"The first parts to break away, Malashenko believes, will be the Kaliningrad enclave, wedged between Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus and firmly oriented to Europe, and the Far East on the opposite side of this country, firmly locked economically to China, Japan, and South Korea.
"The Kaliningrad region and the Far East have as little in common within the Russian Federation as, say, Estonia and Turkmenistan did in the Soviet Union. No viable economic ties exist between the extremes of this large country. There is nothing like Route 1 from Key West, Florida, to Fort Kent on the Canadian border to link Kaliningrad to Vladivostok. Only centralized control, known as Putin's vertical of power, has kept Russian regions together like hoops on a cask. As the systemic crisis loosens the hoops, however, the decayed cask will start falling apart.
"On February 9 the Republic of Tuva, which borders Mongolia in Eastern Siberia (and of whose existence most Muscovites are only dimly aware), challenged a key element of this power vertical. Under Putin, regional legislatures just rubber-stamp Moscow's "recommended" presidents and governors (just as Soviet Communist party regional committees "elected" Moscow's "recommended" first secretaries). The central government appoints the key officials of federal agencies in the regions, regardless of local feelings. Tuva now wants Moscow to seek regional approval for such appointments."Although the legislation initiated by Tuva will most likely die on the Duma floor, it does reflect the longstanding anger that has been smoldering in the regions as Putin has been turning the Russian Federation into a unitary state. This anger just broke out in a dangerous way in Dagestan. On February 2 Moscow appointed Vladimir Radchenko to head the Dagestan Republican Directorate of the Federal Internal Revenue Service (UFNS).
"On February 3 Radchenko could not enter Dagestan, because a large crowd of protesting Lezgins, Dagestan's third-largest ethnic group, would not let him in. The Lezgins have a claim on the UFNS under an informal delineation of powers in the multi-ethnic republic.
"Only on February 6 was Radchenko able to make his way into the UFNS headquarters in Makhachkala. He did not stay long, however. Two gunmen broke in, threatened him with guns, grabbed him, and threw him into a car. The kidnappers told Radchenko that they would kill him if he did not leave Dagestan and then just dumped him in the downtown area."
