Michel Foucher, geographer and expert on Russia, was ambassador to Latvia and adviser to the French government. Since the invasion of Ukraine, he has already written two books. In the last one, Ukraine, une guerre coloniale en Europe (Édicions de l’Aube), the author explains that Russia is in a process of traumatic transition of its national identity. "Russia acts in Ukraine like an empire," Foucher assured in an interview with this newspaper. "If she is forced to accept the independence of Ukraine as a sovereign state, she ceases to be an empire and is forced to redefine herself," he added. Russia is not a nation state, it is a territorial state. A quarter of its population is not Russian. Today's Russia is the result of the colonization of everything east of the Urals, of the wars in Central Asia."
Without Ukraine and in the future, perhaps without Belarus, Russia will be something very different?
Russia is obliged to become a normal state, on the model of European states, and in particular a state that accepts its borders. That's a shock. Is not easy. It is a complete redefinition of your identity.
Do you think this war is a revenge for the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than thirty years ago?
The collapse of the Soviet Union is not over. It could be said that this war is the penultimate avatar, the penultimate bloody episode of the end of the USSR.
What will be the last avatar?
It could be an internal crisis in the Russian Federation, in Tatarstan, Chechnya, Dagestan, the entire periphery, especially since all the soldiers they send to Ukraine come from the periphery. No one comes from Moscow or Saint Petersburg. Ethnic minorities are sent to the front lines. There are very clear statistics about it.
Do you see a Russian defeat possible that does not precipitate it into chaos?
Yes, it is a perfectly possible scenario. A military defeat, like that of Jersón, that provokes an attempt to remove the current power. There are alternatives, names that circulate, like the mayor of Moscow, the prime minister, or Dimitri Patrouchev (minister of agriculture), son of the secretary of the Security Council, or the deputy head of the presidential administration. That is a possibility because the Russian elites realize that Putin is failing and that failure is also going to take them down.
Do you not see it, then, as a simple good wish but as a realistic possibility?
Yes, although it will not happen from today to tomorrow. But people wonder about the price of all this. The history of Russia shows that there have been regime changes and reforms after every military defeat. The defeat in the Crimean War (1856) led to the abolition of serfdom in 1861. The naval defeat against Japan in 1905 caused the first Russian revolution. The defeat against Germany in 1917 led to the second Russian revolution. The Germans take Lenin, who was in Zurich, and send him to Helsinki. Military and political defeat in Afghanistan is followed by Gorbachev's reform. The exception was the great victory of 1945. Stalin's regime was strengthened. There is always a link between the internal and the external. It takes an external shock to make it move inside.
In the world of the day after, who will emerge stronger, China, Turkey, the United States?
The three. And the Europeans a little, not as a military power, of course, but in the sense that they have understood that there are common interests and that the European Union is not just a large market, that it is something else: values, reconciliation and cooperation.
Do you think it will be possible to live in peace and cooperation with the future Russia?
I don't know what that future Russia will look like. The main obstacle is that the Russian elites have not understood why their system collapsed in 1991. They have never repented of Stalin's crimes. There has never been a job like in Germany, or even like in France with the Algerian war or the Vichy regime. There has never been such a critical examination of the past, a trial like Nuremberg. The Ukrainians, by the way, ask for a process for the Russian leaders. There was never any work of reconciliation between Poland and Russia, or between Ukraine and Russia. There has never been a declaration of “never again” (Foucher says it in Spanish).
Lots of work to do.
Yes, it will only be done after a loss and a change of team, but it will take time.
Already last March you were concerned about the nuclear danger. You keep talking constantly. Are you more worried now or less?
There is too much talk. The experience is that words precede actions. It must be taken into account that the tactical nuclear weapon is part, in Russia, of the employment doctrine (in a theater of operations), something different from strategic deterrence. The fact that the Kremlin talks all the time is to destabilize public opinion in democratic countries that support Ukraine. That psychological action works. Creating anguish works. The new element, after the meeting in Samarkand between Modi, Xi Jinping, Erdogan and Putin is that, for both the Chinese and the Indians, there is a red line on the nuclear issue.
And will the Russian strategy of systematic destruction of Ukrainian electrical and water distribution infrastructures work?
No, it's just the opposite. The more the Russians do that, the more the Ukrainian population will adapt and react. It is exactly Hitler's method against British cities with the famous V-2 rockets. They destroyed neighborhoods, there were deaths, but the next day the women, the children, the old people, all collected the bricks, cleaned and rebuilt. It causes the opposite effect to the desired one. He mobilizes the population instead of demobilizing it.
Should it be negotiated now or not?
I think there is nothing to negotiate. Moscow says it wants and Kyiv refuses. That is a message to the Chinese and the Indians. Putin wants to negotiate everything he has conquered before losing it. Zelensky's position is that he will only negotiate with another leader, not with Putin, especially since there is the issue of war crimes. But I do see that the issue of negotiation circulates in the diplomatic circles, in Europe, in the US Republican Party. That is the influence of the Russians, obviously. But Zelensky cannot negotiate in any way. The day he did he would be dead. The Ukrainians have suffered a lot. So there needs to be a significant tactical defeat, the Kherson case, clearly, to turn the tide in the Kremlin.
