The collapse of the Ukrainian armed forces will be followed by the collapse of the government
Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an expert analyst at Corr Analytics, www.canalyt.com
Cross-posted from Russian & Eurasian Politics
The Ukrainian Regime Splits, Then Falls
With the military’s collapse or even on the verge of its collapse, one should expect intensifying political instability with internal infighting intensifying as whatever remains of something resembling a front line moves towards Kiev. Russian forces will reach the Dnieper by this summer and perhaps take territories along much or all of its length this year. With the fall of industrial giants, such as the cities of Dnipro and Zaporozhe, rump Ukraine will be reduced to a country of western Ukrainian shopkeepers in a decimated economy, society, and polity, assuming the Russians assume to stop at the Dnieper. Already HUR chief Kyryll Budanov and Office of the President (OP) chief Andriy Yermak are at odds with each other, with rumors circulating for months that Zelenskiy is preparing to fire Budanov (https://gordonhahn.com/2024/12/10/the-second-great-ukrainian-ruin-revisited/ and https://ctrana.news/articles/analysis/471395-pochemu-kniha-o-valerii-zaluzhnom-aktivizirovala-obsuzhdenie-eho-politicheskikh-perspektiv.html). In late January, Pro-Maidan regime Ukrainskaya pravda reported that Budanov shocked Rada deputies in a closed door meeting by stating that if peace talks did not begin soon, processes would begin that would lead to Ukraine’s destruction (www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2025/01/27/7495459/ and https://membrana-cdn.media/video/upr/custom-193959-20250127-desktop.mp4?r=62418). There has been some cooperation in the opposition between Zelenskiy-fired armed forces commander Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhniy and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (https://gordonhahn.com/2024/12/10/the-second-great-ukrainian-ruin-revisited/; https://www.politico.eu/article/kursk-russia-incursion-objections-war-in-ukraine-volodymyr-zelenskyy/; and https://ctrana.news/articles/analysis/471395-pochemu-kniha-o-valerii-zaluzhnom-aktivizirovala-obsuzhdenie-eho-politicheskikh-perspektiv.html). Both have been investigated for supposed treason by Zelenskiy’s prosecutors and the secret police, the SBU, and subject to political attacks by the OP (https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=9599452636751203&id=100000596862745). The head of the parliamentary group of Zelenskiy’s ‘Servants of the people’ party in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, David Arakhamiya is said to be on the outs with OP and will soon be replaced as party group chairman (https://ctrana.one/articles/analysis/478897-uvoljat-li-hlavu-fraktsii-sluha-naroda-arakhamiju-i-chto-zhdjot-shmyhalja.html). Arakhmiya is one of the few Ukrainian figures to acknowledge that Ukraine had nearly concluded a peace agreement with Russia in March 2022 top put a quick end to the war but that the West scuttled the agreement by refusing security guarantees and urging Kiev to fight. Recently, as the new Trump administration has out peace negotiations back on the agenda, Arakhamiya seemed to encourage the process – one Zelenskiy has been cool if not bhostile to – by noting he was in contact with Kremlin-tied Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and good ties with Republicans in the U.S., likely increasing Zelenskiy’s suspicions of Arakhamiya’s loyalty (https://ctrana.one/articles/analysis/478897-uvoljat-li-hlavu-fraktsii-sluha-naroda-arakhamiju-i-chto-zhdjot-shmyhalja.html).
This regime infighting is compounded by the unfulfilled revolutionary aspirations of its ultranationalist and neofascist wing, which led the Maidan takeover in the first place a decade ago in February 2024. Most recently, the founder and former leader of the neofascist Right Sector groupand and advisor to former Ukrainian army top commander Zaluzhniy, Dmitro Yarosh, repeated his call for the completion of the neofascist revolution on his Facebook page: “As it turned out, during the Dignity Revolution and the Russian-Ukrainian War, Ukrainian nationalists became the main factor in the Ukrainian national-liberation struggle in the 21st century… I am a Ukrainian Nationalist – sounds proud both in Ukraine and across the world. The next power after the War for Independence should be nationalist. Otherwise, we will once again be led down an unbreakable cycle of national humiliation, corruption, degeneracy, moral degradation, economic decline, inferiority and defeat… Therefore, after the War for Independence, the wise, courageous and noble should rule in Ukraine. Glory to the Nation!” (www.facebook.com/dyastrub/posts/pfbid07fbi3Z2u8VLPQU1eESuQq9vPhBF9XY5gHe96TKnnXMnty8FZD89ghB9REvyiNgvil). The neofascist Azov Brigade’s leader and commander Andrey Biletskiy sounded the alarm about the army in December and called for wide-ranging reforms perhaps in a bid for military and even state leadership (https://t.me/rezident_ua/25291). In sum, the Zelenskiy government has opponents, even enemies in every camp in Russian politics, from the military to moderate nationalists to the neofascists, even in his own largely discredited and corrupt Servants of the People party (https://ctrana.one/articles/analysis/478897-uvoljat-li-hlavu-fraktsii-sluha-naroda-arakhamiju-i-chto-zhdjot-shmyhalja.html).
These developments inside the elite are compounded by Zelenskiy’s collapsing popularity and trust ratings in society. Gen. Zaluzhniy is favored over Zelenskiy in the most recent opinion surveys in Ukraine. Ukrainians’ trust in Mr Zelensky declined precipitously from 80% in May 2023 to 45% a year later, according to America’s National Democratic Institute (https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/09/26/ukraine-is-on-the-defensive-militarily-economically-and-diplomatically). A recent Ukrainian opinion poll by the Social Monitoring Center in Kiev shows that only 16 percent of Ukrainians are prepared to vote for Zelenskiy in any future presidential election, and 60 percent would prefer he did not run. At the same time, Zelenskiy-dismissed Zaluzhniy would lead in any such election and be backed by 27 percent, according to the poll (www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/zelensky-popularity-poll-fallen-three-years-war-stzqf5bpn). According to the Presidential Office’s earlier in-house opinion polls as well, Zelenskiy today would lose a presidential election to Zaluzhniy. The fired general registers as Ukraine’s most popular political and military figure, according to other recent polls (https://ctrana.news/news/459385-opros-o-politicheskikh-simpatijakh-k-zaluzhnomu-rezultaty.html). In trust ratings, Zelenskiy has fallen to third place – after Zaluzhniy and the head of military intelligence (HRU) Budanov, whom the President’s Office is reportedly trying to fire (https://ctrana.one/articles/analysis/475099-kak-skladyvajutsja-otnoshenija-trampa-i-ukrainskoj-vlasti-.html). The stumbling block may be Budanov’s long-standing ties to U.S. and Western intelligence (www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/us/politics/ukraine-drones-biden-support.html). In a more recent survey both Zaluzhniy (71.6 percent) and Budanov (46.7) retained hire trust ratings than Zelenskiy (40.8 percent) (https://t.me/stranaua/183673). All of the above strongly suggests that the regime is splitting behind the scenes, and Zelenskiy cannot hold the situation together as crises at the front and in the army mount. The Maidan regime is threatened by a regime split into competing factions each putting forward its own claim over the sovereignty of the Ukrainian state or parts thereof. Zaluzhniy’s reported contacts with oppositionist Poroshenko would mark the defection of a key Maidan regime actor to the political opposition to Zelenskiy. Such defections are instrumental in regime transformations, whether transitional or revolutionary. One needs only to recall the effect Yeltsion’s defection from the reforming CPSU Soviet regime of Mikhail Gorbachev had on Soviet politics, aggravating polarization both to the ‘left’ and ‘right’ of Gorbachev’s perestroishchiki and leading to the August hardline coup against them both and ultimately the collapse of the USSR.
On top of all this, the regime’s stability is being shaken by the Trump administration’s to push for peace talks with Moscow and, just recently, its implied move to have Zelenskiy removed from the presidency to facilitate those negotiations. The February 2 call by Trump’s envoy for his Ukrainian peace initiative, Fen. Keith Kellogg, for the convening of presidential elections by the end of the year seems the death knell for Zelenskiy, given Gen. Zaluzhniy’s far greater popularity. For Zelenskiy, an election loss or a decision not to run would be a saving grace compared to the other ways he might be removed from power. But just Kellogg’s suggestion, not to mention an actual presidential campaign run as the front and army collapse, will intensify the power struggle, perhaps to the breaking point.
Then there is the very real potential of a popular uprising, as the economy deteriorates and corruption is publicised, especially as it has to do with the army’s difficulties. Ukrainians already view prices to be a greater threat than the Russian army, according to one recent poll conducted by Kiev’s sociological research group ‘Reinting’. The poll showed more Ukrainians cited price increases and the general state of the economy (32 percent and 33 percent, respectively) as more worrisome than the expansion of Ukrainian territory occupied by the Russian army (25 percent) (https://ratinggroup.ua/ru/research/ukraine/gen_opinion122024.html). Social discontent with the regime’s shortcomings, brought into sharp relief by the extravagant lives visible on the Internet of Zelenskiy’s family, his entourage, and the Ukrainian elite in general is a time bomb waiting to explode.
This Maidan regime crisis is likely to spark a state crisis, perhaps state failure and territorial collapse. Domestic infighting and instability could very well lead to military and/or palace coups and even internecine warfare and the division of parts of the country by mutually antagonistic Ukrainian factions of one sort or another.
The Failure and Collapse of the Ukrainian State
The collapse of the regime could lead to the collapse of the state organizationally and administratively, leaving no functioning central government. This would facilitate territorial dissolution through secessions by warlords, ethnic minority-dominated regions, and/or revanchist takeovers by foreign powers: Poland, Rumania, not to mention Russia. All this could be compounded by economic dislocation and social chaos, leaving both Europe and Russia with a major security problem on their borders. One only needs to recall the Ukrainian national separatism that arose in Lvov and other western Ukrainian regions during the Maidan demonstrations. These early separatist steps preceded those taken in Crimea and Donbass but months later after the collapse of Yanukovych regime and the victory of the Maidan uprising. Below, I review various aspects or phases of the potential collapse of Ukraine as a state: state disorganization and functional failure; territorial collapse on a Ukrainian nationalist and/or quasi-criminal basis; minority ethnonational separatism; and foreign national revanchism.
The Ukrainian state is vulnerable to organization incapacitation and administrative failure as a result of an increasingly dysfunctional economy and its economy’s and state budget’ nearly full dependence on foreign assistance, loans, and grants. I and others have noted the destruction of Ukraine’s energy grid and other infrastructure and the additional debilitating effect of military mobilization on businesses. On the background of such grave difficulties and what can only be expected to be greater economic dislocation caused by the strengthening and advancing Russian army, Ukraine’s main donor, the U.S., has put a freeze on all foreign assistance, excluding only Israel and Egypt from the executive order, as announced by the Trump administration. This will soon leave the Ukrainian government without the funding necessary to govern, provide public goods, and the like. Ukrainians already view prices to be a greater threat than the Russian army, as noted above (https://t.me/stranaua/185326). Thus, Ukraine’s loss of sovereignty to the West, mostly to Washington, means total collapse with the withdrawal of funding. This is already apparent in the most transparent of the USAID corruption disclosures, which revealed that 85 percent of Ukrainian media will have to shut down without USAID’s funds (www.facebook.com/ivan.katchanovski/posts/pfbid028wq1pbbbPQBDQmGMhmLdmzWwpqfvM6Bazck8EXfNNubZgoF57V1c9w4myJDPeRMWl). One can imagine the destructive impact in others sectors of Ukrainian on the life support of Western assistance: the economy, medical care, social welfare payments, etc. Regional governments, relying on ambitious oligarchs opposed to the Zelenskiy government or even the entire Maidan regime itself, can then be expected to become separate fiefdoms for said oligarchs, setting the stage for regional hoarding of key goods and eventually even separatism.
In addition, Ukraine suffers from an ethnonationally based ‘stateness problem’ driven by ethnic minority-populated regions and foreign legacies encompassing most of western Ukraine. These areas are part of Ukraine as a result of the Soviet defeat of the Nazism in the Great Patriotic War and the Red Army’s resulting occupation of these areas, which were then incorporated into the Soviet Union’s Ukrainian SSR. As I wrote in my book Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the ‘New Cold War’ (McFarland, 2016), today’s Ukrainian state was constructed by Lenin, Stalin, and later Khrushchev (Crimea). Thus, in western Ukraine’s Transcarpathian region there are sub-regions with large Rumanian and Hungarian populations the lands of which previously belonged to then Nazi-allied Rumania and Hungary, respectively. The populations have been subjected to language and other forms of discrimination by the state and its allied Ukrainian ultranationalists and neofascists before Russia’s 2022 invasion. Now they are being brutalized by Zelenskiy’s military mobilization press gangs perhaps disproportionally so compared with ethnic Ukrainian areas. This can feed into a desire for a return to their national homelands either on foot or by appealing for their rescue by incorporation into Rumania and Hungary, respectively. Territorially speaking, this is a far lesser danger than the potential of Polish revanchism, which would mean the dissolution of the Ukrainian state. Fortunately for Kiev, such developments are for now a remote possibility. But should the Ukrainian state begin to disintegrate, no less experience internecine warfare or nascent civil war, the potential of external revanchism becomes more kinetic.
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