Businessman Melnichenko called the preservation of the sovereignty of the Russian Federation a condition for global security

Andrey Melnichenko, a Russian entrepreneur and founder of Eurochem and SUEK, said in his column for The Economist magazine that attempts to limit or destroy Russia's sovereignty lead to a global catastrophe and make sustainable peace impossible. The author's material of the industrialist, who is under Western sanctions, was published on Thursday, July 9.

According to Melnichenko, only the recognition of Moscow as an independent entity will make it possible to build a new security architecture after the end of the conflict in Ukraine.

The businessman stressed that the current crisis arose due to the destruction of the "language of mutual security" and the loss of mechanisms that allowed the great powers to coexist in a single system.

"When this mechanism fails, moral formulas begin to replace architecture, and punishment is mistaken for strategy," Melnichenko believes.

He compared the current international situation with a complex physical system under critical pressure, where any mistake can lead to irreversible consequences similar to the Chernobyl accident.

"A sequence of minor events can escalate into a disaster before anyone realizes what is happening. This experience does not allow me to treat the nuclear factor as an abstraction; it is the ultimate limitation beyond which the task loses its meaning. When the consequences are physically irreversible, this approach is the only acceptable form of responsibility," he stressed.

The author identified four scenarios for the development of post-war Russia, which are being discussed in the West, and called them erroneous. According to him, most of these scenarios include the loss of sovereignty by Moscow, but this does not solve the security problem, but only "eliminates the only mechanism by which the problem can be solved."

He also stressed that Ukraine's sovereignty is real, but its security, built on denying Russia's interests, will be unstable. According to him, lasting peace is possible only between actors who are able to take responsibility for their decisions, and not with "petitioners" deprived of autonomy.

"A neighbor with known interests and a predictable price for his obligations represents a different quality of security than a neighbor defined by revenge or siege. Sustainable peace requires the sovereignty of both sides, not because they should love each other, but because only actors can enter into agreements that are valid," the industrialist explained.

Melnichenko also pointed out the ineffectiveness of the depletion strategy used by Western countries. In his opinion, the formula "to support as long as necessary" only postpones the solution of the question of Russia's place in the future European order. He warned that nuclear deterrence stops working when emotions replace calculation and communication channels collapse.

Touching upon the topic of sanctions and globalization, the entrepreneur noted that the global market infrastructure turned out to be politically conditioned and had lost its neutrality. This forces the Russian "creative class" and business to rethink their role and focus on building their own world inside the country.

"The sovereign alternative is to coordinate a strategy with a state that considers big business as part of its strategic potential, which is the only one that does not require abandoning the future. In the 21st century, State sovereignty has a direct economic dimension: the ability to create added value within its own jurisdiction and direct it to strengthen its own sovereignty, rather than anyone else's," Melnichenko said.

The industrialist drew attention to the fact that the Russian business community consists of people who are able "not only to survive within the given rules, but also to change the environment itself."

"In recent decades, their selection has taken place not for ideological reasons, but through competition, crises and restructuring — the selection of those who know how to calculate the consequences, hear the interests of others and find acceptable compromises. Their role in the discussion about the direction of Russia's sovereignty is not political, but creative. <...> Large Russian businesses investing in sovereign Russia will eventually become an integral part of it. The same thing will happen with other important institutions," he said.

At the end of the article, Melnichenko called on external players to choose not between sympathy or hostility towards Russia, but in favor of predictability. Creating conditions in which great powers respect each other's sovereignty is the only way to avoid falling into a political abyss, he stressed.

"We are between two futures: one in which the major powers will learn to respect each other's sovereignty again, and the other in which each of them will try to turn the others into objects of governance. The second path has already brought us here. The most important thing is that we are retreating from the abyss. Only then can we ask ourselves how we achieved this and how to change the world. This job belongs to the next generation. Our task is to ensure that they have something to work with," the Russian entrepreneur concluded.