Casey Michel
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 challenged much of the common Western understanding of Russia. How can the world better understand Russia? What are the steps forward for Western policy? The Eurasia Center’s new “Russia Tomorrow” series seeks to reevaluate conceptions of Russia today and better prepare for its future tomorrow.
Imagine Russia in 2030. Will it resemble today’s imperial kleptocracy? Will it be a Western-style democracy? Will the Russian Federation exist at all? As Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine continues, the questions of what comes next have never been more pertinent. However, while questions of future developments in Ukraine continue to dominate discourse in places like Washington and Brussels, far less attention has been paid to what comes next in Moscow, and across the Russian Federation. Indeed, the discussion of developments within—and policy surrounding—Russia’s potential future has been largely muted across the West. Even after former militia head Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed 2023 putsch, serious discussion regarding potential Russian futures remained largely subdued.
But given the magnitude and fallout of Russia’s invasion, to say nothing of the ongoing threats that a revanchist Kremlin poses to the West and its allies elsewhere, this lack of discussion surrounding Russia’s potential future is increasingly inexcusable. As such, this essay will seek to rectify that inadequate oversight in the broader policy conversations about Russia’s path forward.
These sections include potential developments leading to and through each scenario—imagining what such a scenario would entail—as well as how the West should respond strategically if the scenario comes to pass, as well as potential time horizons.
These scenarios should not be taken as necessarily exhaustive. Instead, these five scenarios should be treated as the five likeliest scenarios moving forward.
All five scenarios should be considered within Western capitals—and attendant policy tool kits should begin to be formulated in preparation of each potential scenario. While this will require efforts and exertion from Western policymakers, such efforts are necessary. After all, if there is one thing the rise of Putin’s regime has illustrated, it is that the West’s lack of broader Russian strategy—and the lack of preparation for potential openings in Russia—helped accelerate Moscow’s aggression and helped fuel the Kremlin’s irredentism. The more prepared the West can be for potential openings and potential evolutions in Russia moving forward, the better off all of us—including those in Russia—will be.
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