Moscow’s recognition of breakaway Ukrainian territories has drawn comparisons to past Russian operations aimed at countering Western influence and bolstering its strategic depth in the former Soviet bloc.
After months of denying his plans to invade Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday ordered Russian “peacekeeping” troops into the breakaway territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, recognizing the two eastern entities – which Russian-backed rebels seized and occupied in 2014 – as independent republics of Kiev.
Despite the specifics of the Ukrainian crisis, analysts were quick to point out that Putin’s move fitted a recent pattern in Russian military operations, aimed at intimidating neighbors into submission, in the process halting any further expansion. to the east of NATO.
The Kremlin has long used so-called “frozen conflicts” to extend its reach beyond Russian borders. For the past three decades, he has backed a pro-Russian regime in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria. In 2008, he launched a conventional invasion of Georgia in support of the breakaway governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two provinces with large Russian-speaking populations. Six years later, Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine and began supporting an insurgency by pro-Russian separatists in Donbass.
In each case, fears of a move away from Russia’s sphere of influence precipitated Moscow’s actions, while the presence of ethnic Russian populations provided the Kremlin with a pretext to intervene as protector. The same logic was at play during Putin’s rambling speech on Monday night, in which he claimed, without evidence, that the Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine were being subjected to “genocide.”
Putin’s playbook
Putin’s latest brazen move comes after months of see-saw tensions in which the Russian president amassed a formidable army along Ukraine’s borders while keeping the world on edge. In the end, the timing of his move may well have been determined by another strange parallel to the conflict in Georgia, this time fortuitous.
In 2008, war between Russia and Georgia broke out at the start of the Beijing Olympics, much to the chagrin of the Chinese authorities. In order not to upset China again, Putin has this time waited until after the closing ceremony of the Winter Games, also in Beijing, before attacking Ukraine again.
Putin’s move brought unsettling déjà vu to Georgians, still reeling from their country’s harsh defeat at the hands of Russia. It came as little surprise to Professor Emil Avdaliani of the European University of Tbilissi and the Georgian think tank Geocase.
“In Georgia, many of us expected the recognition of the two separatist entities in Donbass. It was evident for a year or so,” Avdaliani told France 24. “Moscow has been increasing its funding of the entities, providing Russian passports and clandestinely increasing its military presence. Putin’s decision is a logical conclusion of the process.”
Avdaliani added that Russia’s moves were following “an established playbook,” “creating or fomenting separatist movements to prevent a neighbor from drifting toward Western institutions.”
Defending Russia’s ‘near abroad’
With their large ethnic minorities swept across borders before and during Soviet times, the countries bordering Russia’s western flank have provided fertile ground for conflicts to erupt and fester. In Moscow’s narrative, these conflicts stem from its legitimate claim to a sphere of influence and its duty to protect ethnic Russians from foreign aggression.
“Russia considers itself entitled to a historical sphere of influence, the so-called ‘near abroad,’ and does not allow anyone else to infringe on it,” said Nicoló Fasola, an expert on Russian military strategy at the University of Birmingham, UK.
“Russia is always worried about foreign penetration, not only in terms of military involvement and political engagement, but also in cultural terms,” Fasola told France 24. He pointed to the so-called “color revolutions” that brought pro-Western governments to power in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004), and which the Kremlin perceived as “instruments of the West to distance these countries from Russia”.
This reasoning supports Russia’s continued presence in Moldova’s breakaway province of Transnistria, where attempts to impose the Romanian language in the early 1990s were fiercely resisted by the region’s largely Russian-speaking population. The very concept, protecting ethnic Russians, would later serve Putin to justify his interventions in Georgia and Ukraine.
Although Russia has not recognized Transnistria’s independence, “it has weakened Moldovan sovereignty and frozen its Western integration for the past 25 years,” writes Eric J. Grossman in the US Army War College Quarterly. “This uncertainty has served to trap Moldova in a geopolitical gray area between East and West and has forced it to act as a vehicle for Russian corruption and money laundering.”
“Gray zone”
Both Georgia and Ukraine are now at risk of being drawn into the same geopolitical “gray area”, torn between their hopes of one day joining the NATO military alliance and the knowledge that Russia will not let them go. As for their respective breakaway entities, recognized only by Russia, their fate depends entirely on Moscow.
“Those entities could not survive on their own, but their fragility is actually an advantage from the Russian perspective, because it ties them more to Russia,” Fasola said. “They could not survive without Moscow’s help, which in turn justifies Russia’s continued presence on the ground.”
In recognizing the two “republics” of Donbass, Moscow has meticulously stuck to its tried and tested playbook, reproducing, word for word, the treaties of friendship and mutual assistance it had previously signed with the breakaway provinces of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Whether those entities can prosper is less of a concern for Russia, compared to the overall strategic picture, Fasola said.
“Moscow will provide financial and logistical aid but, in the end, they are nothing more than tools for the achievement of Russia’s strategic goals,” he explained. “It’s about using them as protective walls in the post-Soviet space, instruments to control the situation on the ground.”
A price worth paying
How much control Russia can exert remains to be seen, with critics pointing out that Putin’s actions have hardened anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine and Georgia. As the president of Georgia, Salomé Zurabishvili, recently said, her country understands “very well what the people of Ukraine feel today (…) It is the solidarity of a country that has already suffered and continues to suffer from the occupation.”
Russia may have achieved its short-term goals, but it has “lost prestige and soft power,” Avdaliani said. “Few in Ukraine or Georgia would think of turning to Russia geopolitically. I think in the long run, Russia has wasted the advantages it had even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
For Kremlin strategists, however, resentment against Moscow is a price worth paying to ensure that NATO expansion is stopped in its tracks.
“It is true that Russia’s course of action since 2014 has angered Ukrainian public opinion and legitimized Kiev’s anti-Russian stance,” Fasola said. “But the Kiev government itself is well aware that Russia can decide or at least strongly influence its political decisions. However anti-Russian they may be, they have to take Moscow’s positions and actions into account.”
From a Western point of view, Russia’s aggressive strategy has clearly come at a cost to Moscow, in the form of heavy sanctions, which are meant to be even harsher, and a sharp deterioration in relations with an outraged and compact Western front.
“On the other hand, if we base our assessment on Moscow’s stated goals, namely maintaining Russian control, or at least influence over those specific regions, then we can say that the Russian strategy has been successful,” Fasola warned. “Of course, one time I could counter that neither Georgia nor Ukraine have given up on joining NATO. But, de facto, joining NATO is no longer a viable option. As much as Georgia and Ukraine want to join NATO, they just can’t.”
The same reasoning applies to the West, Fasola added: “On paper, the Western powers decide who gets into NATO. But in practice, they cannot ignore Russia.”
*This article was adapted from its original in English
Moscow’s recognition of breakaway Ukrainian territories has drawn comparisons to past Russian operations aimed at countering Western influence and bolstering its strategic depth in the former Soviet bloc.
After months of denying his plans to invade Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday ordered Russian “peacekeeping” troops into the breakaway territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, recognizing the two eastern entities – which Russian-backed rebels seized and occupied in 2014 – as independent republics of Kiev.
Despite the specifics of the Ukrainian crisis, analysts were quick to point out that Putin’s move fitted a recent pattern in Russian military operations, aimed at intimidating neighbors into submission, in the process halting any further expansion. to the east of NATO.
The Kremlin has long used so-called “frozen conflicts” to extend its reach beyond Russian borders. For the past three decades, he has backed a pro-Russian regime in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria. In 2008, he launched a conventional invasion of Georgia in support of the breakaway governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two provinces with large Russian-speaking populations. Six years later, Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine and began supporting an insurgency by pro-Russian separatists in Donbass.
In each case, fears of a move away from Russia’s sphere of influence precipitated Moscow’s actions, while the presence of ethnic Russian populations provided the Kremlin with a pretext to intervene as protector. The same logic was at play during Putin’s rambling speech on Monday night, in which he claimed, without evidence, that the Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine were being subjected to “genocide.”
Putin’s playbook
Putin’s latest brazen move comes after months of see-saw tensions in which the Russian president amassed a formidable army along Ukraine’s borders while keeping the world on edge. In the end, the timing of his move may well have been determined by another strange parallel to the conflict in Georgia, this time fortuitous.
In 2008, war between Russia and Georgia broke out at the start of the Beijing Olympics, much to the chagrin of the Chinese authorities. In order not to upset China again, Putin has this time waited until after the closing ceremony of the Winter Games, also in Beijing, before attacking Ukraine again.
Putin’s move brought unsettling déjà vu to Georgians, still reeling from their country’s harsh defeat at the hands of Russia. It came as little surprise to Professor Emil Avdaliani of the European University of Tbilissi and the Georgian think tank Geocase.
“In Georgia, many of us expected the recognition of the two separatist entities in Donbass. It was evident for a year or so,” Avdaliani told France 24. “Moscow has been increasing its funding of the entities, providing Russian passports and clandestinely increasing its military presence. Putin’s decision is a logical conclusion of the process.”
Avdaliani added that Russia’s moves were following “an established playbook,” “creating or fomenting separatist movements to prevent a neighbor from drifting toward Western institutions.”
Defending Russia’s ‘near abroad’
With their large ethnic minorities swept across borders before and during Soviet times, the countries bordering Russia’s western flank have provided fertile ground for conflicts to erupt and fester. In Moscow’s narrative, these conflicts stem from its legitimate claim to a sphere of influence and its duty to protect ethnic Russians from foreign aggression.
“Russia considers itself entitled to a historical sphere of influence, the so-called ‘near abroad,’ and does not allow anyone else to infringe on it,” said Nicoló Fasola, an expert on Russian military strategy at the University of Birmingham, UK.
“Russia is always worried about foreign penetration, not only in terms of military involvement and political engagement, but also in cultural terms,” Fasola told France 24. He pointed to the so-called “color revolutions” that brought pro-Western governments to power in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004), and which the Kremlin perceived as “instruments of the West to distance these countries from Russia”.
This reasoning supports Russia’s continued presence in Moldova’s breakaway province of Transnistria, where attempts to impose the Romanian language in the early 1990s were fiercely resisted by the region’s largely Russian-speaking population. The very concept, protecting ethnic Russians, would later serve Putin to justify his interventions in Georgia and Ukraine.
Although Russia has not recognized Transnistria’s independence, “it has weakened Moldovan sovereignty and frozen its Western integration for the past 25 years,” writes Eric J. Grossman in the US Army War College Quarterly. “This uncertainty has served to trap Moldova in a geopolitical gray area between East and West and has forced it to act as a vehicle for Russian corruption and money laundering.”
“Gray zone”
Both Georgia and Ukraine are now at risk of being drawn into the same geopolitical “gray area”, torn between their hopes of one day joining the NATO military alliance and the knowledge that Russia will not let them go. As for their respective breakaway entities, recognized only by Russia, their fate depends entirely on Moscow.
“Those entities could not survive on their own, but their fragility is actually an advantage from the Russian perspective, because it ties them more to Russia,” Fasola said. “They could not survive without Moscow’s help, which in turn justifies Russia’s continued presence on the ground.”
In recognizing the two “republics” of Donbass, Moscow has meticulously stuck to its tried and tested playbook, reproducing, word for word, the treaties of friendship and mutual assistance it had previously signed with the breakaway provinces of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Whether those entities can prosper is less of a concern for Russia, compared to the overall strategic picture, Fasola said.
“Moscow will provide financial and logistical aid but, in the end, they are nothing more than tools for the achievement of Russia’s strategic goals,” he explained. “It’s about using them as protective walls in the post-Soviet space, instruments to control the situation on the ground.”
A price worth paying
How much control Russia can exert remains to be seen, with critics pointing out that Putin’s actions have hardened anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine and Georgia. As the president of Georgia, Salomé Zurabishvili, recently said, her country understands “very well what the people of Ukraine feel today (…) It is the solidarity of a country that has already suffered and continues to suffer from the occupation.”
Russia may have achieved its short-term goals, but it has “lost prestige and soft power,” Avdaliani said. “Few in Ukraine or Georgia would think of turning to Russia geopolitically. I think in the long run, Russia has wasted the advantages it had even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
For Kremlin strategists, however, resentment against Moscow is a price worth paying to ensure that NATO expansion is stopped in its tracks.
“It is true that Russia’s course of action since 2014 has angered Ukrainian public opinion and legitimized Kiev’s anti-Russian stance,” Fasola said. “But the Kiev government itself is well aware that Russia can decide or at least strongly influence its political decisions. However anti-Russian they may be, they have to take Moscow’s positions and actions into account.”
From a Western point of view, Russia’s aggressive strategy has clearly come at a cost to Moscow, in the form of heavy sanctions, which are meant to be even harsher, and a sharp deterioration in relations with an outraged and compact Western front.
“On the other hand, if we base our assessment on Moscow’s stated goals, namely maintaining Russian control, or at least influence over those specific regions, then we can say that the Russian strategy has been successful,” Fasola warned. “Of course, one time I could counter that neither Georgia nor Ukraine have given up on joining NATO. But, de facto, joining NATO is no longer a viable option. As much as Georgia and Ukraine want to join NATO, they just can’t.”
The same reasoning applies to the West, Fasola added: “On paper, the Western powers decide who gets into NATO. But in practice, they cannot ignore Russia.”
*This article was adapted from its original in English
Moscow’s recognition of breakaway Ukrainian territories has drawn comparisons to past Russian operations aimed at countering Western influence and bolstering its strategic depth in the former Soviet bloc.
After months of denying his plans to invade Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday ordered Russian “peacekeeping” troops into the breakaway territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, recognizing the two eastern entities – which Russian-backed rebels seized and occupied in 2014 – as independent republics of Kiev.
Despite the specifics of the Ukrainian crisis, analysts were quick to point out that Putin’s move fitted a recent pattern in Russian military operations, aimed at intimidating neighbors into submission, in the process halting any further expansion. to the east of NATO.
The Kremlin has long used so-called “frozen conflicts” to extend its reach beyond Russian borders. For the past three decades, he has backed a pro-Russian regime in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria. In 2008, he launched a conventional invasion of Georgia in support of the breakaway governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two provinces with large Russian-speaking populations. Six years later, Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine and began supporting an insurgency by pro-Russian separatists in Donbass.
In each case, fears of a move away from Russia’s sphere of influence precipitated Moscow’s actions, while the presence of ethnic Russian populations provided the Kremlin with a pretext to intervene as protector. The same logic was at play during Putin’s rambling speech on Monday night, in which he claimed, without evidence, that the Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine were being subjected to “genocide.”
Putin’s playbook
Putin’s latest brazen move comes after months of see-saw tensions in which the Russian president amassed a formidable army along Ukraine’s borders while keeping the world on edge. In the end, the timing of his move may well have been determined by another strange parallel to the conflict in Georgia, this time fortuitous.
In 2008, war between Russia and Georgia broke out at the start of the Beijing Olympics, much to the chagrin of the Chinese authorities. In order not to upset China again, Putin has this time waited until after the closing ceremony of the Winter Games, also in Beijing, before attacking Ukraine again.
Putin’s move brought unsettling déjà vu to Georgians, still reeling from their country’s harsh defeat at the hands of Russia. It came as little surprise to Professor Emil Avdaliani of the European University of Tbilissi and the Georgian think tank Geocase.
“In Georgia, many of us expected the recognition of the two separatist entities in Donbass. It was evident for a year or so,” Avdaliani told France 24. “Moscow has been increasing its funding of the entities, providing Russian passports and clandestinely increasing its military presence. Putin’s decision is a logical conclusion of the process.”
Avdaliani added that Russia’s moves were following “an established playbook,” “creating or fomenting separatist movements to prevent a neighbor from drifting toward Western institutions.”
Defending Russia’s ‘near abroad’
With their large ethnic minorities swept across borders before and during Soviet times, the countries bordering Russia’s western flank have provided fertile ground for conflicts to erupt and fester. In Moscow’s narrative, these conflicts stem from its legitimate claim to a sphere of influence and its duty to protect ethnic Russians from foreign aggression.
“Russia considers itself entitled to a historical sphere of influence, the so-called ‘near abroad,’ and does not allow anyone else to infringe on it,” said Nicoló Fasola, an expert on Russian military strategy at the University of Birmingham, UK.
“Russia is always worried about foreign penetration, not only in terms of military involvement and political engagement, but also in cultural terms,” Fasola told France 24. He pointed to the so-called “color revolutions” that brought pro-Western governments to power in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004), and which the Kremlin perceived as “instruments of the West to distance these countries from Russia”.
This reasoning supports Russia’s continued presence in Moldova’s breakaway province of Transnistria, where attempts to impose the Romanian language in the early 1990s were fiercely resisted by the region’s largely Russian-speaking population. The very concept, protecting ethnic Russians, would later serve Putin to justify his interventions in Georgia and Ukraine.
Although Russia has not recognized Transnistria’s independence, “it has weakened Moldovan sovereignty and frozen its Western integration for the past 25 years,” writes Eric J. Grossman in the US Army War College Quarterly. “This uncertainty has served to trap Moldova in a geopolitical gray area between East and West and has forced it to act as a vehicle for Russian corruption and money laundering.”
“Gray zone”
Both Georgia and Ukraine are now at risk of being drawn into the same geopolitical “gray area”, torn between their hopes of one day joining the NATO military alliance and the knowledge that Russia will not let them go. As for their respective breakaway entities, recognized only by Russia, their fate depends entirely on Moscow.
“Those entities could not survive on their own, but their fragility is actually an advantage from the Russian perspective, because it ties them more to Russia,” Fasola said. “They could not survive without Moscow’s help, which in turn justifies Russia’s continued presence on the ground.”
In recognizing the two “republics” of Donbass, Moscow has meticulously stuck to its tried and tested playbook, reproducing, word for word, the treaties of friendship and mutual assistance it had previously signed with the breakaway provinces of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Whether those entities can prosper is less of a concern for Russia, compared to the overall strategic picture, Fasola said.
“Moscow will provide financial and logistical aid but, in the end, they are nothing more than tools for the achievement of Russia’s strategic goals,” he explained. “It’s about using them as protective walls in the post-Soviet space, instruments to control the situation on the ground.”
A price worth paying
How much control Russia can exert remains to be seen, with critics pointing out that Putin’s actions have hardened anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine and Georgia. As the president of Georgia, Salomé Zurabishvili, recently said, her country understands “very well what the people of Ukraine feel today (…) It is the solidarity of a country that has already suffered and continues to suffer from the occupation.”
Russia may have achieved its short-term goals, but it has “lost prestige and soft power,” Avdaliani said. “Few in Ukraine or Georgia would think of turning to Russia geopolitically. I think in the long run, Russia has wasted the advantages it had even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
For Kremlin strategists, however, resentment against Moscow is a price worth paying to ensure that NATO expansion is stopped in its tracks.
“It is true that Russia’s course of action since 2014 has angered Ukrainian public opinion and legitimized Kiev’s anti-Russian stance,” Fasola said. “But the Kiev government itself is well aware that Russia can decide or at least strongly influence its political decisions. However anti-Russian they may be, they have to take Moscow’s positions and actions into account.”
From a Western point of view, Russia’s aggressive strategy has clearly come at a cost to Moscow, in the form of heavy sanctions, which are meant to be even harsher, and a sharp deterioration in relations with an outraged and compact Western front.
“On the other hand, if we base our assessment on Moscow’s stated goals, namely maintaining Russian control, or at least influence over those specific regions, then we can say that the Russian strategy has been successful,” Fasola warned. “Of course, one time I could counter that neither Georgia nor Ukraine have given up on joining NATO. But, de facto, joining NATO is no longer a viable option. As much as Georgia and Ukraine want to join NATO, they just can’t.”
The same reasoning applies to the West, Fasola added: “On paper, the Western powers decide who gets into NATO. But in practice, they cannot ignore Russia.”
*This article was adapted from its original in English
Moscow’s recognition of breakaway Ukrainian territories has drawn comparisons to past Russian operations aimed at countering Western influence and bolstering its strategic depth in the former Soviet bloc.
After months of denying his plans to invade Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday ordered Russian “peacekeeping” troops into the breakaway territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, recognizing the two eastern entities – which Russian-backed rebels seized and occupied in 2014 – as independent republics of Kiev.
Despite the specifics of the Ukrainian crisis, analysts were quick to point out that Putin’s move fitted a recent pattern in Russian military operations, aimed at intimidating neighbors into submission, in the process halting any further expansion. to the east of NATO.
The Kremlin has long used so-called “frozen conflicts” to extend its reach beyond Russian borders. For the past three decades, he has backed a pro-Russian regime in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria. In 2008, he launched a conventional invasion of Georgia in support of the breakaway governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two provinces with large Russian-speaking populations. Six years later, Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine and began supporting an insurgency by pro-Russian separatists in Donbass.
In each case, fears of a move away from Russia’s sphere of influence precipitated Moscow’s actions, while the presence of ethnic Russian populations provided the Kremlin with a pretext to intervene as protector. The same logic was at play during Putin’s rambling speech on Monday night, in which he claimed, without evidence, that the Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine were being subjected to “genocide.”
Putin’s playbook
Putin’s latest brazen move comes after months of see-saw tensions in which the Russian president amassed a formidable army along Ukraine’s borders while keeping the world on edge. In the end, the timing of his move may well have been determined by another strange parallel to the conflict in Georgia, this time fortuitous.
In 2008, war between Russia and Georgia broke out at the start of the Beijing Olympics, much to the chagrin of the Chinese authorities. In order not to upset China again, Putin has this time waited until after the closing ceremony of the Winter Games, also in Beijing, before attacking Ukraine again.
Putin’s move brought unsettling déjà vu to Georgians, still reeling from their country’s harsh defeat at the hands of Russia. It came as little surprise to Professor Emil Avdaliani of the European University of Tbilissi and the Georgian think tank Geocase.
“In Georgia, many of us expected the recognition of the two separatist entities in Donbass. It was evident for a year or so,” Avdaliani told France 24. “Moscow has been increasing its funding of the entities, providing Russian passports and clandestinely increasing its military presence. Putin’s decision is a logical conclusion of the process.”
Avdaliani added that Russia’s moves were following “an established playbook,” “creating or fomenting separatist movements to prevent a neighbor from drifting toward Western institutions.”
Defending Russia’s ‘near abroad’
With their large ethnic minorities swept across borders before and during Soviet times, the countries bordering Russia’s western flank have provided fertile ground for conflicts to erupt and fester. In Moscow’s narrative, these conflicts stem from its legitimate claim to a sphere of influence and its duty to protect ethnic Russians from foreign aggression.
“Russia considers itself entitled to a historical sphere of influence, the so-called ‘near abroad,’ and does not allow anyone else to infringe on it,” said Nicoló Fasola, an expert on Russian military strategy at the University of Birmingham, UK.
“Russia is always worried about foreign penetration, not only in terms of military involvement and political engagement, but also in cultural terms,” Fasola told France 24. He pointed to the so-called “color revolutions” that brought pro-Western governments to power in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004), and which the Kremlin perceived as “instruments of the West to distance these countries from Russia”.
This reasoning supports Russia’s continued presence in Moldova’s breakaway province of Transnistria, where attempts to impose the Romanian language in the early 1990s were fiercely resisted by the region’s largely Russian-speaking population. The very concept, protecting ethnic Russians, would later serve Putin to justify his interventions in Georgia and Ukraine.
Although Russia has not recognized Transnistria’s independence, “it has weakened Moldovan sovereignty and frozen its Western integration for the past 25 years,” writes Eric J. Grossman in the US Army War College Quarterly. “This uncertainty has served to trap Moldova in a geopolitical gray area between East and West and has forced it to act as a vehicle for Russian corruption and money laundering.”
“Gray zone”
Both Georgia and Ukraine are now at risk of being drawn into the same geopolitical “gray area”, torn between their hopes of one day joining the NATO military alliance and the knowledge that Russia will not let them go. As for their respective breakaway entities, recognized only by Russia, their fate depends entirely on Moscow.
“Those entities could not survive on their own, but their fragility is actually an advantage from the Russian perspective, because it ties them more to Russia,” Fasola said. “They could not survive without Moscow’s help, which in turn justifies Russia’s continued presence on the ground.”
In recognizing the two “republics” of Donbass, Moscow has meticulously stuck to its tried and tested playbook, reproducing, word for word, the treaties of friendship and mutual assistance it had previously signed with the breakaway provinces of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Whether those entities can prosper is less of a concern for Russia, compared to the overall strategic picture, Fasola said.
“Moscow will provide financial and logistical aid but, in the end, they are nothing more than tools for the achievement of Russia’s strategic goals,” he explained. “It’s about using them as protective walls in the post-Soviet space, instruments to control the situation on the ground.”
A price worth paying
How much control Russia can exert remains to be seen, with critics pointing out that Putin’s actions have hardened anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine and Georgia. As the president of Georgia, Salomé Zurabishvili, recently said, her country understands “very well what the people of Ukraine feel today (…) It is the solidarity of a country that has already suffered and continues to suffer from the occupation.”
Russia may have achieved its short-term goals, but it has “lost prestige and soft power,” Avdaliani said. “Few in Ukraine or Georgia would think of turning to Russia geopolitically. I think in the long run, Russia has wasted the advantages it had even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
For Kremlin strategists, however, resentment against Moscow is a price worth paying to ensure that NATO expansion is stopped in its tracks.
“It is true that Russia’s course of action since 2014 has angered Ukrainian public opinion and legitimized Kiev’s anti-Russian stance,” Fasola said. “But the Kiev government itself is well aware that Russia can decide or at least strongly influence its political decisions. However anti-Russian they may be, they have to take Moscow’s positions and actions into account.”
From a Western point of view, Russia’s aggressive strategy has clearly come at a cost to Moscow, in the form of heavy sanctions, which are meant to be even harsher, and a sharp deterioration in relations with an outraged and compact Western front.
“On the other hand, if we base our assessment on Moscow’s stated goals, namely maintaining Russian control, or at least influence over those specific regions, then we can say that the Russian strategy has been successful,” Fasola warned. “Of course, one time I could counter that neither Georgia nor Ukraine have given up on joining NATO. But, de facto, joining NATO is no longer a viable option. As much as Georgia and Ukraine want to join NATO, they just can’t.”
The same reasoning applies to the West, Fasola added: “On paper, the Western powers decide who gets into NATO. But in practice, they cannot ignore Russia.”
*This article was adapted from its original in English