Russia | The former Soviet republics are now parting ways with Putin

of Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev on Friday gave the blunt Pakit to the French president For Emmanuel Macron. Aliyev announced that he will not participate in the Brussels peace talks with the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan with, because he had invited Macron as mediator. The news agency Reuters reported about it.

Aliyev got angry with Macron in October, when the parties were in negotiations in Prague mediated by France and the EU. Macron blurted out that “Azerbaijan has started a horrible war” in Nagorno-Karabakh, which was not particularly diplomatic.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at war over Nagorno-Karabakh for three decades now, most recently in September. In the past, the intermediary was Russia, but its services are no longer valid.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin has made two mistakes in the eyes of his former Soviet allies: first he started the war, now he is in danger of losing it.

First The neighbor who spoke directly to Putin’s Ukraine policy was the president of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokaev. He attended the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in June together with Putin and refused to recognize the independence of the so-called People’s Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Tokayev reminded peoples of the right to self-determination and territorial integrity. “And that is why we have not recognized Taiwan, Kosovo, South Ossetia and Abkhazia,” Tokayev continued. “And this principle obviously also applies to such quasi-state regions as Donetsk and Luhansk.”

In January, Putin sent a group of Russian soldiers in the name of the collective security organization ODKB to Tokayev’s aid when widespread protests gripped Kazakhstan. Putin was mistaken if he expected favors in return.

of Uzbekistan president Shavkat Mirziyoyev on the other hand, reminded at the commemoration of the victims of the Soviet persecutions in August that the Soviet persecutions actually continued until the 1980s. And when the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was held in Samarkand in September, Mirziyoyev did not make it to the airport to meet Putin.

President of Kyrgyzstan Sadyr Japarov in turn sat Putin in the same meeting waiting for a meeting. Japarov was obviously indignant because Putin, in his rush to Ukraine, did not have time to resolve the border skirmishes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The freshest protests were seen at a meeting of the ODKB, the security organization of the former Soviet republics, or Ivy countries, in Yerevan on Wednesday. The current members of the ODKB are Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan jumped a meter aside as Putin stammered for a group photo next to him.

At the end of the meeting, the prime minister of the host country refused to sign a joint statement because Russia did not defend Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.

“It is depressing that Armenia’s membership in the ODKB did not prevent Azerbaijan’s hostile actions,” Pashinyan commented at the press conference. At the same time, large numbers of Armenians demonstrated outside the conference hall against Russia and in favor of Ukraine.

A think tank Carnegie Europe’s East Asia and Caucasus expert Tom de Waal reviews the newspaper on Friday For The Guardianthat Russia is currently losing its hard power in Ukraine and its soft power elsewhere in the former Soviet Union.

“It’s a broad trend where Russia still looks after its smaller partners as a Soviet legacy, even though the neighbors are independent states,” de Waal assesses. “The ODKB should be a defense union, but at least towards Armenia it has not fulfilled its obligations.”