Russia loses influence in Soviet sphere as it gets distracted by Ukraine War

With the Kremlin distracted by war 2,400 kilometers away in Ukraine, Russia’s hold on the former Soviet empire shows signs of crumbling. Moscow has lost its aura and its dominance, creating a disorderly vacuum that once obedient former Soviet satraps, like China, are moving to fill.

In the mountain-flanked steppes of southwestern Kyrgyzstan, the result in a remote village was devastating: houses reduced to rubble, a school burned down and a terrible stench emanating from the rotting carcasses of 24,000 dead chickens.

All were victims last month of the worst violence to hit the area since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 — a brief but bloody border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, both members of a Russian-led military alliance dedicated to preserving peace, but did nothing to stop the chaos.

“Of course, they are distracted by Ukraine,” laments Kyrgyz President Sadir Japarov in an interview in Bishkek.

Before President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Russia played an inordinate role in Central Asian affairs and the volatile Caucasus region, which passed for a distant “Pax Russica”. In January, he sent troops to Kazakhstan to help the government calm a wave of violent unrest. In 2020, it sent 2,000 armed “peace keepers” to the Caucasus to enforce a truce between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Today Yerevan is smoking. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, who has been a close ally, appealed in vain to Moscow last month for help in stopping further Azerbaijani attacks. Furious at Russia’s inaction, Armenia now threatens to leave Moscow’s military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

The Kazakh government Putin helped support in January is straying from the Kremlin’s roadmap on Ukraine and seeking help from China to secure its own territory, which has areas inhabited mainly by ethnic Russians and which nationalists consider Russia’s own.

And along the mountainous border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, old disputes between farmers over land, water and smuggling turned into a full-scale conflict involving tanks, helicopters and rockets, as armies fought to a stalemate.

According to Kyrgyz officials, the conflict has killed dozens of civilians and driven more than 140,000 people from their homes. It also left many residents and officials in Bishkek wondering why Moscow — long seen as a watchful guardian of stability on the flaming fringes of the former Soviet empire — barely lifted a finger.

“Russia could have stopped all this in a second. But it did nothing,” says Zainaddin Dubanaev, 75, a Russian teacher at a burned-out school in Ak-Sai, a Kyrgyz village near a fenced-off stretch of Tajik territory.

Moscow’s security alliance has long been touted by Putin as Russia’s answer to NATO, the Western alliance, and an anchor for its role as a dominant (and often dominating) force in vast swaths of the former Soviet Union. But now the block is barely working. Five of its six members – Armenia, Belarus, Russia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – have been involved in war this year, while the sixth, Kazakhstan, has experienced violent internal conflicts.

In response, China is asserting itself again, while the US also sees openness, pushing Kyrgyzstan to sign a new bilateral cooperation agreement. It would replace a decommissioned one in 2014 after Russian pressure forced the closure of an American air base outside Bishkek that had been set up to supply warplanes flying over Afghanistan.

“Even Ukraine, China and Russia were not interested in open competition in Central Asia,” says Asel Doolotkeldieva, a professor at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, a graduate center focused on security issues. “There was an unspoken divide: security for Russia, economy for China. But Moscow is no longer doing its job. It has shown that it is unable or unwilling to protect the region.”

Russia still has tremendous influence in Central Asia. Its largest foreign military base is in Tajikistan, and there is a small air base in Kyrgyzstan, a poor and remote country that remains heavily dependent on Moscow’s energy supplies and remittances from more than 1 million Kyrgyz workers in Russia.

Japarov, aware of the vulnerability, hesitated in signing the new agreement with the US. Doing so would be perceived in Moscow as a “stab in the back — and they would be right.”

“Russia is obviously focused on other things right now, not Central Asia, but the moment it wants to enact the law, it just needs to imply that it will make life difficult for migrant workers,” says Peter Leonard, Central Asia editor at Eurasianet. , media channel about the region.

But the recent border war between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan has shaken old assumptions about Russian power. It erupted when Putin was in neighboring Uzbekistan for a summit of a Chinese-sponsored regional group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which was attended by Xi Jinping and leaders from India, Turkey, Azerbaijan and four Asian countries. Central.

Overshadowed by the Chinese leader, Putin endured a series of humiliating protocol confusions that left him awkwardly waiting in front of the cameras while other leaders, including Japarov, showed up late to meet him. “Of course this was not deliberate,” says the Kyrgyz. “No disrespect was intended.”

But widely circulated videos of Putin looking uncomfortable; a public rebuke from India’s prime minister, stating that “today’s age is not one of war”; and an acknowledgment by the Russian leader that China had “questions and concerns” about the Ukraine War reinforced an image of diminishing influence and attraction.

“Putin is no longer the great invincible leader that everyone wants to know,” says Emil Djuraev, a researcher in Bishkek at the research group Crossroads Central Asia. “He lost his aura.”

On the other hand, Xi has become more assertive. On a visit to Kazakhstan last month, he pledged to “resolutely support the country in defending its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” a remark widely interpreted as a warning to Moscow not to try anything.

A few days later, after the advance of Tajik forces, China issued a similar pledge regarding Kyrgyzstan, reinforcing Russia’s former role as guardian of Central Asia’s borders.

Officials in Bishkek wonder whether Russia has approved military action in Tajikistan, a dictatorship tightly controlled by the same leader since 1994 — even longer than Putin has been in the Kremlin. Kyrgyzstan, on the other hand, is considered the only Central Asian country with a modicum of real democracy and a relatively free press.

The view of Putin allied with Tajikistan — rather than being an impartial arbiter between two members of his military alliance — gained more ground last week when the Kremlin declared it would give veteran Tajik dictator Emomali Rahmon a prestigious state award for its contribution to “regional stability and security”. The Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry said the award, announced “while the blood of innocents has not yet cooled on Kyrgyz soil”, has caused bewilderment.

“The perverse aspect of this is that both sides are members of the same military alliance that Russia commands,” says Leonard. “The days when Russia dictated the military posture of these countries are clearly out the window.”

The head of the district administration, Jorobaev Imamalievitch, was dismayed. “Russia has gone silent. It’s busy in Ukraine and it’s not paying attention. It’s just not here anymore.”