Russia isn’t Germany, the repercussions of a move like that would be absolutely catastrophic, it would make the situation here chicken feed in comparison.
We see the repercussions of allowing Russian power to rise again right now.
The west made serious mistakes as regards post-Soviet Russia - the worst were not implementing a Marshall Plan style plan to enable it to evolve into a modern European social democracy, tolerating the corruption of Yeltsin, opening its arms to the corrupt Russian cash that flooded into it.
But you can’t undo those mistakes. You can only deal with the now. Putin now is an existential threat not just to Ukraine but to Europe and the world and the west must ultimately defeat him - whether by slow economic and informational strangulation including cyber warfare - or by actual violent war (let’s pray it doesn’t come to that) - or western freedom and democracy as we know them will not survive.
If they were to go ahead with the idea you mentioned there then you would create multiple Putins all vying for control in a subsequent power vaccum, civil war would erupt amongst the fragmented territories before the strongest would emerge and reunite the nation again regardless.
It didn’t happen in West Germany. And it doesn’t happen if you properly call the shots in a post war plan about what system will prevail.
Anyway, all that is a hypothetical in the event of the sort of war nobody in the west wants, and with a bit of luck will probably never happen.
The greatest threat in terms of giving in to Russian power in the west is internal. Russia has fifth columnists inside every western society trying to tear these societies apart, and has been very successful at doing so so far. Whether they are Russian agents, Russian assets or neither of these things - and the vast majority are neither - is irrelevant. The tragic truth is that the interests of western kleptocrats align almost perfectly with that of Putin. And they increasingly control the narrative, with the help of ether paid by Russia chaos agents or in most cases useful idiots. Informational warfare that is either Russian in origin or which helps Russia is everywhere online.
As I said earlier, the 2024 US presidential election will be Ground Zero of this. If the wrong result happens, say bye bye to any sort of meaningful western resistance to Putin.
Belarus is holding a “referendum” next Sunday. Basically it means that Lukashenko’s rule will be enshrined in perpetuity and that Russian nuclear weapons will be stationed in Belarus.
So we will have Russian nuclear weapons pointed at Europe in both Kaliningrad and Belarus.
Meanwhile Russia talks about needing “concessions” and “security guarantees” from Europe, while Europe mulls over conceding, while the idea of asking Russia for concessions seems to exist on some far away planet.
I wonder what the result of the “referendum” will be.