The Russian Federation consists of eighty-five “federal subjects,” or constituent parts, of which twenty-two are republics named after non-Russian ethnicities. Russia has over190 ethnicities, and many of them live in remote locations like Siberia and the Caucasus region.

Why would they secede? For two main reasons: economic and cultural.

Today’s Russia, like the Soviet Union before it, is not an economic success. Russia is a middling economic power with a GDP about the size of Spain or Texas. Its GDP per capita is even less impressive: In the 2020 World Bank index, Russia ranks eight-fifth, between Bulgaria and Malaysia.

Alexei Kudrin, a former deputy prime minister and finance minister, and perhaps the most influential Russian economist, argued in a 2018 interview that Russia may fall apart just like the USSR if “the Russian leadership will not get rid of the Soviet mentality.” Among the risk factors he named were oil dependency, sanctions, restricted access to technology, labor shortages, and low labor productivity.

Many of the republics and regions have closer ties with other countries than with Russia. They feel they get little to no benefits from the central government in Moscow that they view as corrupt and inept.