Russia today: Different Tsar, same story

Illustration photo: T-64 Tanks parade through Tiraspol, the capital of Transnistria, in 2015 / Press service of the President of the PMR (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:T-64_tanks,_Tiraspol_2015.jpg)

Maximilian Weber / February 27, 2020

( 7 min read )

Ever since its inception, Russia has been defined both by itself and by its (often short-lived) neighbors as an aggressively expansionist power. Like many other powers, this became the defining feature of Russia, a form of consistency across regimes. Whether it was the ancient Rurikids, expanding 18,000 miles a year under Ivan the Terrible, or the Romanovs expanding into the Ukraine and Alaska, Russian rule was synonymous with expansion.

Granted, there were many expansions in Russia’s history, but none are more remembered today than the post-World War 2 expansions of the Stalinist USSR, its seeds sown by devilishly genius Lenin. The USSR boasted incredible control of land, whether it was their de jure control which stretched from L’viv to Vladivostok, or their de facto control which stretched from Prague to Hanoi. No one could deny that Soviet Russia was a superpower, a behemoth on two continents, or at least until the regime collapsed in on itself in late 1991. With the Soviet “empire of evil” (as denoted by Reagan) in shambles, one is left to ask, what is Russia up to now?

Rebranding the Soviet Union

In 1991, no one could argue that it was the end of an era. The Berlin Wall was broken, Czechoslovakia was free, The Solidarity Protests in Poland expelled the communist government, and on the home front the USSR was overrun by nationalist movements demanding the same treatment as other members of the Warsaw Pact under the so-called “Sinatra Doctrine”. Despite these complications, many politicians attempted to maintain Soviet control of the autonomous republics that composed it, through several attempts at rebranding the Soviet Union, without the use of communism; the Union of Sovereign States, as proposed by Mikhail Gorbachev, or the current loosely structured Commonwealth of Independent States and the Eurasian Economic Union that functions somewhat similarly to the EU, but is organized around Moscow.

All of these can be seen as attempts to maintain Moscow's influence around the old USSR borders, but none are overtly expansionist. That is, except the so-called “Union State” established between Russia and Belarus. Formed in 1996, this supranational organization would have indisputably bound Belarus to Moscow, creating a single national border, currency, and government, effectively reversing at least a part of the USSR’s collapse. Except that it didn’t.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) and his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, attend a joint press conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, on March 15, 2013. ALEXEY DRUZHININ/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The Presidency in Russia shifted away from Boris Yeltsin and to the now infamous Vladimir Putin, who directed Russian policy towards pacifying the rogue province of Chechnya, reining it in and installing the Kadyrov dynasty. Thus, there had been little interest in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the Union State, but such interests were renewed recently with Vladimir Putin using the economic ties that Belarus has to Russia to advance his agenda with the Union State, effectively arguing for the eventual annexation of Belarus by Moscow. But Russian expansion did not start with Belarus, and from the end of the 1990s up until now, Moscow’s foreign policy was marked by behind-the-scenes proxy war expansion.

Transnitria in Moldova on the map of Europe. Source: https://112.international/opinion/trans-dniester-the-disputed-smugglers-haven-ruled-by-moldovan-football-kings-39776.html

Moldova, Transnistria, and Russia

The SSR Moldova was created after Stalin’s annexation of Romanian Bessarabia shortly before operation Barbarossa and resulted in the current breakaway state of Transnistria, which attempted to break away from the newly created independent Moldovan state. Unlike the new Moldovan state, Transnistria uses Russian as an official language and the variation of Romanian (called Moldovan within Transnistria) is written using Cyrillic Script. When one dives even further into the aesthetics of Transnistria, the pro-Soviet Stance of the unrecognized state cannot be denied: the Transnistrian flag is the variation of the flag of the USSR, complete with the communist hammer and sickle, and the so-called “Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic” (the official name of Transnistria) has repeatedly expressed its wish to cooperate with Moscow. In 1997, the Tiraspol Supreme Soviet (a Transnistrian government body) applied for integration within the Confederation of Independent States (CIS), and in 2006 an unbinding referendum saw overwhelming support for joining the Minsk-Moscow Union State.

This is not to say that the Moldovan people are reminiscent of Moscow control; in fact, the declaration of the MTR (Moldovan Transnistrian Republic) caused a brief civil war in the young country with Transnistrian forces being backed by the CIS and Russia established the breakaway state. The fighting lasted from the end of the USSR until a ceasefire in 1992, after which Russian “peacekeepers” enforced the Transnistrian-Moldovan Border. This frozen civil war has lasted up until today, allowing the Transnistrian Government to set up a currency, armed forces, and even passports for its citizens, all done with a flavor of Soviet-esque imagery. The result: a Russian backed “state” near the border of NATO in the EU, not only expanding the Russian sphere of influence, but also locking Moldova in a civil war that prevents it from joining NATO, the EU, or reuniting with Romania. 

Russo-Georgian war on the map. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War#/media/File:2008_South_Ossetia_war_en.svg

Russo-Georgian War

However, Moldova is not the only country to suffer the effects of Russian expansionism: Georgia, a country unfortunate enough to border Russia has seen the creation of two states as a result of Russian funding: South Ossetia and Abkhazia, of which Abkhazia is recognized as an autonomous region of Georgia. However, the two operate as their own (unrecognized) countries. South Ossetia never had autonomy within the modern Georgian state, and Abkhazia was recognized as an autonomous polity within Georgia.

The two declared independence from Georgia shortly after the Soviet collapse; Abkhazia declared independence 6 months after Moscow’s control of its SSRs (Soviet Socialist Republics) collapsed, and South Ossetia on the day of the collapse. While the fighting in Abkhazia and South Ossetia resulted in a short ceasefire in the late 1990s, worsening relations between Tbilisi and Moscow culminated in the Russo-Georgian War in 2008, which ended with Moscow officially recognizing the breakaway republics. After this date, the Georgian government has officially labeled the territories as “Russian Occupied”, with the rest of the UN backing the statement. Once again, Russia has expanded and simultaneously isolated a state by freezing it in a civil war. 

Ukraine War

These two interventions by Russia pale in comparison with the recent involvement by Russian forces in Ukraine, which is also the ongoing source of the conflict between the two states. Ukraine is the second-largest Slavic country in the world, and until recently enjoyed very friendly relations with Moscow. When the USSR broke up, the Ukrainian government surrendered the Soviet stockpile of nuclear weapons to the Russian Federation in exchange for an unkept Russian promise of non-interference with Russian borders. Furthermore, Russian was recognized as an official language within the Ukraine spoken in many regions of the country along with the capital, and up until the Euromaidan protests the country was very much aligned with Moscow. However, once the government in Kyiv made strides towards friendlier relations with the EU and came under pressure from the Euromaidan protests to align itself more with Europe than with Russia, Moscow started to change its foreign policy towards Ukraine, and Kyiv found itself in the crosshairs of Moscow. 

Volodymyr Zelensky, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin on Dec. 9. Photographer: Ludovic Marin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

The problem that the government in Kyiv faced was the fact that after the Holodomor genocide of Ukrainians orchestrated by Moscow in the 1920s, Eastern Ukraine came to be inhabited by many Russian speakers, who settled especially on the Eastern Border areas around Donetsk and Luhansk. The problematic nature of this population became evident after the dissolution of the USSR, with many of the Russian speakers in the east maintaining a preference for a Russian administration, rather than a Ukrainian one. Therefore, when news of European cooperation started to reach the east, Soviet nostalgia strengthened in the region, with many of the region's proletariat fearing that their Russian-speaking identity would be stripped away from them by the Ukrainian speaking western half of the country. These fears were further fueled by the government in Moscow, which was aware of this divide within Ukraine.

The situation quickly spiraled out of Ukrainian control, with pro-Russian “counter-maidan” protests popping up in Eastern Ukraine at the same time that pro-European Maidan protests were going on in Kyiv. Riot police were deployed in the region, and the central government hoped that the situation would blow over. However, the conflict only got worse.  

Map of the '2014 Russo-Ukrainian War', '2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine' or '2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine'. (Includes '2014 Crimean Crisis' and 'War in Donbass') Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_intervention_in_Ukraine_(2014%E2%80%93present)#/media/File:2014_Russo-ukrainian-conflict_map.svg

Amidst the chaos of the Maidan and Anti Maidan protests, the Moscow government used the opportunity to annex the Crimean Peninsula away from Ukraine. With the Ukrainian government preoccupied with its internal matters, the Russian government was able to seize this peninsula virtually unopposed, with Russian forces sweeping in to take control of the strategic region. A suspiciously successful referendum was held, in which the citizens of the peninsula almost unanimously voted to join the Russian Federation. This referendum happened, of course, with the presence of the Russian Army, throwing its validity into immediate question. This, however, didn’t stop the Russian Federation from annexing the territory after the so-called “referendum” went in its favor.

The instability created by the annexation of Crimea and the resignation of Yanukovych as a result of mounting Maidan Protest pressure encouraged the anti-Maidan protesters to follow Crimea’s lead and perform their own Russian backed violation of the law. The local administration of eastern Ukrainian towns was overrun by rebels birthed from these protests. These local rebels claimed that their identity was being suppressed by the government in Kyiv, and soon organized themselves around two regional separatist governments: the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic (Named after the Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Luhansk). These governments seceded with the explicit intention of joining Russia, and for a while even contemplated forming a joint provisional state of Novorossiya (New Russia). While the confederation of Novorossiya has not come to be yet, their pro-Russian message remains as strong as ever.

At first, Moscow denied involvement in the conflict, but in 2017 Russia openly stated that they would supply the separatists' provinces with electricity and other aid that was labeled as “humanitarian” by Moscow. Along with this support of the rebels, it has been documented that Moscow covertly supplies these rebels with weapons. A prime example of this would be the anti-aircraft system that the rebels used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, exposing the hostility of these rebel groups to the international community. 

Conclusion

As we enter the new decade, we find ourselves in a world that is not so free of Muscovite aggression as one might have predicted during what was once deemed as the “end of history”. Though we might not be threatened by the apocalyptic threat of Marxist-Leninist World Revolution, the Double-Headed Eagle of the new Russian Federation has proven itself as jingoistic as the Hammer and Sickle of the late Soviet Union.

Illustration photo. Source: http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/07/23/new-old-russian-imperialism-and-hybrid-wars-an-historical-overview/

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