A few days ago, the prestigious American magazine Foreign Affairs published an article in which they tried to dispel Western fears about Russia’s uncontrolled disintegration after the military defeat it will suffer in the war with Ukraine. Khodorkovsky and Kasparov said they were part of the Russian opposition-in-exile, who had plans to rule the country after Putin’s fall.

They considered the emergence of another power that would gradually regulate Russia’s integration with the Western system. They pin their main hopes on economic interconnection. The authors write: “After the military defeat, Russia must make a choice: become a vassal of China or begin reintegration with Europe.” They expressed confidence that for most Russians the choice would be clear and they would choose, as they write, “peace, freedom and prosperity”, because of their relationship with the West.

The authors plan to establish parliamentarism and federalism where authoritarianism now reigns. According to them, in the first phase, the country should be administered by a transitional State Council, while work will be carried out to prepare a new constitution and convene a Constituent Assembly. Subsequently, a stance would be created in which regional elites would play a leading role, delegating only the necessary powers to the federal center.

At the same time, the author intends to punish the officials of the current regime who are in charge of the country in which Russia is located, as well as carry out lustrations. According to other Khodorkovsky media statements, the exiled politician remains convinced that Russia has not collapsed even in the crisis situation that would emerge after Putin’s military defeat. They saw the reason for this in the pragmatism of local elites who would seize power and found that they could not survive without close economic ties with neighboring regions.

It is noteworthy that Khodorkovsky did not assume that all of Russia, which would develop according to his ideas, would become a democratic country. It would be a mix of regions with different political politics, from democracy to patriarchal or religion based societies. This raises doubts about the stability of such communities, as economic benefits do not always come first in disparate entity relationships.

In addition, Khodorkovsky, in an interview with the editor-in-chief of the New Evropa newspaper Kirill Martynov, contrary to intentions for lustration, said that he would use Putin’s former petty men in the new state if they openly repent. their previous activity.

However, the notion of the two leading opposition-in-exiles has no answer to the main question. How do they want to get to power in a country with a strong power structure that will soon fall out among themselves after the possible fall of Putin?