The Recent History Of Russian Military Aggression

Russia has been trying to rebuilt its Soviet era empire for a while, but the Ukraine War and the defeat of Syria's regime, has forced it to back off.

As the Russian military’s demand for weapons has left Moscow unable to fulfill promised exports, countries such as Armenia are turning to other suppliers in Europe and India; other regional states are purchasing weapons from Turkey and even China. And as Russia has withdrawn forces and equipment from its military bases in the Caucasus and Central Asia to redeploy them to Ukraine, countries in both places are resolving conflicts that Russia has long exploited for its own benefit. Improved cooperation within the wider region is also creating new opportunities to enhance trade connectivity and build alternatives to transit through Russia. By reducing the dependency that once defined their relationship with their former hegemon, countries in the region have become increasingly capable of engaging Russia (and other powers) on favorable terms.

And yet if history is any guide, Moscow could go to extreme lengths to preserve its regional dominion. In 2014, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia annexed Crimea and intervened in the Donbas region; earlier, in 2008, it invaded Georgia. Today, the Kremlin maintains a proprietary view of not only Ukraine but also many other countries. Ukraine and Belarus remain Moscow’s top priorities, but the Kremlin also aspires to a kind of suzerainty over Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Moldova and maintains a more distant post-imperial regard toward the remainder of Central Asia. 

The 2023 Russian Foreign Policy Concept, the strategy document outlining parameters and priorities for Russia’s foreign policy, resurrected the term “near abroad” to describe these countries, pointing to their “centuries-old traditions of joint statehood, deep interdependence … a common language, and close cultures” as a justification for efforts to keep them within Moscow’s sphere of influence. Once the fighting in Ukraine winds down, the Kremlin will almost certainly ramp up its attempts to coerce other neighbors to join Russian-backed multilateral bodies, strengthen economic ties, adopt Russian-style laws targeting civil society, and accept a larger Russian military and intelligence presence on their territory.

From Foreign Affairs magazine.