Russia’s neo-imperialist ambitions founder on the rocks of reality

Jun 24th 2010

SO MUCH for Russia’s “zone of privileged interests” and the West’s worries about it. The phrase was coined by Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, in the aftermath of the 2008 war with Georgia, when Russian rhetoric reached shrill levels. The events of the past two weeks in Belarus and Kyrgyzstan have provided a humble reality check and exposed the hollowness of Russia’s neo-imperialist ambitions among the states that once made up the Soviet Union.

Russia has long wished to keep the West away from its backyard. Now that America and the EU are tied up with their own problems, Russia has had its wish partly granted. Left to its own devices, however, it has shown little leadership, vision or sense of imperial responsibility in its vaunted “zone”.

A spat over gas with Belarus has exposed the fragility of the embryonic customs union between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, put forward by Moscow as the nucleus of a new Russia-dominated economic club. The bloody pogroms in Kyrgyzstan (see article) reveal the Collective Security Treaty Organisation—a post-Soviet military alliance of Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Belarus and Armenia—to be a chimera.

• Kyrgyzstan's humanitarian crisis: Sad homecomingJun 24th 2010

In its dispute with Belarus this week Russia started to cut gas supplies to its supposed close ally, claiming it was owed some $200m. The debt stems from Belarus’s decision to pay last year’s price of $150 per thousand cubic metres of gas, ignoring a Gazprom price increase. Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Belarus’s maverick leader, upped the stakes by ordering a cut in transit shipments of Russian gas to the EU, arguing it was also owed money. On June 24th Gazprom resumed full supply but Belarus maintained its claim.

This is not the first spat between Russia and Belarus, and it will not be the last. But, as Fyodor Lukyanov, the Russia editor for Global Affairs, argues, this time the row has a political flavour. For all his authoritarianism and anti-Americanism, Mr Lukashenka is disdained by Russian officials for reneging on his promises and dragging his feet on agreements. He has skilfully managed to extract large subsidies from Russia while poking it in the eye and playing it off against the EU.

Last year the Belarusian president refused to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two breakaway Georgian territories over which Russia had warred with Georgia. That was followed by a Russian ban on Belarus’s milk products. More recently, Mr Lukashenka has decided to shelter Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the overthrown authoritarian leader of Kyrgyzstan, who is loathed by Moscow.

Mr Lukashenka has also sabotaged the customs union with Kazakhstan and Russia, demanding that Russia scrap its export duty on oil and oil products, which would allow Belarus to buy them at Russia’s domestic prices and to re-export them at a profit. (Russia wants to keep oil out of the union for now.) Russia’s response is to reach for its favourite weapon: the gas taps.

In its relations with its neighbours, Russia has mostly relied on coercion. Consider its response to Mr Bakiyev’s fall and the subsequent pogroms in Kyrgyzstan. The Kremlin shed no tears for Mr Bakiyev, whom it saw as two-faced and greedy. Last year Mr Bakiyev extracted a $2 billion aid package from Russia in exchange for a promise to close an American military air base in Kyrgyzstan, as Russia insisted. He then raised the rent for the American base and allowed it to stay.

Solve your own problems

When, earlier this month, the Kyrgyz clashed with the Uzbek minority in the southern Kyrgyzstani city of Osh and the interim government appealed to Russia for military help, the Kremlin stood back. To the outside world it looked like the opportunity Russia had been waiting for to show that it dominates its backyard. To Russia it was a nightmare that evoked memories of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Russia’s official line was that it could not interfere in Kyrgyzstan’s internal affairs (a statement that sat oddly with Russia’s war against Georgia).

In fact, Russia has neither the capacity nor the will for such intervention. As Alexander Golts, an expert on Russia’s armed forces, argues, the Russian army—which largely consists of unskilled recruits and is plagued by bullying—is not equipped for the sort of peacekeeping operation they were asked to carry out in Kyrgyzstan. Besides, Russia’s “allies” in the CSTO, particularly nearby Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, have no desire to see Russian troops setting a precedent by sorting out the internal affairs of a neighbouring state.

Russia’s intervention would be unpopular at home too. Xenophobia towards migrant workers from Central Asia and memories of Afghanistan would make any sacrifice of Russian lives in Kyrgyzstan unacceptable to most Russians. Yet, if Russia was right not to send troops to Kyrgyzstan, it was wrong to claim the country as part of a zone of privileged Russian interest.

When ethnic clashes broke out in Osh 20 years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev sent in Soviet troops. Today’s government, for all its Soviet nostalgia, seems to feel no such obligation. What Russia’s response to Kyrgyzstan has made clear, Mr Golts observes, is that “Moscow bosses imitate imperial ambitions in the same way they imitate democracy.”

Europe