The State Duma and the Federation Council of the Russian Federation unanimously voted for the annexation of four regions of Ukraine to Russia.

What will be the consequences of this annexation?

Yury Drakakhrust offers his answer in a column on the "Zerkalo" portal.

Now, the defeat of Russia with moderate losses, with the loss of everything gained during hostilities, as it was after the end of the war in Afghanistan, is excluded from the set of war outcomes.

The USSR entered there as if it were a foreign country, and after 10 years it left this foreign country.

In the current war, this will no longer be the case by definition.

If Russia is defeated in this war, the defeat will be shameful, catastrophic, at least psychologically.

No one in the world (well, very few) recognizes the annexation of a huge territory of a neighboring country to Russia.

But according to internal Russian laws, this is the territory of the Russian Federation, and the Russians will not forgive Putin for its loss.

And with his decision, he burned bridges behind him, excluding the option of any compromise peace.

And for now, apparently, Putin is determined to continue raising the stakes.

Russia is now defeated on the battlefield, but this does not mean that this is the final defeat in the war.

Since February 24, military fortune has turned its face to one side, then to the other.

Mobilization in Russia may not be the decisive factor, but it will undoubtedly be an important factor.

The lack of manpower, which was acutely felt in the Russian army in recent months, will be replenished, especially in a month or two, when the mobilized will be trained.

But Ukraine also has reserves that it can mobilize to compensate for the new imbalance.

In addition, now the unspoken self-restraint practiced by the West - not to give Ukraine long-range weapons so that it does not shell the territory of Russia - can be canceled.

From the Russian point of view, now any weapon is long-range, capable of shelling the territory of the Russian Federation.

In the territory that she now considers her own, there are heated battles.

So the unspoken self-restraint can be unspoken, and even if it's vocal, canceled.

Well, in response, Russia can conduct new and new waves of mobilization, waging a war of attrition.

By the way, it is possible that "a cat will be called a cat", a special military operation - a war.

It is obvious that Ukraine is not going to stop hostilities on the territories where it is currently conducting them.

Russia can now consider this as aggression against it and declare a state of war with Ukraine.

If this happens, it will be a challenge for the CSTO countries, in particular, for Belarus.

Russia can turn to them with a request for military assistance as a victim of aggression.

However, the experience of Armenia, which requested such help and did not receive it, shows that there is no automaticity in the fulfillment of mutual obligations.

As for Russia, its territorial "acquisitions" have not yet been recognized by any CSTO country, not even Belarus.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka's inexplicable trip to Abkhazia was, as it seems, an attempt to evade the recognition of Russia's annexation of 4 regions of Ukraine.

After the start of quasi-referendums in these regions, Kazakhstan issued a statement in which it actually announced the non-recognition of their results.

And there is no recognition of Russia's ownership of the territories where the war is going on - there is no aggression against Russia, accordingly, there are no obligations to help it with military force.

However, no one can say whether Putin has burned all bridges.

If the allies do not want to recognize the Russian territorial grabs, he can try to force them to do so.

However, there may not be enough strength for everyone.

In addition, there are different restrictions.

It is not by chance that the Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Kazakhstan before the SCO summit in Samarkand, where he very unequivocally expressed his support for the country's territorial integrity.

Who, I wonder, could threaten the territorial integrity of Kazakhstan?

For now, according to everything, Putin will focus on military operations in Ukraine, on building up the group that is fighting there.

It is worth noting that in the statements of the President of the Russian Federation and other Russian officials regarding the annexation, there were no assurances that the 4 regions are all that Russia is going to conquer in this war.

The original goal of "denazification of Ukraine", which is a euphemism for the destruction of Ukraine as a sovereign state, has not been canceled.

Now Russian propagandists and politicians, including Putin, are threatening to use nuclear weapons almost every day.

Not only political demagogues, but also once respectable scientists discuss the possibility and desirability of using even strategic nuclear weapons.

It is unlikely that this threat will be implemented soon: Putin has not yet exhausted the conventional possibilities of war.

However, in a socio-psychological sense, these opportunities may end sooner than he thinks.

The mass flight of Russians from the mobilization, the protests against it in Russia, the drop in the rating of Putin himself, and the popularity of the war after the mobilization was announced - all this is not similar to the enthusiasm that gripped Russia at the beginning of the First World War.

Counting on the rise of patriotic feelings, combined with the protection of new territorial acquisitions, is unlikely to be justified - this capture was carried out too hastily and without justification.

So the further this war goes, the more it will become Putin's personal war.

And here the impact on society will be not only the flow of coffins from the front, but also defeats, the growing sense of the senselessness of continuing the war.

3 years after the euphoria of August 1914, in February 1917, Emperor Nicholas received telegrams from front commanders with a "loyal" appeal - "Resign."

In February 1917, Russia had not yet lost the war, but it no longer had the moral strength to continue it.

However, a completely new leader, Vladimir Lenin, who since 1914 advocated Russia's defeat in the war, was able to give peace with huge territorial concessions, which was called "indecent" at the time.

Something similar can happen in modern Russia, the probability of such a scenario is quite high.

What happiness the new Lenin will bring to Russia and the world is a separate question.

But the matter may not come to his decision.

After all, nuclear weapons are capable of changing everything.

If Putin finds himself in front of a constant dilemma - a shameful defeat (and he guaranteed its disgrace with annexation) or a nuclear war, perhaps he will choose the second and burn not only bridges, but also the whole world.

The opinions expressed in the blogs represent the views of the authors themselves and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editors.