Russia. A History

The Putin government, with little success, sought to maintain its influence in the ‘near abroad’—the former Soviet republics—partly because these countries now held a sizeable Russian diaspora, partly for geopolitical reasons. It had no success whatsoever in the Baltic states, which hastened to join the European Union and NATO and flagrantly violated the rights of ethnic Russians on their territories. Relations with Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia steadily deteriorated. In Moldova’s case, Russia continued to support Trans-Dniester, a pro-Russian secessionist territory; despite agreements to withdraw Russian forces, Russia continued to deploy a military contingent and support the region’s demands for autonomy. Relations with Ukraine sharply deteriorated after the ‘orange revolution’ in late 2004, both because Moscow had backed the losing candidate for president and because the new government in Kiev tilted strongly toward the West. Apart from historical enmity (including Ukrainian demands that golodomor,

the famine which accompanied collectivization in the early 1930s, be recognized as genocide), there were other, more urgent contemporary issues. One was the status of the Crimea (which Khrushchev generously transferred to Ukraine in 1954, but which had a population composed primarily of ethnic Russians). The two sides had earlier agreed to ‘share’ the Black Sea fleet, but that too became a point of contention. Economics, above all the price of natural gas, also played a role. Given Ukraine’s Western tilt, Moscow saw no reason to continue Ukraine’s 60 per cent discount on natural gas prices (a subsidy amounting to three to five billion dollars a year); Kiev’s refusal to pay old debts and to negotiate new rates led Russia to shut off gas deliveries on two occasions, which ended in temporary agreements, but did not remove the question as a source of future conflict. Relations with Georgia, especially after the ‘rose revolution’ in 2003, also became increasingly acrimonious. As Georgia strengthened its ties to the West, Russia bolstered support for two secessionist areas of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, populated by a non-Georgian majority; Russian peacekeepers had enabled both territories to remain virtually autonomous since the early 1990s. In August 2008, in a bid to reassert control (and with the promise of American support), Georgia launched an offensive in South Ossetia, but quickly suffered a devastating defeat at the hand of Russian forces. Russia’s action elicited much criticism, especially from the American administration, adding to the rancour in Russian-American relations. Russia (and only one other state, Nicaragua) formally recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, to the fury of officials in Washington and Tbilisi. Moscow’s action, however, should not have come as a surprise. Two years earlier, as the West prepared to recognize an independent Kosovo, Putin warned that such an action would provide a precedent: ‘If someone believes that Kosovo can be granted full state independence, then why should we refuse the same to Abkhazia or South Ossetia?’

Some areas of the former Soviet Union, however, maintained close ties to Moscow. Belarus, indeed, even sought some kind of quasi-political union; while such proposals were current in the 1990s, Putin was less enamoured and the public likewise became increasingly sceptical, given the Belarusian economy and the ill repute of its mercurial president Aleksandr Lukashenko. Moscow attached far greater importance to its relations with the countries of Central Asia, partly because of the sympathies of Russian and Russified populations there, but also because they shared a common desire to contain Islamist fundamentalism and terrorism.

As Putin’s tenure drew to a close in early 2008, it was clear that Moscow was seeking to reassert its stature as a major power. But in fact Putin’s regime had achieved little; his gratuitous attacks, however popular at home, aggravated tensions with the West. The United States, in particular, increasingly came to regard Russia as a threat to its power and to the process of democratization.

2008: A New President