The venture in Kazakhstan, at the request of the country’s leader, follows nearly 15 years of Russian intervention in Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine and elsewhere, aimed at drawing these countries even closer to Russia, leaders aligned with the Kremlin. To play regional power. -brokers, or trying to undermine those who show respect for the West.
Mr. Putin’s determination to re-establish Russian hegemony in former Soviet territory is based largely on his view that the demise of the USSR was “a major geopolitical disaster”.
Analysts said he sees mutual benefit in deeper integration between Russia and the former Soviet republics and is determined to reject what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization sees as a threat of encroachment in the east. He said he was also eager to leave a legacy that projects Russia as a superpower that is both respected and feared.
Mr. Putin’s efforts to claim Russia’s influence over his backyard have culminated in his current standoff with the West over Ukraine – a country that sits on the Russian border that seeks closer military and economic ties with the West and is popular. The site of the protest has been a pro-Russian leader.
Mr Putin, who argues that NATO and the US have used Ukraine to expand military activities to the Russian border, has amassed some 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border. Russian and US officials will meet on Monday to discuss Moscow’s demands for NATO to halt its eastern expansion.
In those talks, analysts said, the Kremlin could take the opportunity to portray the crisis and call for help from Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev as evidence of Russia’s role as a defender of regional order and stability. Is.
Mr Tokayev requested military help to quell the violent protests fueled by public anger over the rise in fuel prices in his country. The Kremlin leader deployed thousands of troops to the country.
“Putin would be walking into the meeting and saying, ‘Look, that’s why I need a special place in the regional security of former Soviet space and other parts of the foreign country near us, because without me, things like this spiral. will be,'” a U.S. said Maximilian Hess, fellow for Central Asia in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank.
Officials from Moscow and Kremlin supporters insist that Russia is only offering help in what the foreign ministry has described as a “brotherly neighbor” and that Russia can restore peace in Kazakhstan legally and through negotiations. wants nothing more than to help, “not through street riots and violation of laws,” the ministry said in a statement last week.
In recent years, a series of crises in Russia’s neighbors have undermined Moscow’s efforts to more closely integrate the countries stretching from Central Asia to Eastern Europe, as citizens of some former satellite states had stable economies, democratic Oppose the lack of independence and corrupt leadership.
The Kremlin has viewed with concern rising pro-Western sentiment in countries such as Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, eventually intervening to quell dissent and help support pro-Russian sides.
In 2008, Russian forces broke into Georgia, a staunch US ally, after Moscow accused the Caucasus nation of aggression against South Ossetia, a pro-Kremlin region where Russia still deploys troops.
The move would paint over a decade of Russian adventurism.
In 2014, rebels in Ukraine toppled a Putin hero. The Kremlin took over the Crimean peninsula and threw support behind pro-Russian separatists in the slow-moving conflict in eastern Ukraine.
In neighboring Belarus, the Kremlin has offered financial and military aid to authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko, who faced waves of popular opposition. Moscow’s reward was an agreement signed late last year to integrate the two countries into a formal union, a major step in the Kremlin’s long-standing goal of exerting greater influence over Belarus.
The political turmoil in Kyrgyzstan – which has been the subject of competing interests from Moscow, Beijing and Washington since its independence in 1991 – saw opposition parties grab power from the pro-Russian leadership in October 2020 following allegations of voter fraud during parliamentary elections. Tried. The political turmoil continued for months, but eventually resulted in a presidency who agreed to maintain close ties with Russia.
The Kremlin-broker peace agreement for Armenia and Azerbaijan in November 2020, following conflict over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, strengthened Moscow’s leverage on both countries.
The Kremlin already has troops on the ground in the breakaway region of Transnistria, officially part of Moldova with which it fought in 1992 after the power vacuum left by the Soviet breakup. And concerns that terrorist organizations in Afghanistan could infiltrate Tajikistan and cause insecurity in Central Asian states prompted Moscow to conduct joint military exercises along the Tajik-Afghan border last year.
“For Putin, ensuring stability abroad is almost paramount,” Mr Hayes said.
Ukraine and Kazakhstan are of special historical and strategic importance to Russia.
Mr Putin has repeatedly stated that he supports redrawing the borders of the late nineteenth-century Russian Empire, which includes much of contemporary Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
“Modern Ukraine is entirely the brainchild of the Soviet era,” Putin wrote in a July treatise. “We know and remember that to a large extent it was built at the expense of historical Russia.”
When it was part of the Soviet Union, Ukraine claimed rich agricultural land, which produced most of the wheat consumed in the USSR.
Its vast plains also acted as a buffer between the European powers and the Russian hinterland. The historical, cultural and linguistic ties prior to the rise of the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century underscore Putin’s belief that nations are “two parts of one and the same people.”
He has also long cast doubt on Kazakhstan’s autonomy, saying the Kazakhs “never had statehood” and referring to the country as an artificial state, invented by Nursultan Nazarbayev, who in 2019 Headed Kazakhstan for nearly three decades before resigning and nominating Mr. Tokayev as his successor.
But now the crisis in Kazakhstan could provide an opportunity to delve deeper into a vital sector, some political experts said.
What began as street demonstrations over a hike in fuel prices has spread to demands for economic and political change. Protests continued after Kazakhstan’s government resigned last Wednesday to remove Mr Tokayev and sideline Nazarbayev, who has wielded great power in the country even after stepping aside.
Analysts said forcing political change down the road is unacceptable to Mr Putin, who does not allow such discontent to be stoked at Russia’s doorstep.
“In general, he is vulnerable to any rebellion of the people against the ruler,” said Abbas Galyamov, an independent political analyst based in Moscow. “They fear it will inspire the Russian opposition.”
The Russian-led forces backing Mr Tokayev’s government are there to protect vital facilities, airfields and key social infrastructure. But the presence of Russian troops in Kazakhstan could prove risky for Mr Tokayev’s leadership, analysts said.
Paul Stronsky, former director of Russia and Central Asia on National Security, said, “We are certainly in a dilemma because if the Tokayev government is able to restore stability, and if it stays in power, it is forever grateful to the Russians.” Will stay.” Council under President Barack Obama and now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters at a briefing on Friday that “a lesson in recent history is that once the Russians are in your house, sometimes they are very difficult to leave.”
The remarks prompted an angry response from Russian Foreign Ministry officials, who on Saturday called them offensive.
“When Americans are in your home, it can be difficult to stay alive, not robbed or violated,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its Telegram messenger channel.
This story has been published without modification to the text from a wire agency feed
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