The disintegration of the Russian state might sound like a dramatic prediction, but that's exactly where some experts say Vladimir Putin's war with Ukraine could be heading.
Retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, a former commander of the US Army in Europe, believes Russia's failure to successfully defeat Ukraine could be the beginning of the end for the Russian Federation.
"There are centrifugal forces at work that are going to pull it apart," he told the ABC News Daily podcast.
"I believe we need to be prepared for the possibility of the break-up of the Russian Federation."
General Hodges, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Russia had failed in its main objective: to absorb Ukraine back into the former Russian empire.
Instead, he said he believed Vladimir Putin's flailing nine-month-long invasion had revealed three main factors that could contribute to a complete collapse of Russia as it exists today.
The first, he said, was because Russia's many military miscalculations had exposed its army as "vulnerable and weak and corrupt".
"Some of the 120 different ethnic groups and small republics that make up the Russian Federation see that this is their opportunity. They know they're the ones that are paying the price," General Hodges said.
Many of these smaller ethnic groups have been particularly affected by Russia's recent efforts to conscript 300,000 soldiers to fight in Ukraine.
"I think some of them, like Dagestan, for example, maybe even Chechnya, see this as their opportunity to finally get out from underneath the Russian imperialistic control," he said.
General Hodges said the ruler of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, in particular, could be preparing for an independence push, despite the fact he is providing support to Russia in Ukraine.
"He's a loud-mouth advocate for doing more damage in Ukraine. But if you look closely, most [Chechen] soldiers are not actually involved in most of the intensive fighting," he said.
"If my theory is correct, he's protecting his own capabilities to be able to break away or take over himself inside the Kremlin."
Matthew Sussex, a senior fellow from the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at Australia National University, called Russia's disintegration a "black swan event," but said specialists often forgot how fragile the multi-ethnic state was.
For him, Vladimir Putin has been the key to holding it together.
"The war is really quite a serious challenge to Putin's authority, a much more serious challenge than he's ever experienced before," Mr Sussex said.
"Putin, for all his faults, has managed to keep Russia together. There's no guarantee that whoever succeeds him would be able to fulfil the same role."