ease with which some comrades speak out about this, how you can throw yourself at it, is striking, Igor Nikolaev complains. Because the consequences will be very real - for everyone.