>Good Luck annexing Kaliningrad back, it may already be filled with nuclear warheads pointed at its neighbors
Helped Ukraine much, did it?
Helped Ukraine much, did it?
(Controlling Denmark would help tremendously, too, which is why Moscow once asked Berlin for Denmark during or right before WWII as a response to Berlin's asking Moscow for its consent for Berlin to take control of Romania or some such.)
And yes, I believe that continuing to be able to access the world ocean from St Petersburg has helped Russia in its war with Ukraine.
BTW, "China ends up in either nominal or practical control of almost all of [Russia]" strikes me as so unlikely as to not be worth thinking about.
Who does, then? There doesn't seem to be any internal power in position to gracefully take power when Putin inevitably proves mortal; whatever the power scramble looks like, it's going to take external funding (and thus external obligations) to secure it, which leaves whoever's providing that funding in effective control. And even if the US and/or Europe decide to try to buy one horse, China clearly is willing and able to buy a whole lot of them; just statistically they probably end up with it, no?
The US, Britain, France and Japan actually invaded Russia (circa 1918) to try to influence the outcome of a transition of power without success.
None of the transitions I described depended on which leader or which faction had funding from outside Russia. I expect Russian self-determination to continue. Nationalism is a very potent force in most countries, Russians seem more nationalistic than average, and the Russian ethnicity is firm in control of the country, which increases stability and nationalism.
Just because Russia has declined in influence relative to the great powers doesn't mean it will break up or stop exercising self-determination.
I’d say that this is how every country should be. Unfortunately, there is no self-determination in Russia. Yeah, most people do support Putin, though it’s not as overwhelming as they would like you to believe, so they rig the elections. The problem is there’s no real alternative. There like four parties, only one of which does something other than show up and vote for whatever bullshit new law they’re trying to pass, and they’ve invented some new ones recently, which I believe are also all puppets with different branding.
There is also nationalism, of course, feeded by a metric shit ton of propaganda. Will it help keep Russia from breaking up? I don’t know. As a Russian, it’s not up to me, and honestly, I don’t really care about the borders at all. My nationalism does not extend to the state terrorizing my people.
So did Russia, of course.
It did not help Ukraine with independence (and the warheads were gone very fast), nor did it help Russia retain control of Ukraine.
So I'd say in the hypothetical of Russia falling apart into chunks, Kaliningrad having the nukes won't be a decisive factor in where Kaliningrad ends up.
And I hope that if it doesn't end up as a part of what's left of Russia, whoever gets it won't send the nukes back like Ukraine did.