Federalism in Russia — here it is, what is it like?

One of the unnoticed news this week is Ramzan Kadyrov’s call to realize the potential of Russian federalism. Well, the speech in which he made this call, urging the «self-mobilization» of Russian regions for war against Ukraine, has been noticed and discussed for days. However, it went unnoticed that he justified this call with the federal structure of Russia.

Meanwhile, Kadyrov said, «Russia is a federal state in which regions can be initiators of any actions, and one of such actions today should be ‘self-mobilization’. In other words, federalism in Russia, according to Kadyrov and Putin, is not when regions can elect their own leaders and call them presidents, build their relations with the center on the basis of agreements, have their own constitutional courts, regional parties, not to mention special legislation in certain areas taking into account their specificities, such as Sharia law for Muslim republics. All this, let us remind you, was taken away from the regions, after which the name ‘Russian Federation’ looks like a mockery.

However, when it came to mobilization for war, they remembered that Russia is a «federal state». So why go through such difficulties when this mobilization can be declared from the center? The thing is that Putin is not only a dictator who has gradually crushed federalism, local self-government, opposition, independent media, etc. in Russia. He is also a cowardly dictator who is terribly afraid of taking responsibility for decisions that are unpopular with the «common people».

Therefore, when lockdowns had to be imposed during the pandemic, he shifted the responsibility for making such decisions to the regions, while trying to portray the central government as a benefactor helping those in need. And now he is afraid that the people will revolt against the mobilization for a war that is becoming less and less popular, and he wants to shift the responsibility for it to the heads of the regions.

So it turns out that Russian-style federalism is when the regions have no rights or influence over the decisions of the center, for example, the ability to prevent a war that is alien to their interests, but they are blamed and bear the costs of the center’s decisions.

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