The Institute Of World Politics

Mr. Janusz Bugajski will discuss the state of Russia today and the consequences a failed Russian state may have on the world. About the Lecture: The Russian Federation is a failed state. It has proved unable to transform itself into a nation-state, a civic state, or a stable imperial state. Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has accelerated the process of state rupture through economic decline, falling revenues, elite conflicts, military incompetence, and regional and ethnic disquiet. Russia confronts an existential paradox. Without economic reform and regional autonomy, the federal structure will become increasingly unmanageable. But even if democratic reforms are undertaken by a weakening central state several regions can exploit the opportunity to secede. The prospects for violent internal conflicts substantially increase if reforms are indefinitely blocked. Growing fractures in the Russian Federation will also have a major impact on all neighboring countries for which Western policymakers are not pr