a follow-up on the report in the Newsweek article:

What Will Russia Without Putin Look Like? Maybe This.
by Joy Neumeyer, Ms. Neumeyer is a journalist and historian of Russia
and Eastern Europe.
Opinion/Guest Essay, New York Times, November 21, 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/opinion/russia-putin-opposition.html
. . .
Composed of well-known opposition figures as well as younger
representatives from local and regional governments, the First
Congress of People’s Deputies of Russia met in Poland in early
November. The location, Jablonna Palace outside Warsaw, was symbolic:
It was the site of early negotiations in the round-table talks that
led to the end of Communist rule in Poland. There, over three days of
intense debate, participants laid out proposals for rebuilding their
country. Taken together, they amount to a serious effort to imagine
Russia without Mr. Putin.

The first and most pressing priority, of course, is the invasion of
Ukraine. Everyone at the congress opposes the war, which they assume
will be lost or lead to nuclear disaster. To deal with the
consequences and to prevent a repeat tragedy, they propose an “act on
peace” that would demobilize the army and end the occupation of
Ukrainian territory, including Crimea; create a joint group for the
investigation of war crimes; pay reparations for damaged
infrastructure and the families of the dead; and reject future “wars
of conquest.” In addition to offering a deterrent to future
expansionism, this wide-ranging pledge would provide an essential
reckoning with Russia’s history of imperialist invasion.

The officials responsible for the devastation will need to be rooted
out, too — something that never happened after the collapse of the
Soviet Union. The congress would bar from working in state and
educational institutions those who belonged to “criminal”
organizations — such as the Federal Security Services or state
television channels — or publicly supported the war, as well as
restricting their voting rights. It would also create a
“de-Putinization” commission to consider the rehabilitation of certain
groups, including those who publicly recant and did not commit
especially serious crimes, and open the archives of the security
services.

Then there’s the structure of Russia itself. The Russian Federation is
highly centralized, with a patchwork of over 80 republics and regions
that are strongly subordinate to the president, enabling the
accumulation of enormous power. The congress, drawing on decentralized
visions from around the time of the Soviet collapse, proposes to
dissolve the Russian Federation and replace it with a new
parliamentary democracy. According to a broadly worded draft provision
on “self-determination,” the future Russian state should be “joined on
the basis of free choice by the peoples who populate it.”
. . .

I would argue that this sort of thing that shows up in a second rate has-been US magazine, is nothing more than wishful thinking. Prognostications like this are useless, IMO.

David Walters

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