Too many red lines have been crossed, too many points of no return passed. So deep is the country’s malaise that even Russian President Vladimir Putin’s exit from the Russian political stage, whenever it occurs, is unlikely to change the country’s current trajectory. Should Russia endure as a state within its current borders, we might as well come up with a new name for it. If there’s any agreement among them, it is that Russia as we knew it-a semi-mythical Eurasian nation that, according to its own lore, had saved the world from the Mongols and Nazis, endured a communist experiment, and then reunited itself with the West-is no longer there. I asked a group of military experts, sociologists, journalists, and economists who think about Russia professionally to help me envision the future. This time, I, like many others, struggle to see any light in Russia’s future. Now I’m forced to revise, yet again, my assumptions about what Russia is and what it will become. Back then, it seemed that after a decades-long totalitarian detour, Russia had finally found its true path-that of a free, democratic country. I was one of those euphoric young Russians standing amid the ruins of communism, looking forward to a life free of ideology, oppression, and untruths. I came of age as the borders of the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia embraced the West. The same cannot be said for Russia, which now finds itself staring down the inevitable black hole of its future. When this war is over, though, there is still hope that Ukraine will take its place in a brighter and honorable future, earned through the heroism of its people. The barbarity of Russian warfare defies everything modernity stands for. The trauma and misfortune Russia has wrought, unprovoked, on Ukraine is akin to those depicted in the tragedies of antiquity-advanced weapons such as drones and missiles notwithstanding. In the heart of Europe, at least 18,000 civilians are dead, 14.5 million displaced, and thousands more tortured, mutilated, forcefully resettled. Russia’s war of choice shattered these assumptions. A world trending irreversibly toward liberal democracy. A world where mutually beneficial commercial activity was guaranteed by a global security order, to which the world’s leading nations adhered in exchange for membership in a shared civilization. We used to live in a world where large-scale conventional wars that left thousands of dead and wounded existed only in video games and books.
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