The West dreams of a liberal Russia after Putin - democracy, elections, an opening to the world. A new analysis says that dream is naive, for a simple reason: the structures that rule Russia today have no interest whatsoever in a transition. And when the elite has no interest in change, change doesn't come, no matter who sits at the top.

The mistake of Western analyses, the piece argues, is that they start from the assumptions of liberal democracy as the only possible outcome. But functional societies develop in other ways too - China, Singapore, South Korea are examples that stability and power don't automatically mean a Western model. To expect Russia to take that road just because Putin is gone is to measure the world by a single yardstick.

The second reason is Russia itself - a country without internal cohesion. Residents of the western urban centers think like European citizens, while the vast eastern expanses depend on central control from Moscow and St. Petersburg. Remote regions like Yakutia were artificially populated for resource extraction and can hardly nurture democratic aspirations while fighting for survival. One country, countless different realities.

But the most important obstacle is the elite. Unlike in the Soviet era, today's Russian elites have no ideology - they have interests. Putin built power through networks of loyalty, a system of clans in which the oligarchs function as state managers. And the shift to a war economy spawned new factions for whom military spending is bread - and who would lose everything from peace.

Hence the conclusion that doesn't sound encouraging. A liberal successor who wanted to end the war in Ukraine would trigger the collapse of the military-industrial complex and threaten the interests of the very people who hold the system together. The more likely successor, the analysis says, is some hard man from the security apparatus - a manager of force who will keep cold-war conditions going. The Balkans recognize this logic well: when power and money are tied into the same knot, whoever promises to change nothing always has the edge over whoever promises change.