Ivan Bakalov is a researcher and expert on Russia’s political economy. He argues that Russian capitalism hit its limits after the economic crisis of 2008-2009. Bakalov speaks of an organic crisis to which the Russian regime was unable to adequately respond. The final stimulus for Russian economic growth ultimately came from the country’s entry into a large-scale war of attrition, which has had a positive impact on the development of the Russian economy. What condition is the Russian economy currently in? Can we speak of a war economy? Are sanctions having the desired effect, and what could we change in our approach to the Russian Federation? He discussed all of this in an interview with Jan Bělíček, editor-in-chief of Alarm.cz,

Moving Beyond Geopolitical Explanations

Jan Bělíček: You say it’s important to stop relying on geopolitical explanations of the current war in Ukraine and instead bring materialist and economic explanations. Why is this shift important?

Ivan Bakalov: Because geopolitics, and I would add so-called civilisational choice explanations, are not just academic theories. It’s not just about explaining what happened and why, but it’s also a framework for thinking about the world that shapes how European countries and the USA have talked about this war, and determines what will follow after the war. If we consider this the main explanation for this war, it will also influence our political measures. But if you have a weak theory for explaining the war, you also have a weak foundation for understanding ongoing changes and a weak foundation for politics generally.

How do these explanations manifest in practice?

There are various variants of geopolitics, but the mainstream usually says something to the effect that Russia is merely reacting to NATO expansion. It works with the notion of geopolitical blocs and their mutual interaction. One of the most famous articles on this topic was written by American political scientist John Mearsheimer back in 2014. He presents arguments for why the annexation of Crimea occurred and why the West is to blame for the separatist war in the eastern Ukrainian region Donbas. If we follow this explanation and take it seriously, the invasion should never have happened. In 2014, Mearsheimer stated that Russia not only cannot and does not want to carry out an invasion of all of Ukraine because it’s merely a defensive reaction on its part, but also because it lacks the resources and military potential to invade Ukraine and maintain control over its territory.

And we’re talking about 2014, when the Ukrainian army was still very weak. If we took this explanation seriously, this scenario should have been even more improbable eight years later, when Ukraine had already built up its army in preparation for a future invasion. And it’s not just Mearsheimer who claims this. You can actually find such people in Russian strategic discourse as well. For example, former General Leonid Ivashov, who was chairman of the All-Russian Council of Military Officers, declared in January 2022 that Russia faced no major external threat. So if you really take the geopolitical explanation seriously, the invasion should never have happened.

What would a similar geopolitical explanation sound like from the other side? From the Western side? Because this is the Russian explanation. But what’s the Western version?

Yes, you’re right, there are different variants of geopolitical explanation. The “pro-Western” geopolitical explanation claims something along the lines of: “Russia sensed that the West was weak and tried to take advantage of this opportunity to restructure Europe’s security architecture.” And people continue this argument and refer to the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. They refer to internal European troubles, such as Angela Merkel’s departure from the scene, unrest in France, and then also stereotypes like Russia never taking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seriously and assuming he would immediately flee once they invaded Ukraine.

It could be argued that this is how Russian decision-makers “saw” the world, and there are indeed people on the Russian side who promote this explanation. This version of geopolitics suggests that Russia took advantage of an opportunity to actively restructure Europe’s security architecture. And this already corresponds much better to the scenario of a sudden invasion. However, it’s still a weak theory because it’s a post hoc explanation. It only gained strength after the invasion occurred.

Why do you think that?

Because geopolitics deals not only with the structural balance of power but also with the balance of resources, and these were still unfavourable for Russia at the time of the invasion. Although support for Ukraine was initially limited, the balance of power was still tilted against Russia. The trick of this explanation lies in the fact that “reconfiguration of security architecture” remains in a black box. What would that actually mean? That US hegemony in Europe would fall if Russia defeated Ukraine? That NATO would collapse or retreat if Russia defeated Ukraine? This version of geopolitics cannot explain why the invasion is so important for Russian decision-makers that it justifies the risks it entails.

Do we have any other popular and flawed theory explaining why Russia launched the war in Ukraine?

Yes, there’s another popular explanation that can be called “civilisational choice.” It has various forms and shapes, but focuses on civilisational clash. Whether we have in mind a clash between democracy and autocracy or Western and Eastern civilisation. In this explanation, it’s primarily about aggression and aggressive foreign policy being inherent to the nature of Russian rule and the Russian nation in general. It’s simply something that Russians do. This explanation suggests that there’s something specific about Russia and Russians that compels them to attack other countries. And then it’s up to Western civilisation, the good and right civilisation, to avert this threat.

This theory is weak in explanatory terms because it implies that Russia should be attacking someone almost non-stop. It should have attacked Ukraine back in 2005, should have launched a full invasion in 2014, and so on. While geopolitics claims that Russia shouldn’t attack anyone at all on its own, this theory suggests it should be attacking all the countries around it all the time. And Ukraine might not even be the best place to start an invasion. It’s still a weak theory that doesn’t explain why the invasion happened at this particular moment.

But we also have Putin’s famous historical document about Ukraine, in which he tried to justify the invasion from a historical perspective. There’s also [Russian political philosopher and ultra-nationalist] Alexander Dugin’s Eurasian theory, which has at its core an irreconcilable struggle between the West and Eurasia. Perhaps you’re somewhat underestimating these tendencies among Kremlin intellectuals and politicians...

You quite rightly point out that this explanation has Western and Russian versions. I’ve now focused on the Western version of the story. You can look at how the war was initially explained by American historian Stephen Kotkin, for example. And the Russian version of this explanation, as discussed by Dugin, for instance, is somewhat different because it provides a positive assessment of Russian civilisation. Russian civilisation defends the foundations of Christianity against the decadent West. For Dugin, this invasion is a force for good. Russia is trying to save traditional values against the decadence of Western civilisation. Western civilisation is in decline, whilst Russian or Eurasian civilisation is on the rise.

And you correctly refer to the essay allegedly written by Putin in 2021, in which he says that Ukraine is territory historically belonging to Russia and that the Ukrainian state was artificially created by Russia’s enemies. External enemies in the West and internal enemies in the form of Bolsheviks [Russian revolutionary communists who came to power in 1917]. But even if you accept the Russian version of the civilisational choice story, it still doesn’t help you explain why the invasion happened when it did, and not, say, one, three, five, ten, or fifteen years earlier. Yes, there are intellectuals and politicians who talk like this, and some of them might even believe it. But that doesn’t make this story a good explanation.

The problem isn’t just that these are weak theories. The problem is that they inform an entire worldview in which war is just one instance in the process of historical development. The internal contradictions of these theories are reproduced even in the events that followed the invasion. It’s not just an academic attempt to find a good explanation. It’s an attempt to understand what’s wrong with the world and how to fix it.

The Materialist Explanation: Capitalist Dead End

If you say that geopolitical explanation is wrong and civilisational explanation misleading, what do you propose instead?

It’s difficult to give it an appropriate label. It could be said that it’s an explanation based on historical materialism. If I had to give it a short and punchy designation, I’d probably call it the “capitalist transformation dead end.” It emphasises understanding how the contradictions of the capitalist transformation of the 1990s brought us to this point. It’s about the war, and especially the Russian invasion, being an expression of the contradictions of the capitalist system both in Russia and Eastern Europe, and more generally at the global level. In this view, the 2022 invasion is just one phase of a gradual process during which the ruling bloc in Russia is trying to mitigate the organic crisis it faces.

What exactly do you mean by that?

The Russian ruling bloc faces an organic crisis, a crisis of Russian capitalism. I usually refer to three illustrative examples that clarify this theory. The first problem is the stagnating Russian economy. When you look at graphs of Russia’s total GDP, you’ll see that in 2000 there was a sharp increase that was faster than in the rest of the world. And after the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, you’ll see a line that fluctuates but remains more or less in the same place. A problem of insufficient growth emerged.

This was caused partly by falling export energy prices, but even more significantly by the limited ability of Russian capital to expand due to the exhaustion of resources and potential of the means of production. In 2000, energy prices were rising, but not only those. It was also a time when Russian capital absorbed the capacities of the Soviet economy that had remained idle in the 1990s. That’s why the economy grew. However, these capacities were exhausted, and with them Russia’s ability to grow was also exhausted.

How did the Russian Federation react to this situation?

How can you solve this situation if you’re striving for extensive growth? You create an integration bloc. And you might remember that at the turn of the 2000s and 2010s, the idea of creating a customs union in the post-Soviet space was introduced, which was partially realised. Kazakhstan, Belarus, and later Armenia and Kyrgyzstan joined it. However, Ukraine was the crucial market for this integration bloc. It’s simply the largest market and has the most capacities that Russian capital can absorb. So invasion wasn’t plan number one. It wasn’t even plan number two, not even plan number three.

So how do you think the Russian Federation proceeded?

Initially, there was an attempt to use carrot-and-stick methods to get Ukraine to join this integration bloc. And this actually partially succeeded. You might remember that Yanukovych [Viktor Yanukovych, former Ukrainian president] signed an agreement to join the customs union in 2013, only for this decision to be subsequently overruled by massive social mobilisation in Ukrainian streets. This is also part of the organic crisis. Not only does the Russian capitalist system struggle with reproducing itself, but it also struggles with creating an attractive image for external societies so that other countries would voluntarily join its integration bloc. This testifies to failing Russian hegemony in this area.

It’s not just about Russian capital going and seizing some factory in Ukraine. It’s not just about seizing natural resources. The reproduction of the capitalist system also relies on the reproduction of the workforce it necessarily needs for its functioning. This is another dimension of the organic crisis of the Russian capitalist system. The workforce is not reproducing at the pace necessary for its further development. Simply put, not enough new workers are being born. Russian politicians call this a “demographic crisis,” but the problem is actually that Russia has an increasingly smaller reserve of labour force. By annexing Crimea, you don’t just suddenly gain a market for Russian banks, telecommunications operators, and so on. It also means that the Russian labour market grows overnight by 2.5 million people.

Do you see in this population or demographic crisis also a reason for the nativist turn in Russian ideology? I mean that anti-Western ideology based on conservatism and traditional values that emerges around the same time.

Definitely. In this area, I draw heavily from the work of Alexandra Talaver [researcher on Russian demographics and politics] and others who examine this question in depth. But I can say with certainty that the discourse of traditional values and pro-family nativist policies or the fight against abortion is part of a broader discursive foundation for the subordinate position of workers, especially in the context of war. It’s about their disciplining to do exactly what’s expected of them. So work should reproduce, but material conditions disrupt these scenarios. On one hand, you have policies supporting birth rate growth, but at the same time a reduced budget for healthcare. You’re closing hospitals so you can spend more on violence, but at the same time you want more children to be born. There are many fundamental contradictions between the rhetorical and material levels here.

And what would be the third example of the organic crisis of Russian capitalism?

The third illustrative example is the absurd level of inequality in Russia. A very small number of people here concentrate enormous wealth, which creates a crisis of legitimacy. It’s not that the Russian ruling bloc faces strong opposition or that it can’t manipulate elections. It manages that very well. It’s a crisis of legitimacy in a more fundamental sociological sense. There’s a huge rift here between the people who are in the ruling bloc and the rest of the population.

The level of inequality is incomparable to anything we can find in other large economies. According to Credit Suisse estimates, one percent of the wealthiest in Russia own 59 percent of all domestic wealth (in the USA it’s 35 percent), and that’s ignoring the extraordinarily high level of wealth stored in offshore accounts abroad. So if we’re trying to explain why the invasion happened when it did, we should take a good look at this organic crisis of the ruling bloc. We see here a problem of capital accumulation, labour reproduction, and a fundamental rift between one percent and the rest of the population.

You explained the first two problems quite clearly, but what about the third? How does this enormous inequality relate to war?

According to Novokmet, Piketty, and Zucman [economists who study inequality], the current level of inequality can only be compared to the level of inequality in the Russian Empire just before the October 1917 Revolution. How do you explain to your population that it’s so poor despite living in a country incredibly rich in resources? Through mythology about the greatness of the Russian empire and the Russian world. But not only that. The Russian world is under threat. If you don’t mobilise now to protect it, its enemies will destroy it. Never mind that your life has already been destroyed by the people who rule you. What’s important is that others are allegedly coming to destroy even the little that remains.

Did this explanation work?

This great Russian chauvinism and its reincarnation in contemporary imperialist foreign policy worked for a while between 2014 and 2015. But then the effects began to fade. And when you look at what was happening in Russia between 2016-2018, you’ll see that there were many protests, and not just protests by liberal opposition politicians, but also groups of people who are conventionally understood as the core of support for the Russian president.

In 2017 and 2018, you had protests by lorry drivers. In 2018, protests against pension reform followed. There were environmental protests against local government. In 2020, during COVID, there were also protests against government policy. Public support for the government was declining. This doesn’t mean there would have been a coup in 2022 if Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine. Not at all. But it means that the ruling bloc lost the ability to mobilise the population based on positive motivation.

This was clearly shown in autumn 2022, when the Russian state administratively attempted to mobilise soldiers. It was a complete disaster. The situation only turned around after the regime switched to economic mobilisation by expanding the recruitment model of private military companies [like the Wagner Group]. It transformed social inequalities and widespread poverty into an advantage by building an army of mercenary soldiers.

War as Economic Solution

So Putin’s regime was under pressure and looking for a way to stop this organic crisis?

It was a systemic problem, so I’d formulate it a bit differently. It’s not that there was some actor with a grand plan all along. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t Putin who ultimately commanded the attack. The point is that the system was struggling with reproducing itself and numerous contradictions created incentives for this decision. It was clear that the only way to save the existing power constellation and the extravagant lifestyle of yachts, palaces, and offshore havens was to try to export the internal class conflict abroad in the form of an invasion of Ukraine. And as I mentioned, this wasn’t an optimal decision for Russia. The optimal scenario for them would have been for Ukraine to voluntarily join the integration bloc. That didn’t happen. So came plan number two.

What was plan number two according to you?
To take Crimea, but leave Donbas alone. Why? From a historical materialist perspective, Russia was concerned with occupation but subsequent reintegration of Donbas into Ukraine, which would force Ukraine to enter the integration bloc, thus ensuring Russian capital expansion. Incidentally, if Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and Donbas represented a geopolitical threat for it, or had always been part of Russia, then why didn’t Russia occupy it back in 2014, when its military superiority was much greater than in 2022?

Geopolitics fails in this regard, and so does civilisational choice theory. The historical-materialist explanation would suggest that the purpose of plan number two was to integrate Ukraine into the economic bloc through reintegrated Donbas. However, this didn’t happen because the Minsk agreements [2014-2015 peace agreements attempting to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine], which were the legal-institutional form of plan number two, were never integrated. There was widespread resistance to the Minsk agreements in Ukraine, which underscores the external dimension of Russia’s legitimacy crisis.

So what was plan number three?

Conquer Kyiv within three days. A short and victorious war that would confirm the supremacy of the Russian state and the supremacy of Russian capital in the Ukrainian market. However, this plan also failed. Plan number four was therefore a war of attrition. If you can’t conquer Kyiv in three days, you can imagine extensive war as a real driving force of capitalist development in Russia. It’s capitalist expansion by other means.

But we usually associate war with horror and suffering. It’s not easy for people to understand that it could have some economic advantages. How can war effort help declining economies

That’s a very good question. Among people who look at war from a Marxist perspective, there are also different interpretations. There are those who claim that it’s not in the interest of big capital to go to war or continue it. My colleagues and I see it differently. We perceive the interests of government, the security sector, the president, and everyone around them as interconnected. The political sphere and economic sphere have integral interests. So war is supposed to provide space for capitalist expansion, for appropriation of labour force, for strengthening great Russian chauvinism as a legitimising force.

What makes a war of attrition advantageous for Russia?

First, we can look at what’s happening with the Russian economy. In 2023 and 2024, it grew. It’s not just a matter of statistics. War kick-started the Russian economy in a similar way to the 1990s. There was extensive reallocation of production capacities. The British geographer and social theorist David Harvey calls this accumulation by dispossession. Many production assets passed from the hands of foreign investors to Russian capitalists. War was advantageous for many sectors of the economy, and especially for big capital, which appropriated various assets at huge discounts. In addition, a large amount of assets that were previously stored abroad returned to Russia. Banking was simply doing well, which revived the Russian economy and it grew.

When you talk about assets stored abroad, what are you talking about? How do they return to Russia?

I’m thinking primarily of offshore assets. The level of wealth that Russian capital stores in offshore accounts is much higher than in other large economies. Significant economic incentives appeared for withdrawing capital back to Russia. It was possible to acquire property at a discount that appreciated significantly, or it was also possible to park money in Russia and earn more than twenty percent interest rates if you deposited them in a Russian bank. That’s quite a nice deal...

That’s very nice...

The profits of the Russian banking sector are enormous. These private funds are subsequently invested in violence. Bank loans provided to companies involved in the production of tools and equipment designed for killing are enormous.

Do you have any data that would illustrate what the situation actually looks like?

Both 2023 and 2024 were record years for the Russian banking sector. Profit amounted to 3.3 and 3.8 trillion roubles, roughly 70 billion euros over two years. Of course, asset portfolios and liquidity also increased. Concentration of the banking sector continued at an accelerated pace. There were several key mergers and acquisitions that consolidated the entire sector into several mega-banks. All in line with what could be expected from a capitalist system in the imperialist phase.

War is a great benefit for big capital. And war also brings great scope for cooperation between the public and private sectors. There are many state investments, both into sectors producing violence and into creating tools for exercising violence. Violence becomes the engine of capitalist development. It could be said that violence has already replaced oil and gas as the main export item of the Russian economy.

By that you mean weapons production?

Yes, weapons, equipment. But actually it’s about the entire production chain. You have factories that produce weapons and also ammunition, but also enterprises producing steel. Or the nitrates used in gunpowder. You naturally also have logistics, which is another sector that has expanded significantly. It’s a long chain in which you’ll find a series of different production facilities that are mutually interconnected.

Evaluating Russian Economic Statistics

In the west, an argument appeared in the first year of the war that Russian Federation economic growth statistics are fabricated. What would you say to people who claim these statistics are falsified?

I’d take that with a pinch of salt. The level of expertise and competence of the Russian financial sector is not disputed by anyone in the West. Even liberals like Stephen Kotkin would say that the Russian central bank and Russian finance ministry have world-class experts. The data produced by the central bank is generally considered reliable.

However, if you’re dealing with more sensitive types of data, they’re either censored or strictly limited. They don’t play with numbers; they simply don’t publish them. And there are other types of distortions in the data. If, for example, you’re interested in demographics and want to find out the actual number of people living in Russia, you need to have lots of contextual knowledge to be able to actually read the data. There are difficulties with reading official Russian statistics, but that doesn’t mean you can’t work with them.

From your description, it sounds as if Russia is becoming a war economy. Would you agree with that?

There’s an argument that Russian economic growth can be explained by military Keynesianism of official policy. I would disagree with that. Keynesianism assumes that in the economy you redistribute resources from the supply side to the demand side. You want to increase demand, and you increase demand by conducting mass employment policies where workers can drive demand through increased consumption. In Keynesianism, you want to create large projects involving many people. War appears similar at first glance. It brings higher wages that are unprecedented by regional standards in Russia. This could be considered a large Keynesian project where you stimulate demand. But I’d say that high employment and rising wages are a side effect. War is still largely a supply-side phenomenon.

Why do you think that?

Putin himself says so. When you look at his press releases at the economic forum in St Petersburg [annual international economic forum], he constantly refers to supply-side economics as the logic driving everything forward. So the purpose of war is to create opportunities for capital growth. They’re not concerned with regulating the pathological pursuit of profit that creates cycles of crises in capitalist economies, as Keynesians would wish. On the contrary, they want to stimulate growth through deregulation of the relationship between capital and labour and creating new markets.

War doesn’t follow the logic of military Keynesianism but is still in line with neoliberal logic. Initially, it was a technocratic war: “We’ll go and conquer Kyiv in three days, professionals will take care of it, and the rest of Russia won’t even notice that something happened.” Hence the designation “special military operation.” Now emphasis is placed on using war as a driving force of economic growth through linking state contracts with private investors and creating conditions for private capital growth.

Impact on Ordinary Russians

You claim that war is good for big capital. But what impact does it have on ordinary people in Russia? Are they doing well, or are they struggling with problems?

To be fair, real wages in Russia grew during the war. However, there are many structural imbalances here. This is partly due to wages paid to people recruited into the army. Partly due to increased wages for those involved in producing military equipment and ammunition. But there’s also enormous inflation. Inflation data is somewhat tricky. Official inflation has been around 10 percent over the past year, and wage growth was higher.

However, when you look at what goes into inflation and focus on things relevant for low-income employees—rent, electricity prices, water, food—inflation for these items is higher than 20 percent. Also, high interest rates are good for those who already have money. They can deposit it in a bank and get a decent return. But if you want to buy a new house or car, loans are really very expensive.

So loan interest rates also hover around 20 percent?

Yes, there were of course discount programmes, but those ended last year. And if you have mortgages with variable interest rates, which most people have, you have a big problem. It’s difficult to answer this question unambiguously, but on average, most residents’ lives haven’t improved.

The Effectiveness of Sanctions

How are sanctions affecting the Russian economy? People in the West believe that international sanctions and large military expenditures must severely damage the Russian economy. Is this the case?

Sanctions work, but they don’t bring the desired result. If the desired result is forcing Russia to end the war, that’s not happening. It’s unlikely that sanctions alone could achieve this in the future without changes in other dimensions of the war. However, they have an enormous impact. Russian exporters have partially managed to adapt to sanctions in the area of energy exports. There’s been a lot of talk about the shadow fleet transporting Russian oil around the world. The capitalist system is complex and full of contradictions. These create obstacles for Russian capital, but in other respects, they create opportunities. German manufacturers, for example, no longer produce cars in Russia, but when you look at German car exports to places like Kyrgyzstan, that’s on the rise.

A classic story...

In Kyrgyzstan, which coincidentally is in a free trade zone with Russia, thousands and thousands of Mercedes cars are suddenly being purchased. Yes, logistics are more complicated, but economic exchange still takes place. So sanctions in many respects push inflation up, but at the same time don’t cause the collapse of the Russian economy.

So perhaps sanctions aren’t targeting the right goals? Would there be any international sanctions that could have a greater effect than those being applied recently?

I’m not an expert on sanctions. However, I can say that they definitely also affect groups of people in Russia who are trying to oppose the war. But I’d like to emphasise that the logic of sanctions is closely related to the worldview we have about the war. The way sanctions are conceived follows the line of geopolitical explanation. We are a geopolitical bloc at war against another bloc, which mostly consists of Russia and Belarus. And we want to harm this other bloc. That’s the general logic.

If someone followed the historical-materialist explanation of war, perhaps other ideas for sanctions would emerge. If you’re aware of the problem of labour force reproduction in Russia, what effect would it have, for example, if we created opportunities for Russian labour force to leave Russia? At the moment, Russia has no restrictions on travelling abroad. In fact, it rather supports the departure of opposition-minded people from the country.

How could this look concretely?

What would happen if Russian labour force could be employed elsewhere? Let’s say it would help with the transition to a more sustainable industrial model in the EU? We also know about Russian capital’s dependence on the offshore financial and banking regime. We also know about the harmful impact of offshore structures on economic development possibilities, especially on the sub-periphery of the global capitalist system. Some of the preferred offshore zones like Cyprus, Luxembourg, the Netherlands are moreover located directly in the EU. What if we abolished the global offshore regime? Not only would we complicate Russian capital’s investments in the violence market, but we’d also create conditions for fairer tax systems worldwide and support economic development on the peripheries. The logic of sanctions is simply connected to how we explain the war.

No Easy Exit from War

Current ceasefire proposals essentially don’t address any of the problems that brought Russia into this war according to you. Is there any way out of the war for Russian leadership?

The problem for them now isn’t the conditions of a possible ceasefire, but rather the contradictions that war creates and their consequences for the Russian capitalist system. It would be very difficult to reset the Russian economy back to civilian conditions. War gave it enormous new impetus, and it will be very difficult to reset it to a peaceful development regime. We have about 700,000 soldiers currently mobilised in the war effort. Most of them enlisted because of the offer of higher wages.

What happens when these people are demobilised and return to Russian regions where they can’t even remotely think of similar salaries, but at the same time will have to repay new mortgages they took out thanks to high army salaries? This is a fundamental question related to the possibility of continuing Russian imperialist foreign policy. Even if it weren’t Ukraine, it would be someone else, because Russian imperialism will still face the same contradictions it faced in 2022. The crises of Russian capitalism have definitely not been resolved.

Do you consider this dynamic a threat to Europe?

I’m afraid so. There are of course differences, and I wouldn’t reduce “Europe” to the “European Union” here. Russia represents a greater threat to countries like Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Georgia than to Lithuania or Finland. And that’s simply from the perspective of where Russian capital can be dominant and where it can appropriate labour force. What would happen, for example, to Belarus if Alexander Lukashenko [president since 1994] left the scene for some reason and the current class structure of Belarusian society was threatened, leading to the rise of new capital fractions interested in connecting to Western markets? The markets of Belarus, Georgia, and Kazakhstan are more likely targets of future Russian “special operations,” but Russia’s war of attrition in Ukraine is definitely not over yet.

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Ivan Bakalov works as a research fellow at the Technical University of Dresden. He has also worked professionally at universities in Leiden, Vienna, Marburg, and Sofia. He was born in Bulgaria and is a member of the Bulgarian publishing house dVERSIA.

Jan Bělíček is a literary critic and journalist. Since the end of 2019, he has been editor-in-chief of Alarm.cz, which he co-founded in 2013. He writes about literature, culture, but also politics and society. With Pavel Šplíchal, he moderates the Kolaps podcast and together with Eva Klíčová creates the literary podcast TL;DR.