What I desire and what I forecast are two very different things. Also, Russian-speaking emigres such as Sergej Sumlenny and Kamil Galeev, the Moscow dissident Boris Kagarlitsky and the emigre dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky can talk with much more authority than I about the prospects for Russian military collapse (as opposed to the "destruction" that you think I wish for). Berlin-based Sumlenny and and Washington-based Wilson Center Galeev, since they're both from the non-Russian periphery of the empire, know this ethnic and political landscape much more deeply than I. They could teach you far better about the prospects for a reformed, voluntary membership Russian confederation that would realize the unfulfilled promise of the partial top-down nomenklatura-driven 15 republic breakup of 1991 that stopped at Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.
This is Sumlenny's Unherd video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqYZqNpLQb8
Galeev's National Divorce video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y02gN6E6eDk
To show you what I truly desire, I'd have to go back to these and other sources to distinguish utopian dream from probable scenario in a post-Putin regime collapse. Throughout Russian history the window of opportunity when the Siloviki are forced to cede power temporarily to reformers like Gasparov and Kerensky, as in 1992-1999, or 1905 and 1917, is always brief, chaotic and violent. 1991-99 was about as good as it gets in terms of violence avoidance in a Russian state collapse. The probability of a post-Putin collapse following a Crimean Loss 2.0 being that peaceful is very low. But I did previously publish this hopeful scenario of a clever, non-violent Finnish approach to triggering a Russian military collapse: https://medium.com/illumination-curated/april-25-russia-ukraine-endgame-2b564512f8c5
Those who've speculated about or advocated the breakup of Russia run across the entire political spectrum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_Russia
Defeat transformed the political DNA of German and Japan (Italy less so). But that required apocalyptic Jahr Null (Year Zero) type defeat, lengthy foreign occupation, a MacArthur and a Marshall Plan, a complete non-starter in Russia.
The best I hope for is a halfway competent decade long damage and loose nukes control scenario with a relatively circumscribed and limited level of Yugoslavia type violence (like Georgia, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Tadzhikistan and Kirgizhstan in the 90s) As the stronger parts of Russia's periphery (Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Karelia, Dagestan, Chechnya, the Vladivostok region) that didn't make a break for independence in 1991 secede the level of violence will be largely a function of Muscovite resistance to the new reality.
