Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire

The last set of country case studies, Belarus and Armenia, is dealt with in Chapter 7. These states have been among Russia’s closest allies since their independence and offer a unique perspective on how Moscow’s compatriot-driven reimperialization policies can be pursued in highly cooperative, dependent, and vulnerable post-Soviet states. The analysis demonstrates that such states are less able to resist both Russia’s softer and its more coercive means of influence, so that they are maintained de facto in Russia’s imperial project without the need to resort to outright aggression.

The conclusion summarizes the progression of Moscow’s compatriot-driven expansionism from the most clear and current examples to future risk cases in Russia’s neighborhood. I argue that Moscow has succeeded in implementing its reimperialization trajectory in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova; made notable progress in the Baltic States; reaped many benefits in Armenia and Belarus; and largely fallen short in Central Asia. I also assess the long-term consequences of Russia’s neo-imperialist policies, including frozen conflicts and the muted ability of the territorially jeopardized countries to lead independent foreign policies. Finally I consider the implications of the book’s findings for Western policy toward Russia and Russian compatriots as well as focus on near abroad countries’ policies toward their Russophone and other minorities.

CHAPTER TWO Russian Reimperialization FROM SOFT POWER TO ANNEXATION

[Putin] talks about the need to rebuild the world order, about Russia’s birthright to its own sphere of influence, about the necessity of protecting the Russian minorities abroad. The Kremlin uses minorities, language and cultural issues to blow up the neighboring countries from the inside.

—Boris Nemtsov, February 2015

THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION was a joyous occasion for many people from the fourteen subjugated Soviet republics, including many Russians who sought to transform the Russian Federation into a civic state out of the rubble of an empire. However, for some of the old guard of the Kremlin, the dissolution of the Union was a disaster that in a fortnight wiped out a superpower of some 293 million Soviet citizens and some eight and a half million square miles that stretched from the European continent to China. The early years of the fledgling Russian democracy under President Boris Yeltsin were marked by painful reforms and an economic slump that was in no small part due to the low global oil prices of the 1990s.¹ Under the leadership of Yeltsin and his first foreign minister, Andrey Kozyrev (1991–96), there was an effort to leave behind Russia’s imperial ambitions—demonstrated by the withdrawal of Russian troops from Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, cuts in military spending, recognition of the borders of Russia’s neighbors, and in the case of Ukraine, letting Kiev keep part of the Black Sea Fleet while not encouraging Crimea’s separatists. However, the emergence of strong-man President Vladimir Putin in 1999 and growing wealth from rising global oil prices reignited Moscow’s drive to rebuild Russia’s lost power and influence based on the historical legacies of the Soviet Union and even the Romanov empire. Indeed, there was an effort to extend Moscow’s sphere of influence (if not its actual territory) to match the borders of the historical Russian empire. As Putin noted in January 2012, the Soviet Union “actually was Great Russia whose base formed back in the 18th century.”²