“One of the main dynamics here is that there’s nothing to separate Russia and Ukraine. Russia will always possess the ability to aggress and destabilize Ukraine, if nothing else because of their adjacency,” says Samir Puri, an expert in Russian and international affairs at the Singapore-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
At a recent symposium hosted by Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank with an anti-interventionist mindset, Puri compared Ukraine to Chechnya, the restive and semiautonomous majority-Muslim republic that Russia subjugated in two brutal wars starting in 1994.
“The Russians failed in attaining Chechnya, and then they gathered their strength and had another go,” Puri told Yahoo News in response to a question about the potential length of the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
“Putin’s successor could actually present himself within right-wing circles in Moscow around being able to do the job better,” Puri told Yahoo News. “And history could repeat itself. Just as Putin did the job that [former Russian President Boris] Yeltsin failed to do in Chechnya, maybe a Putin successor might actually say, ‘I can do the job in Ukraine, or a different job in Ukraine, better.’ And that is [why] I think this is a real long-term problem.”
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