PSCRP-BESA Reports No 209 (June 9, 2026)
The largest Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which took place in mid-May, became, in a certain sense, a symbolic event, demonstrating the Russian Army’s inability to fully protect even the capital and its immediate surroundings. Powerful Ukrainian attacks on Russian targets in the Volga region, the Urals, and the North Caucasus—not to mention the Russian regions directly bordering Ukraine and the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories—have become commonplace in recent months. On the morning of June 3, the opening day of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the Ukrainian Armed Forces demonstratively launched a drone attack on St. Petersburg and set fire to the city’s oil terminal, officially classified as a strategically important facility.
Against this backdrop, statements about the inevitability of Russia’s defeat and possible disintegration as one of the consequences of such a defeat have become increasingly frequent. One of the prominent Russian opposition figures in exile, Garry Kasparov, co-founder of the Free Russia Forum, has repeatedly spoken about this possibility. Discussing the centrifugal forces that could cause the Russian Federation, in the event of a weakening central government, to lose some of the territories currently within its borders, the former world chess champion emphasized the civilizational differences between various parts of the Russian Federation. He reduced this idea to the formula: “Chechnya and Ingermanland (i.e., the Leningrad Region – V.C.) do not belong in the same state.”
Garry Kasparov views the possibility of Russia’s disintegration calmly. He has repeatedly urged European politicians to stop being frightened by such a prospect and to free themselves from the concept whose grip, in his view, they still remain under. In this respect, he is much closer than some of his colleagues in the PACE Platform of Russian Democratic Forces, such as Vladimir Kara-Murza and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, to the Free Nations League, which unites a number of national and regionalist movements advocating the disintegration—or, as they prefer to call it, the decolonization—of the Russian Federation.
The fact that most Western and Israeli politicians still tend to regard the possibility of Russia’s disintegration as highly unlikely, and the political movements seeking to establish new states on the territory of the Russian Federation as marginal, is not a sufficient reason to avoid understanding what exactly is at stake. In recent years, we have witnessed rapid and dangerous changes taking place not only in the post-Soviet space but also in other parts of the world, with Russia’s direct or indirect involvement. Some of these developments have already resulted in open military conflicts; in other cases, they manifest themselves as local episodes of a broader hybrid war.
The notion that the Russian Federation is experiencing a steadily deepening crisis from which there are no good exits has already become almost axiomatic. Yet serious attempts to imagine “the day after” are, in essence, not being made either in the West or in Israel, whose interests do not always fully coincide with those of the broader Western world.
The divergence between Israel’s interests and those of the broader West became particularly evident after the large-scale terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, which drew the Jewish state into a multi-front war that continues to this day. Against this backdrop, Western countries experienced an unprecedented wave of antisemitism, while most EU states adopted openly anti-Israeli positions, effectively denying our country’s right to self-defense. Practice has shown that even the administration of President Donald Trump—the most pro-Israel U.S. president to date and likely in the foreseeable future—openly disregards Israel’s security interests when they conflict with American interests. Therefore, it seems appropriate to analyze the hypothetical prospect of the Russian Federation’s disintegration strictly from the standpoint of Israeli interests.
The aforementioned Free Nations League (FNL) is currently the only serious coalition of separatist movements whose objective is the creation of new independent states on the territory of today’s Russian Federation, although not all such movements belong to it. An important event demonstrating the FNL’s growing influence and the success of the Ukrainian diplomacy supporting it was the accession of the organization Tatar Shurasy (“Council of Tatars of the World”). On April 10 of this year, this organization was added to Russia’s “Foreign Agents Register.”
The accession of Tatar Shurasy to the Free Nations League was officially announced at the end of May. The announcement was accompanied by the following statement: “While Moscow continues to extract resources from the regions to finance its geopolitical adventures, national movements are beginning to unite their efforts in the struggle for real sovereignty and decolonization.”
Ruslan Aysin, a fairly well-known activist in the Tatar national movement, announced Tatar Shurasy’s accession to the FNL on behalf of the organization. Given the context of Israeli interests, it is worth examining his figure more closely.
Born in 1980 in Ulyanovsk and a graduate of the History Department of Kazan University, Ruslan Aysin joined the Tatar national movement in his youth. Initially, it was a legal movement. From 2008 to 2012, he held a prominent position as chairman of the World Forum of Tatar Youth, the youth wing of the officially recognized and still legally operating World Congress of Tatars.
Afterward, Ruslan Aysin moved to Moscow, where he became a personal assistant to the founder and chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia, philosopher Geidar Dzhemal (1947–2016), who had no connection to the Tatars (his father was Azerbaijani and his mother Russian). In the context of attitudes toward Jews and Israel, it should be noted that during Perestroika, in 1988, Geidar Dzhemal joined the antisemitic organization Pamyat together with the Russian imperialist philosopher Alexander Dugin and for some time served on its coordinating council.
After Geidar Dzhemal’s death, Ruslan Aysin became known as a publicist on issues related to the Tatar national movement and Islam, including through cooperation with Idel.Realii, the Russian-language online publication of Radio Liberty’s Tatar-Bashkir service. In 2022, he openly condemned Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and emigrated to Turkey. In 2023, Russian authorities designated him as a foreign agent.
While in Turkey, Ruslan Aysin began running a regular Russian-language YouTube blog characterized by uncompromising support for Islamist movements and undisguised hostility toward the Jewish state. Moreover, this Tatar propagandist does not hesitate to engage in outright falsehoods, often presenting wishful thinking as reality in order to maintain the morale of his openly antisemitic audience.
A few of the titles of his broadcasts are sufficient illustration: “The Israeli Project Is Doomed“, “Putinyahu on the Brink of Failure“, “The U.S. and Israel Are Exhausting Themselves“, “Iran and the Vatican Outplayed Trump and Netanyahu“, “Netanyahu in the UAE: The Myth of Losers“, “Will There Be a War Between Turkey and Israel?“, “Netanyahu Has Disappeared“.
It is this individual who now represents Tatar Shurasy, and it is he who was photographed shaking hands with Syres Boleyen (Alexander Bolkin), leader of the Erzya national movement and one of the founders of the Free Nations League.
The accession of Tatar Shurasy to the FNL is undoubtedly, as already noted, a success for the organization, significantly enhancing its prestige and potentially serving as a trigger for other national and regionalist movements that support the idea of dismantling the Russian Federation to join it. The Tatars are Russia’s largest ethnic minority, possessing their own state tradition and a long history of national movements.
Today, the FNL includes, in addition to the Erzya national movement and Tatar Shurasy, the government-in-exile of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria headed by Akhmed Zakayev, who served as Minister of Culture during the years of Ichkeria’s de facto independence; the Committee of the Bashkir National Movement Abroad led by Ruslan Gabbasov the Congress of the Oirat-Kalmyk People, headed by Arslang Sandzhiyev and operating legally within Russia from 2015 to 2022; the Ingush Independence Committee established in Istanbul in 2023 and led by Islamist Ingush activist Ansar Garkho (one of the co-founders of the Russian-language Islamist YouTube channel Voice of Truth); and the regionalist movement Free Ingria, which advocates self-determination for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region (not to be confused with the national movement of the Ingrian Finns).
The predominance of national movements representing traditionally Muslim peoples within the FNL is already noticeable. Moreover, these include the largest ethnic minorities in the Russian Federation—Tatars, Chechens, and Bashkirs—with populations of 4,713,669, 1,674,854, and 1,571,879 respectively, according to the 2020 census, which is widely suspected of deliberately undercounting the non-Russian population. For comparison, the Erzya together with the closely related Moksha numbered only 484,450 according to the same census.
One should not automatically regard all national movements of traditionally Muslim peoples as hostile to Israel. Israel maintains fairly close relations with such post-Soviet states as Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Moreover, it would be naïve to expect that, in the event of the Russian Federation’s disintegration, the leaders of the national movements currently in exile would necessarily come to power in the new states that emerge on its territory, rather than representatives of local elites currently cooperating with Moscow.
However, in order to construct a local ethnopolitical narrative and legitimize their authority, such elites would, one way or another, need the support of those national movements.
Ruslan Aysin is by no means the only influential activist in movements seeking independence from Russia whose views raise concerns from an Israeli perspective. The President of the Assembly of the Peoples of the Caucasus and former Deputy Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Ruslan Kutayev, is hardly more favorably disposed toward the Jewish state.
On January 26 of this year, Kutayev was included in the PACE Platform of Russian Democratic Forces as one of the representatives of national movements. Shortly thereafter, he sparked controversy through statements concerning the LGBT community and “honor killings” that were at odds with European norms. His membership in the Platform was even temporarily suspended.
However, even before joining the PACE Platform of Russian Democratic Forces, Ruslan Kutayev had publicly attacked Israel
and openly supported Hamas. Since these statements did not contradict current European norms, they did not in any way prevent his inclusion in the Platform.