An Existential Crisis for the Russian Federation

When Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he gambled not merely on the capture of territory or the subjugation of a neighbour, but on the survival of the Russian state itself. What began as an imperial adventure to reassert control over a former vassal has become an existential confrontation that threatens to consume the Russian Federation, exposing her structural weaknesses, economic dependencies and centrifugal ethnic tensions. The war has transformed from a project of conquest into a struggle for the very continuity of the Russian polity — the last vestige of empire left standing in Eurasia.

The Historical Continuum of Russian Empire

Russia’s identity as a state has always been bound to the notion of empire. From the Muscovite princes who proclaimed themselves heirs of Byzantium, to the tsars who expanded across Siberia and Central Asia, to the commissars of the Soviet Union who rebranded imperial dominion as socialist fraternity, Russian governance has relied upon perpetual expansion and centralised coercion. The borders of Russia were never secure; they were defined by the subjugation of peripheries. Empire was not a political project but a mode of existence.

Hence, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Russian Federation that survived was less a nation-state than a truncated empire, still commanding vast non-Russian populations, oil-rich territories, and a fragile federal architecture inherited from the USSR. Putin’s rise was built upon restoring order to this post-imperial chaos. Yet his vision was never of a democratic or pluralistic Russia; it was of an empire reconstituted, with Ukraine — the historic heartland of Rus’ — as her linchpin. By launching his invasion, Putin sought to reverse the humiliation of Soviet dissolution. Instead he reopened the imperial wound that had only been temporarily bandaged.

The War and the Unmasking of Fragility

The invasion has revealed that the Russian state remains brittle beneath its authoritarian surface. The country’s military failures, economic isolation and demographic decline have exposed the limits of its coercive capacity. Russia’s armed forces, once presented as a modernised instrument of power, have been degraded into a conscript army reliant on mercenaries and penal battalions. Sanctions have drained its access to technology, forcing it into dependency upon China, North Korea and Iran.

This vulnerability is not merely technical but existential: Russia’s political system depends upon projecting strength. The myth of victory underpins the legitimacy of the Kremlin. As defeats mount and mobilisation deepens, that myth corrodes. The more the war continues, the more it erodes the delicate equilibrium of the federation. Regional governors, security services, and ethnic republics are all balancing loyalty against survival. Chechnya, Tatarstan, Dagestan, and Yakutia — regions held together by subsidies and repression — are quietly calculating the limits of Moscow’s endurance. China is moving people and investments into the Russian far east and Lake Baikal. The empire is at risk from every direction.

The Peril of Imperial Disintegration

If Russia loses in Ukraine — not merely on the battlefield but in the narrative of power — the consequences will not stop at the Kremlin’s gates. The defeat of an imperial war carries within it the defeat of empire itself. The Russian Federation may fragment under the weight of economic collapse, political paralysis and centrifugal nationalism. Her enormous geography, sustained by oil rents and fear, could begin to unravel as provinces refuse to bear the costs of Moscow’s ambitions.

This prospect is not idle speculation. The dissolution of the Soviet Union set a precedent that remains fresh in memory. The difference now is that the centre itself is weaker and poorer, and the peripheries are more self-aware. The security services, the Orthodox Church, and the army — pillars of unity — are discredited. In such a context, defeat in Ukraine could ignite the same forces that shattered the Romanov empire in 1917 and the Soviet Union in 1991: mutiny, bankruptcy, and national awakening at the margins.

The Ideological Collapse

The war has also consumed the ideological foundations of Putin’s Russia. For two decades, the Kremlin’s legitimacy rested upon a promise of stability and restored greatness. The invasion turned that promise into a delusion. State propaganda, once effective in binding the population, now must compensate for mass casualties, conscription, and visible decay in living standards. The notion of a sacred “Russian world” — the Russkiy Mir — is unravelling under the weight of military failure and moral exhaustion.

The Kremlin has no ideological substitute. Communism once offered a universal vision; now Russia offers only resentment. The state defines itself not by what it builds, but by what it opposes — the West, democracy, liberalism, and Ukraine’s independence. Such negative identity cannot sustain a civilisation. When the war ends, whether through exhaustion or defeat, the hollowness of the regime’s message will be laid bare.

The Paradox of Victory and Defeat

Paradoxically, even a limited “victory” in Ukraine may not save Russia. A Pyrrhic triumph — the occupation of destroyed territories, the annexation of hostile populations — would deepen the economic and moral crisis. The costs of reconstruction, the endless counterinsurgencies, and the isolation from the West would turn Russia into a garrison state: impoverished, paranoid, and inward-looking. Such a Russia would not be stable; it would merely be suspended in decay.

Thus whether she wins or loses in military terms, Russia has already entered the phase of imperial exhaustion. The war has forced her to consume the very resources — material, moral, and demographic — that sustained her power. Every dead conscript, every exiled scientist, and every silenced dissident is another blow to the possibility of renewal.

The Devouring of Empire

The invasion of Ukraine was intended to devour Ukraine; instead, it is devouring Russia. It has stripped the Russian Federation of its imperial illusions, reduced its alliances to dependency, and turned its own peripheries into potential secessionist tinder. If Russia loses, she risks ceasing to exist in her current form. The world would witness the final disintegration of a centuries-old empire — one that never succeeded in becoming a nation.

What began as an attempt to rewrite history may end as history’s most decisive verdict upon the Russian imperial experiment: that an empire built upon coercion and fear cannot outlive the faith it demands in its own invincibility. The collapse of that faith is already under way.