(Part three can be found here.)
1. Disagreements on implementing border agreements. On paper, borders have been settled, but to implement them many families will have to be moved with land swaps between nations. Reconstructing the 5 separate pieces of Buryatia (near the Mongolian border by Lake Baikal) and the 3 parts of Circassia (around Sochi on the Black Sea) are two examples. The plan could be stimulated by financing for new community developments and new housing to replace current housing much of which is deteriorating. Detractors assert that such extensive social re-engineering is too complicated. Resolutely, the effort is to undo the injustices wrought by Lenin and Stalin in their Russification policies and banishment to the Gulags where millions died.
2. Living in harmony with other cultures. Agreements to share infrastructure, transportation, natural resources and environmental responsibilities are economic matters that affect employment. Certainly, each Free Nation must do its due diligence in assessing its resources, capabilities and available markets to come up with a viable economy that is able to support their whole population with a fair distribution of opportunities among the segments of their population. In the Post-Russia space, all 41 Free Nations are multi-ethnic and many have large proportions of Russians. Getting along with neighbors will be crucial, particularly where rivers, lakes and hydroelectric power must be shared, along with transportation routes. Hospitals, firehalls, schools and community facilities have to be built, renovated, maintained and staffed.
Language policies are important in education, recreation, museums and religious worship. Representational structures and budget mechanisms require careful design to avoid systemic inequities between cultures. Wresting control over decisions from Moscow is not enough. Learning from successful multi-cultural jurisdictions Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands are working multi-ethnic countries. Of all the regions in the Post-Russia space, the Transcaucasian region immediately proximal to Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan is the most complex, home to over 50 ethnic groups. For a century rulers in the Kremlin divided these peoples and set them against each other and Russian troops have intervened like an infection that is not properly treated. Consequently, many conflicts have occurred in the statelets of Abkhazia, North Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria that remain unresolved. Meddling from the Kremlin continues to back Ramzan Kadyrov a violent dictator. Removing the financial support of the Kremlin is likely to yield more cooperation, but the reality is there will be private armies spread across Russia.
3. There are about 250,000 personnel in up to a dozen Private Military Companies (PMCs), of which the Wagner group headed by Prigozhin is the largest consisting of about 55 thousand prisoners. Most of them have been committed to fight in Bakhmut and more than half have been killed. The second largest PMC about 10 to 12 thousand is headed by Ramzan Kadyrov, President of Chechnya. Up to 2000 have been committed to fight in Ukraine. The energy giant Gazprom and Defense Minister Shoigu each have their own private military company. In Russia, money talks so it is anticipated that the oligarchs will hire PMCs to protect their mega-industries.
4. Of course leaders in the Kremlin will not be pleased when their Federal subjects do not remit taxes owed, and declarations of autonomy will not sit well either, but referenda backing declarations of independence could result in military intervention. However, the Kremlin no longer has sufficient troops to put down many simultaneous declarations of independence. Furthermore, armed forces are unlikely to fire on civilians. And the communities of the Free Nations will have returning soldiers to supplement local police forces in case troops from Moscow do show up. Certainly the 41 Free Nations must coordinate their declarations with at least a dozen or so proclaiming independence at once. They must all have the courage to inform their Kremlin appointed plenipotentiary envoys that their authority no longer applies. Brinksmanship is highly likely as these envoys will have staff resources and bodyguards.
Dr. Rein Lepnurm
University of Saskatchewan and EKN
(to be continued)
