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Topic: Diplomacy Blog Brand: The Buzz Region: Americas, and Eurasia Tags: Exile, Great Power Competition, Regime Change, Russia, United States, and Vladimir Putin Breaking Up Russia Is a Dangerous Fantasy December 29, 2025 By: Brandon J. Weichert
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The “Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum” is fundamentally an opposition exile movement—and such movements are almost never effective at bringing about change in their home countries.
A strange and dangerous movement has taken root in the West—one that claims to be concerned about Russia’s future, while advocating for policies that could make the world much more unstable.
A New Russian Exile Movement Is on the March
Known as the “Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum,” this group, founded in Poland in 2022, calls for nothing less than the complete dissolution of the Russian Federation and its replacement with dozens of smaller ethnostates. According to the group’s defenders, such a breakup would better represent the interests of Russia’s many regions and minority populations. After all, the logic goes, Russia is fundamentally an imperialist state.
In practice, however, this group represents one of the most reckless foreign policy fantasies to emerge from Western elite circles since the end of the Cold War.
To be clear, this is not a fringe movement operating in isolation. The Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum enjoys significant visibility and institutional support in Europe and the United States. The group has received funding, media attention, and invitations to appear at prominent policy venues, including events associated with the Jamestown Foundation.
For a Western establishment frustrated by its inability to decisively weaken Moscow through sanctions and proxy war, the idea of dismantling Russia “from within” has become alluring. Still, the logic these Western elites are employing is seductive. It’s also profoundly irresponsible.
Russia Is Stronger Than the West Thinks
American and European elites view this expatriate movement as a non-kinetic weapon to weaken Russia in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet there is little evidence that the dissolution of the Russian Federation enjoys any meaningful support inside Russia—the one place that matters in this conversation. Indeed, like so many exile movements before it, the group is sustained almost entirely by wealthy sponsors, sympathetic think tanks, and media platforms far removed from the political realities on the ground.
Moscow’s response to the group has been predictable. When the Russian Supreme Court designated the group as a terrorist organization, many Western commentators rushed to portray the move as evidence of panic or weakness from within the Kremlin. In reality, it was neither novel nor revealing. Suppressing opposition movements, real or imagined, is routine behavior for the Russian government under Vladimir Putin, especially during wartime.
The end result is that Russia today is more internally consolidated, and the country is more self-sufficient than it has been in decades. The Kremlin is winning the Ukraine War on the battlefield. Its industrial base has adapted. Its military manpower pipeline remains relatively intact. Indeed, even with losses sustained after years of brutal attrition warfare, Russia’s casualties and manpower are at more sustainable levels than Ukraine’s.
Observers have highlighted ethnic tensions within Russia—in particular the Kremlin’s tendency to overwhelmingly recruit rural minorities into the Russian Armed Forces, while leaving urban areas like Moscow and Saint Petersburg alone. The end result has been far higher casualty rates among those minority groups, leading to tensions. But while such tensions do exist, it is clear that there is no significant mass movement inside Russia demanding the disintegration of the state. The Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum does not represent a latent revolutionary force within Russia; it is little more than Western wish-casting.
Exile-Driven Regime Change Never Works
History, sadly, offers plentiful examples of similar delusional attempts to overthrow foreign governments through exile movements. From the farcical attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro using Cuban exile groups in Florida, to the catastrophic role of Ahmed Chalabi in promoting the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Western powers have repeatedly convinced themselves that expatriate elites can deliver regime change cheaply and cleanly. They never do.
In this case, the risks are vastly higher. Unlike Cuba or Iraq, Russia is a nuclear superpower. It possesses the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, along with extensive chemical and biological weapons capabilities.
During the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, American and European leaders worked painstakingly with Moscow to prevent these arsenals from falling into the hands of warlords, separatists, and terrorist organizations. Stabilizing the post-Soviet Russian Federation—rather than allowing it to fragment—was widely understood as a core global security priority.
That judgment was correct then, and it remains the proper conclusion today. Even if Russia were to be dissolved—an extremely unlikely prospect—the world would be a far more dangerous place. A balkanized, nuclear-armed Russia would produce chaos, proliferation risks, and ungoverned spaces stretching across Eurasia.
Indeed, what makes today’s Western posture toward Russia so incoherent is that many of the same policy leaders that once labored to prevent Russia’s disintegration are now entertaining scenarios that would recreate the very nightmare they fought so hard to avoid in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The West Doesn’t Like Putin. So What?
All of this, apparently, because Western elites dislike Vladimir Putin.
One need not admire Putin, or excuse Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to recognize the lunacy of openly discussing Russia’s dissolution while Moscow is engaged in what it perceives as an existential conflict against a Western-backed adversary.
Such rhetoric increases the likelihood of catastrophic miscalculation. States fighting for survival do not behave with restraint—especially nuclear-armed ones. The fact that Russia has not escalated significantly is actually a testament to how stable the Russian Federation is, despite the best attempts of the West to undermine it.
If Russian leaders believe the Americans are attempting to overthrow the Russian Federation’s government and balkanize the country, they might decide to stop holding back the way they’ve been doing for the last few years. This is a reality that the United States and the rest of NATO, despite their braggadocio, are not prepared to confront.
The tragedy is that this fantasy persists even as Ukraine’s strategic position deteriorates. Despite enormous Western investment, Kyiv cannot defeat Russia militarily. As the window for a negotiated settlement closes, Ukraine faces the prospect of real defeat, with profound consequences for European security and Western credibility.
Yet rather than confronting the reality, Western elites retreat into escapist schemes—imagining that a handful of expatriate activists can somehow shatter the Russian central government from afar.
They cannot. And if they could, the result would not be victory, but global instability on a scale not seen since the early 20th century. In that scenario, policymakers might find themselves longing for the relative predictability of dealing with a centralized Russian state—even one led by Putin.
The Western fixation on the Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum is not strategy. It is a symptom: of denial, of frustration, and of an unwillingness to accept the limits of power. Persisting in this fantasy risks turning a brutal regional war into a systemic global crisis.
Reality will assert itself eventually. The only question is whether Western leaders will face it now—or after the consequences become irreversible.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert is a senior national security editor at The National Interest. Recently, Weichert became the host of The National Security Hour on America Outloud News and iHeartRadio, where he discusses national security policy every Wednesday at 8pm Eastern. Weichert hosts a companion book talk series on Rumble entitled “National Security Talk.” He is also a contributor at Popular Mechanics and has consulted regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including The Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, and the Asia Times. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
Image: Shutterstock / photoibo.
The post Breaking Up Russia Is a Dangerous Fantasy appeared first on The National Interest.
Источник: nationalinterest.org