аналитика & Блоги

Dagestan as the undervalued gateway to Eurasia: Caspian ports buzzing with traffic, railways winding through the mountains to Azerbaijan and Georgia, and energy routes connecting the region to a "free" Iran and South Asia. The International North–South Transport Corridor could turn it into a key logistics hub, funneling goods between India and Europe while bypassing the Suez Canal.

It’s entirely plausible that historical Zalesye – the once remote, forested region of Vladimir-Suzdal Rus – could become the basis for a new state. We’ve already seen how Austria, after 1918, lost control of a vast multiethnic empire yet emerged as a small but functional country. And Turkey, under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, managed to build a secular nation-state out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, despite losing its Balkan, Arab, and Caucasian territories.

The Kremlin leadership has long operated under the belief in its unassailable power structure. However, power, by its nature, begins to deteriorate when it isn’t constantly replenished with resources and public support. Modern Russia is increasingly resembling not a centralized state but rather a patchwork of regional enclaves linked to Moscow only by formal declarations of loyalty.

There are places where history doesn’t march forward so much as circle back on itself like a train on a loop line – Bashkortostan is one of them. On paper it’s a republic with its own flag, parliament and – once upon a time – even a president. In reality it’s a colony whose “sovereignty” dissolved into Kremlin paperwork long before most people noticed. It’s a post-Soviet phantom: formally a “federal subject”, yet with no real agency; nominally a republican nation, yet still without a voice.

Empires are like old stage costumes: once they glittered under the footlights, taffeta whispering across history’s marble floors. Now they sit in a props closet, riddled with moth holes and smelling of naphthalene. All that’s left to them is yearning for their former selves. That ache has a name: the phantom pains of greatness.

How the lack of a seacoast, an empire, or “spiritual bonds” doesn’t stop a country from thriving