Let’s talk about something good.
The international community has managed to cause the Russian economy great pain in a very short time. In principle, this is quite enough to bury the current regime in the RF, should it decide to keep playing out an already lost war. But this will a) take a long time, b) bring enormous losses to all states and private companies that joined the sanctions against the RF, c) in no way help a fundamental solution to the problem of aggression by a nuclear power against a non-nuclear one (the PRC can wait until the governments that so joyfully implemented sanctions against the RF are swept away by an opposition promising a return to normalcy—and immediately after that move to restore its own territorial integrity across the strait).
How to solve the problem faster, cheaper, and more reliably? Simply use not only the stick, but also the carrot. You are already trying to apply this method by offering Russian pilots rewards for flying military aircraft abroad, but, agree, this is small-scale; act on a larger scale. Declare that your sanctions are only against the RF. If any territorial entity declares its separation from the RF, states that it does not support the RF’s invasion of Ukraine, and joins the sanctions against the RF, promise to immediately recognize the sovereignty of this new state, admit it to the UN, recognize its nuclear status if nuclear warheads are located on its territory—and, since this state is not the RF, no sanctions will apply to it.
For decades, the leadership of the RF has told its population that the collective West dreams of dismembering Mother Russia. So, bring this nightmare to life! Let Vladimir, the gatherer of Russian lands, go down in history as the one who left Russia as a principality the size of the Moscow region. It would be elegant. It would be instructive. It would put the PRC in its place.
A compact state, whose activity mostly consists of ensuring the operation of infrastructure and legal frameworks, is something that even libertarians agree to tolerate with some distaste. Yes, it is an outdated interface, but perhaps it is worth preserving temporarily for reasons of backward compatibility until the last statists die out naturally. However, vast empires are a dark past that belonged in the dustbin of history a hundred years ago, and there is simply no reason to preserve the RF (or the PRC) within its existing borders. If even the Ukrainian crisis does not push these empires toward collapse, it is frightening to imagine how great a crisis these empires will cause next time.
