Russia builds “bridgeheads in post-Soviet space”
After months of denying plans to invade Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday ordered Russian peacekeepers to enter the country’s separatist territories, Donetsk and Lugansk, recognizing the two eastern entities – which rebels backed by The Russians captured and occupied them in 2014 – as independent republics.
Despite the specifics of the Ukrainian crisis, analysts were quick to point out that Putin’s move was in line with a recent pattern in Russian military operations aimed at subduing its neighbors and thwarting their Western aspirations.
The Kremlin has long used so-called “frozen conflicts” to expand its reach beyond Russia’s borders. For the past three decades, he has supported a pro-Russian regime in Moldova’s separatist region of Transnistria.
In 2008, it launched a conventional invasion of Georgia in support of the separatist governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two provinces with a large Russian-speaking population. Six years later, Russia confiscated Crimea from Ukraine and began supporting a pro-Russian separatist insurgency in the Donbas.
In each case, they have seized it, despite obstacles we can scarcely imagine. “
Putin’s agenda
Putin’s latest move comes after months of dizzying tensions during which the Russian president rallied a formidable army along Ukraine’s borders as a whole world tried to guess his intentions.
Finally, the timing of his move could very well have been determined by another, bizarre, parallel to the Georgian conflict.
In 2008, Russia’s war with Georgia broke out at the beginning of the Beijing Summer Olympics, much to the chagrin of Chinese officials. In order not to upset China again, Putin waited until this time for the closing ceremony of the Winter Games, also in Beijing, before falling in love again in Ukraine.
Putin’s move has a strange deja vu for Georgians who are still signaling that their country has fallen into the hands of Russia.
It was a small surprise for Professor Emil Avdaliani of the European University in Tbilissi (Georgia).
“In Georgia, many of us expected the recognition of Donbas’ two separatist entities. It was obvious in the last year and something “, Avdaliani declared for FRANCE 24. “Moscow has increased the funding of its entities by providing Russian passports and clandestinely increasing its military presence. Putin’s decision is a logical conclusion of the process. “
The movements followed “a well-established handbook,” Avdaliani added, “creating or promoting separatist movements to prevent a neighbor from turning to Western institutions.”
Russia “protects” ethnic Russians from foreign aggression
With their large ethnic minorities mixed across borders before and during the Soviet period, the countries bordering Russia’s western edge provided fertile ground for conflict.
According to Moscow’s narratives, such conflicts are rooted in his claim to a sphere of influence and his duty to protect ethnic Russians from foreign aggression.
“Russia perceives itself as a right to a historical sphere of influence and does not allow anyone to violate it,” said Nicolò Fasola, a Russian military strategy expert at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.
“Russia is always concerned about foreign influence – not only in terms of military involvement and political commitment, but also in terms of culture.”
Fasola highlighted 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 oust those countries from Russia”.
This reason is based on Russia’s continued presence in the separatist province of Moldova, Transnistria, where attempts to impose the Romanian language in the early 1990s were rejected by the region’s predominantly Russian-speaking population.
The same concept – the protection of ethnic Russians – will later provide Putin with a plan to justify interventions in Georgia and Ukraine.
While Russia has ceased to recognize Transnistria’s independence, it has “weakened Moldova’s 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 gray geopolitical zone between East and West and has forced it to act as a vehicle for corruption and money laundering in Russia.”
“Gray area”
Both Georgia and Ukraine are now in danger of being absorbed into the same geopolitical “gray zone”, nestled between their hopes of one day joining the NATO military alliance and the realization that Russia will not let them go. As for those separate entities, recognized only by Russia, their fate depends entirely on Moscow.
“These entities could not survive alone, but their fragility is actually a plus from the Russian perspective, because they are closer to Russia,” Fasola said. “He could not survive without Moscow’s help, justifying Russia’s continued presence on the ground.”
By recognizing the two “republics” of Donbas, Moscow meticulously complied with its tried-and-tested playing card, reproducing word for word treaties from friends and mutual assistance that it had previously signed with the separatist provinces of Georgia, Abkhazia, and Ossetia. South.
Whether these entities can thrive is a minor concern for Russia compared to the overall strategic picture, Fasola said.
“Moscow will provide financial and logistical assistance, but at the end of the day, they are just tools to achieve Russia’s strategic goals,” he said. “It’s all about using bridgeheads in post-Soviet space – tools to control the situation on the ground.”
A price worth paying
How much control Russia can exercise remains to be seen, with critics noting that Putin’s actions have raised anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine and Georgia. As the President of Georgia, Salome Zurabishvili, recently said, the country and the understanding “very well what the people of Ukraine feel today (…). This is the solidarity of a country that has already suffered and still suffers from the occupation of the Russians.
Russia may have achieved its short-term goals, but it has “lost its prestige and power,” Avdaliani said. “Few in Ukraine or Georgia would think of moving geopolitically to Russia. I think that in the long run, Russia has wasted its advantages even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. “
For the Kremlin’s strategies, however, resentment against Moscow is a worthwhile price to pay to ensure that NATO expansion is halted.
“It is true that Russia’s 2014 course of action angered the Ukrainian public and legitimized Kiev’s anti-Russian stance,” Fasola said. “But he is well aware that Russia can decide, or at least influence, its political decisions.
No matter how anti-Russian they are, they must take into account Moscow’s positions and actions. “
From a Western perspective, Russia’s aggressive strategy has had a clear cost to Moscow, in the form of severe sanctions – which are set to become tougher – and severely damaged relations with an outraged and compact Western front.
“On the other hand, if we do not base our assessment on Moscow’s stated goals, which are to maintain Russian control – or at least influence – over those specific regions, then we can say that the Russian strategy has been successful,” Fasola warned.
“It simply came to our notice then that neither Georgia nor Ukraine had renounced NATO membership. But de facto NATO membership is no longer a viable option. No matter how much 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 joins NATO. But in practice, they cannot ignore Russia. ”