“Official circles do not think about Ukraine that much anymore, because Ukraine is not our geopolitical priority. The official circles rather approve of two approaches to Ukraine. Some dream of Ukraine becoming a partner within the framework of the Eurasian Union, Customs Union, which would basically make it a satellite. The others think of Ukraine as a buffer zone, a state with the ‘Finlandization’ policy: going neither one way nor the other. New Finland is the best option for Russia.” Said Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center, during her visit to Ukraine.
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She also added that “after 1991, Russia made a trap for itself: after abandoning the Soviet Union, it used this fact for prolongation and reproduction of the same model, the same Russian matrix, but without communism. After giving up the model of undisguised empire, Russia preserved the same system; only the rhetoric, posters, and imitation were different.”
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The expert also emphasised that Putin’s regime is losing stability. Nevertheless, the autocratic system itself has significantly larger chances to survive.
