Michael McFaul, the former architect of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Russian reset policy, claims Putin has no capacity to recreate the Soviet Union. “I just worry that countries of the former Soviet Union could languish in this frozen conflict for many more years, as long as Putin remains in power.”

Remarking on the 30th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s collapse, McFaul said, 30 years later, it’s a tragic event in two different ways:

“Number one is that there are very few democracies that have survived that transition. Russian democracy didn’t survive. We have the three baltic democracies that have survived and I’m very grateful for that. But according to Freedom House, we only have electoral democracies, partially free countries in Georgia, Ukraine, maybe Armenia. I would have hoped there would be a lot more democracy in the former Soviet Union after 30 years. And second, you now have at least three countries in the former Soviet Union, and more depending on how you talk about them, where their sovereignty is been compromised – Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine, because of Russian imperialism.

The magic of Soviet collapse, that was mostly peaceful, of course, it was not completely peaceful, three people died in August 1991, people died in different fights in Nagorno-Karabakh, in Georgia, Tbilisi, there was violence, most certainly, the Chechen wars were tragic and violent, but back in 1991 scholars were saying that this is one of the most peaceful ends of an Empire that the world has ever seen. Tragically, that hasn’t been the case more recently. I’m still cautiously optimistic,” he stated.