China is the only true winner of that war.
[0]: https://medium.com/@hayekesteloo/china-vs-ukraine-ft-investi...
Russia is economically becoming a vassal state just like north Korea is.
The East because they are blockaded at sea currently, if they would invade Taiwan.
And they already have huge economical leverage there.
Russia is basically falling apart. But in a dictatorship, stuff like that is only seen sudden, when it collapses.
Putin seems to be making many of the mistakes of pre 1991.
The simplest solution would be to reboot the Siberian Republic [1] as a Chinese suzerainty. Ideally after Putin dies as part of a deal to the new ascender. Maybe together with giving them personal co-ownership in some major ventures there.
> East because they are blockaded at sea currently, if they would invade Taiwan
Siberia and Outer Mongolia remain closer and thus cheaper and more-secure sources than anything coming in over ocean, which in essence means from Australia, South America or Africa.
Russia is recently bluffing a bit there, Putin had a visit for the first time recently, I think it's China related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands_dispute
China is already owning the area with investments and a lot of workers/projects there are already Chinese. Seems like Russia already lost control ( unofficially)
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.
Something tells me that given a choice between the EU and Russia (under Chinese boot, at that), we'll see number in favor of EU that even Putin didn't dream of for himself.
....because we all know that all those Russians would rather be somewhere else.
But absorbing them is a cost that the EU would absolutely bear if there weren't additional costs to annexing pieces of a nuclear power.
Lithuania, to the north, has a population of just under 3,000,000, of whom Russians are 5%. Take Kaliningrad and suddenly they would be 30% Russian.
Poland is 37,000,000, so Russians would only be around 3%, but that's enough to cause a lot of trouble, and they gain nothing they don't already have besides a ready-made fifth column.
Frankly, the best way to approach it is probably leaving Königsberg / Kaliningrad be as its own state [1] for a bit, and do whatever EU integration programs do. If it works out, you’ll get a million Königsbergers who are a bit nostalgic about Russia but want nothing to do with it otherwise.
One final thing I’d like to note is that the “alien passport” approach taken by the Baltic states mostly, well, alienates the titular nation and Russians right now. If the path to integration was more clear and Russians born and raised in, say, Latvia didn’t feel like second-hand citizens, they wouldn’t really want to have closer ties with Russia either.
[1]: disclaimer for the эшник reading this: this is in a hypothetical scenario where Kaliningrad does get separated from Russia as a result of the “special military operation”. please don’t hurt my family
As the other commenter said, Kaliningrad / Konigsberg could be an autonomous area / city state (of which the EU has a-plenty already), with some form of Euro-integration (associate/candidate membership, etc) which allows for a gradual integration process.
Kosovo shows the formal path for that.
Hopefully, not the historical one.
(After all, if there's anything Russia taught the world, it's the power of Little Green Men)
Yes, and that helped turn the US into the global hegemony it is today. No wonder China wants a wack. Power doesn't need a conscience.
The same can be said about the US <> EU/Russia in this conflict. Why bother helping Ukraine/Europe win the war if you consider them at least partly hostile? Better to let them fight your own enemy (Russia) and trade with both sides to your own advantage.
But hopefully Europe becomes more independent. The US has become too unstable
Why did Denmark sign the Greenland treaty? It's a humiliation ritual. Unrestricted access to develop the resources of the Greenland's economic zone, a perpetual veto over any foreign investment, and two new military bases, plus expansion of existing bases. With no end date. In exchange for a payment of... zero. And Denmark still needs to pay the block grant. Does that seem like a treaty between equals? What kind of country grants someone else veto power over investment in a region? What kind of country allows the hosting of foreign military bases, and still calls itself sovereign?
"Vassals" is too strong of a term. European states aren't vassals. Once in a while they give a speech against the US at the UN. And they are constantly complaining about how they are treated, as most vassals do. But they aren't allies. If the US were to file taxes, they would be listed as dependents. That is why they rage when someone who doesn't share their vision gets elected US President, but most Americans don't care who is elected in Europe.
That describes the ratio of the influence that European political leaders have on the lives of Americans vis-a-vis the influence that American political leaders have on the lives of Europeans.
And the thing about states in a subordinate position like that is that they are not respected. European political leaders like to pretend that this is a situation of equals and then complain when the US pushes them around, but it has never been a situation of equals since the end of WW2. Only the facade has been slowly dropped in the intervening years. The sooner Europe stops pretending, the better it will be for them, as not pretending is the first step towards gaining true autonomy. But each time I get my hopes up that Europe will take responsibility for their military and energy needs, I get disappointed by the resulting wave of irreality and wishful thinking.
Where in the agreement are you reading that?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/09/agre...
> a perpetual veto over any foreign investment
That's presumably section X you're referring to, and it only blocks investment from non-NATO non-EU entities into security relevant things, not "any investment".
About half the country can't believe what's going on, 1/4 thinks he's all great somehow, 1/4 just wants to pretend everything is ok and they don't have to pay attention.
We are living the end of empire, like Nero metaphorically fiddling while Rome burned.
It's a curious symbiosis that is very much against the interests of Russia, but that's what you get when a mafia takes over your country.
That’s a kind of neutrality.
what's the name of that country who's really good at this stuff? I can't remember
And now the US has joined them: https://apnews.com/article/trump-russia-diesel-midterms-12ba...