Putin has changed the world

Looking into my crystal-ball I can see how the water=shed-changed world will be in the future: The Ukrainians will shoot down all the tanks, ships and planes that Russia sent to annihilate them. They will reconquer Donbas and Crimea. Even if the Russians win the imminent military battle they cannot subdue Ukraine. Partisan and guerrilla warfare would eliminate by and by all occupants. No over-mighty aggressor can defeat a united, mobilized and heroic people as have shown America’s Vietnam disaster and the Soviet Unions’ Afghanistan defeat. The Ukrainian people will prevail and the world will come together to rebuild their maliciously devastated land. Women and children will return to their homeland and live in peace together with their brave men. Soon the nation will adhere to the European Union (EU) and their application for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership will be gladly granted.

Putin will be replaced by another strongman because Russians are not mature for democracy. The Belarusian population on the contrary has impressingly shown in the months-long mass demonstrations of 2020 their European culture and their willingness to democratize. Belarusians will topple over the dictator and become a European Union and NATO member. Also the West- Balkan states’ bids for EU membership will be granted by and by. They are North Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia.  

Russia will succumb to the sanctions and be ostracized and isolated for at least two generations. All prisoners will be freed. No tank and no truck, no railway carriage and no harvester can be built for lack of hitherto imported bearings. Domestic airplanes will fall from the sky one by one because of the spare parts embargo. No soldier, no teacher, no public servant will get his salary because Russia’s monetary reserves will get exhausted. China will not save it from bankruptcy. All infrastructure will degenerate. Streets are badly potholed and railway tracks are not save already. No engineer will be there to operate coalmines, oil and gas plants. Millions of qualified Russians are leaving and looking for jobs abroad. The stubborn Putin followers will remain and suffer from poverty, famine and cold. They will freeze to death in the first following winter. Putin has ruined Russia.  

China will occupy Siberia from Kamchatka and Vladivostok to the Ural Mountain without meeting much resistance. The Central Asian states and Mongolia will fall under Chinese dominance. India and the ASEAN states will form a democratic alliance with Australia, Japan and the NATO states. Latin America, Africa and the Arabic world will be neutral. Japan will reconquer the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin including the capital Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Finland will reconquer Karelia including Murmansk. 

In the absence of militarist pressure from mainland Russia, Kaliningrad will adopt its former German name Königsberg, destroy their Iskander rockets and join EU. All the East European NATO states then can disarm too. Whether peace, prosperity and win-win trade will reign the world or another bully will force the world again into an arms race is not clairvoyant in my crystal-ball. - Erich Wannemacher