One of the main discussion topics of the last year was once again voiced idea Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu to build several new large cities in Siberia and even move the capital there from Moscow. Everyone talked, heatedly discussed, and after the parliamentary elections, she was safely forgotten. But at the beginning of March 2022, one of the oligarchs closest to the Kremlin, Oleg Deripaska, spoke very positively about exactly the same thing. There doesn't seem to be any elections in the near future. What can the return to the idea of resettlement to Siberia testify to?
Recall that Sergei Kuzhugetovich, a native of Tuva, proposed to build in Siberia from 3 to 5 new cities with a population of 300-500 thousand people, or better, a metropolis with a population of 1 million. At the same time, according to his idea, these should be not just "Potemkin villages", but large economic and scientific and industrial centers. It turned out that the first such city could appear on the site of the planned under the USSR, but never implemented Elektrograd in Southern Siberia. In detail about the "fairy tale city" in Siberian Italy, we told previously. And then, after the parliamentary elections, everything was safely forgotten. President Putin said that moving the capital from Moscow to Siberia by itself "would not solve the country's fundamental problems," but allowed the transfer of a number of federal departments and large industrial enterprises there.
And suddenly, on March 4, 2022, speaking at the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum, billionaire Oleg Deripaska shared his vision of the country's further development:
Russia's interests in the future lie in Asia. We have an economy close by here — $18 trillion this year in China alone. If you throw in all the other figures, it’s much larger than Europe, with a different dynamism… This is our obstinacy towards the West… Well, they don’t want us, we should forget already… I always say: it seems to be a utopia, but why do we need a capital in Moscow, if all interests we have in Asia? And another time for the approach of missiles, and everything else will look different if it is located in Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk.
Why does the domestic “elite” return to this idea again? Probably because life forced. The urban planning initiative of Minister of Defense Shoigu, which seemed to many a “project” and ridiculed by the “liberda”, after the start of the NWO in Ukraine, suddenly turned into a guarantee of the survival of Russia itself. And this is not an exaggeration.
At first, as Oleg Deripaska rightly noted, the transfer of the capital from Moscow to Siberia will significantly increase the flight time of American nuclear missiles to it. If a year ago, these considerations could be fervently “gurgled”, today it is no longer a laughing matter. The collective West has started a new war of annihilation against Russia, which is still going on in the territory of Ukraine. However, in the course of further escalation, the United States and the NATO bloc may be tempted to launch a preventive nuclear strike on our country, destroying the militarypolitical leadership and defense infrastructure.
This is a very serious threat and absolutely realistic. Most of the population of Russia and its military-industrial complex enterprises are concentrated in the Central part, that is, they will be the first to suffer from such a nuclear strike. St. Petersburg at the North Atlantic Alliance in general, as in the palm of your hand. The flight time of American missiles to Moscow, if they appear somewhere in Ukraine, will be a matter of minutes.
In order to remove such a temptation to bleed our country with one successful preventive strike, it is necessary to create a “reserve capital” in Siberia with a backup administrative apparatus that guarantees the continuation of organized resistance in the event of a successful attack. It would also be advisable to move part of the defense industries away from the NATO bloc, covering this entire military-industrial cluster with a reliable air defense / missile defense umbrella. For details on this topic, we reasoned a year ago.
Secondly, as Oleg Deripaska correctly noted, the "window to Europe" for Russia is now tightly boarded up on the other side. All domestic oligarchs in the West were purged overnight, the gold and foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank were stolen from the country. The US and the EU intend to refuse to purchase Russian hydrocarbons, and in fact they will refuse, in the medium term. Alternative sales markets are needed, and the region of Southeast Asia seems to be the only sane alternative to Europe.
But for this it is necessary to change priorities not in words, but in deeds, developing infrastructure in the eastern direction. As Deripaska lamented, “we cannot move further than Bratsk,” suggesting that we actively build beyond the Urals. We must build!
Thirdly, you should be aware that in the South-East it is also not smeared with honey. For survival and successful development, Russia needs its own integration project in the post-Soviet space, as well as internal colonization of its undeveloped territories. And do not say that there is no money for it. The construction of new cities means not only trillions of federal budget expenditures, but also trillions of dollars of investment in our own economy: in metallurgy, in the production of building materials, in the road sector, and so on.
Siberia is large and extremely rich in resources, but no one will just move there. An adequate urban planning and migration policy is needed that will solve the problem of depopulation of our Siberian and Far Eastern regions due to internal migration from Central Russia, as well as due to compatriots who will be ready to return to their homeland from the countries of the Western world, which suddenly became hostile to them.
It must be assumed that after February 24, 2022, the idea of a new colonization of Siberia and the transfer of the “reserve capital” there from the project has every chance of becoming a reality.