Assume these joined St. Petersburg:

Murmansk Oblast Republic of Karelia Leningrad Oblast Pskov Oblast Novgorod Oblast

  • stoy@lemmy.zip
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    4 days ago

    I’ll admit that I am not super into internal Russian politics, but is there a reason for these areas to want to leave Russia?

    • rockerface 🇺🇦@lemm.ee
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      4 days ago

      Being a part of Russia should be reason enough /s

      Memes aside, I would be more interested in the potential of central and eastern regions leaving Russia - the parts that were historically populated by various indigenous peoples before being forcibly included into the Russian empire.

      • toofpic@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Siberia - easily. “the guys over the mountains” coule live by themselves and get more use of their asian ties, in contrary to working for Moscow.

        • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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          4 days ago

          In reality though, they’d be run over immediately by China which I’m sure isn’t going to be in their best interest

          • toofpic@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            Yes, that’s a risk, I’m just saying the eastern part of Russia is not exactly winning by being under Moscow. They have a major part of Russian’s heavy industry, oil, ores, lumber, and several million cities packed with universities, so they have an initial set of everything to “live independently”. But whoever is nearby will always look at those resources - material or human.

    • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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      4 days ago

      I don’t know of a political movement yet, but I would guess the following:

      • Without Russia, the new St. Petersburg country could engage with more trade with the EU instead. The region is one of the more advanced parts of Russia, so they may figure that they could do better trading within the EU customs union than being frozen out.
      • While a lot of resource wealth goes into Moscow and St. Petersburg from some parts of Russia, there are a lot of other areas that rely on massive Russian subsidies to maintain their standards of living. If resource wealth gets cut off, St. Petersburg may not want to subsidize these backwater areas.
      • The Wagner Group is located in St. Petersburg. It is possible that a future civil war between the Wagner Group and the Russian government may lead to the Wagner Group wanting independence from Russia to keep its pseudo colonial riches.
    • njm1314@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      There’s certainly parts of Russia that have separatist sentiments. Can’t say I’m aware of any overwhelming separatist sentiment in that region though.

      • toofpic@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Right after the “Crimea referendum”, some guys in Saint-Petersburg tried to start a referendum for the independence of the North-West, and got majorly fucked for treason. Guess the “democracy” wasn’t a democracy enough