In Georgia, protesters waving EU flags rallied against what they saw as pro-Russian leaders. Moldova’s government is pushing to join the European Union, angering citizens who want closer ties with Moscow. Armenia has also reached out to Europe, angered by long-time ally Moscow’s overtures to foe Azerbaijan.
Spurred in part by the war in Ukraine, tensions are rising in some former Soviet territories, pitting those who support closer ties with Russia against those more aligned with Europe.
Many of these tensions predate the war and are rooted in long-standing domestic struggles over power, money and other issues, but they are amplified by geopolitics, with both Russia and the West pushing countries to take sides.
Across the former Soviet Union, “how the war in Ukraine intensified competition between Russia and the West now forms the entire backdrop,” said Gerald Toll, author of “Near Neighbors,” a study of Russia’s relations with former Soviet territories.
Worried about losing influence, Moscow has issued a blunt warning to countries such as Georgia and Moldova: Remember what happened in Ukraine. It did not threaten to invade either country but pointed to the unrest and bloodshed that followed Ukraine’s tilt toward the West after a popular rebellion ousted a pro-Russian president in 2014.
Russia also hopes its recent victory on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine will help reverse the many setbacks it suffered in the early years of the war in its prestige and influence among a range of former Soviet states.
“Russian messaging campaigns have been fueling the idea that a closer alliance with the West could threaten a war that only Russia can win,” said Niku Popescu, former Moldova foreign minister. “Everything is It depends on Ukraine.”
As the outcome of the war looks increasingly uncertain, “Russia is enjoying the unease in the West,” said Thomas de Waal, an expert on the Soviet Union at Carnegie Europe.
Russia still has much to recover, and some of its losses may be irreversible.
Distracted by the war and determined to expand ties with rising energy power Azerbaijan, Moscow last year alienated Russian peacekeepers by ordering them to sideline when Azerbaijani troops occupied the disputed mountain enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. One of its closest allies is Armenia. Armenia later said it was considering applying to join the European Union and withdraw from the Moscow-led security treaty.
Moldova has stepped up its efforts to join the European Union and gained candidate status in 2022. Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Moldova to demonstrate U.S. support for Ukraine and neighboring countries that may be at risk.
But even in Georgia – which was invaded by Russia in 2008, lost 20% of its territory to Moscow-backed separatists and harbors deep anti-Russian sentiment – a sizeable minority still hopes for at least improved economic ties with Russia .
“It’s not because they like Russia, it’s because they are afraid of Russia,” said Koba Turmanidze, director of the Caucasus Research Resource Center, a research group in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Mr. de Waal of the Carnegie Center for Europe said that while Georgia wanted to stay out of the conflict in Ukraine, “it saw the war moving in a direction more favorable to Russia.” It tilted more toward Russia while trying to remain nonaligned .
While the Georgian government is formally working to join the European Union, a goal that enjoys broad popular support, it has used fears of Russian retaliation to justify its refusal to join European sanctions against Moscow.
Turmanidze said that the ruling party “Georgian Dream” would never say that it would side with Russia against Ukraine because “it would be political suicide” given the public’s hostility to Moscow. But he added that it had taken measures “in a Russian style”, notably a controversial law on foreign influence that sparked weeks of street protests.
Maintaining influence over former Soviet territories has been a goal of Moscow since the early 1990s, but received new emphasis in the revised “Foreign Policy Concept” signed by President Vladimir V. Putin last year.
The document pledges that Russia will prevent “color revolutions” (Moscow’s term for popular uprisings) “and other attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia’s allies and partners” and “prevent and combat unfriendly foreign actions.”
Russia’s foreign ministry views recent street protests in Georgia as a repeat of the 2014 CIA-orchestrated coup in Ukraine, warning last week that demonstrations in Tbilisi were “just like what happened in Ukraine.”
“Let’s see how the situation develops in Moldova,” added ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, referring to tensions in the country ahead of October’s referendum on EU membership. Opinion in Moldova is divided between those who advocate closer integration with Europe and those who want Russia.
“This looks to be exactly the scenario that Western masters prepared for Ukraine,” Ms. Zakharova said.
In 2014, Ukraine’s president-elect Viktor F. Yanukovych sparked public outrage by refusing to sign a trade and political deal with the European Union, sparking street protests in Kiev that led to Ukraine’s president-elect Viktor F. Yanukovych ·F. Yanukovych (Viktor F. Yanukovych) stepped down.
“Russia’s overall narrative is that there is a geopolitical conspiracy in the West aimed at subverting the sovereignty of independent countries,” Tol said.
The West also has its own Ukraine story, which Blinken told in Moldova last week.
“Moldovans are acutely aware that what is happening in Ukraine concerns not only Ukrainians but also Moldovans,” Blinken said at a news conference with Moldovan President Maia Sandu. He said Russia “will not stop at Ukraine” if left unchallenged.
A few weeks ago, customs officials at Moldova’s international airport discovered more than $1 million in cash in the luggage of some pro-Russian politicians returning from Moscow.
Popescu resigned as Moldova’s foreign minister in January and is now a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“You can be involved in politics, but you can’t bring in bags of cash from Russia,” he said.
He said the risk of Moscow’s direct military intervention in Moldova, which was a serious concern at the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has receded. But he added that recent advances by Russian forces were “worrying.” “They are still far away from us, but everything depends on the outcome of the war.”
War has become the organizing principle around which even narrow domestic disputes revolve, turning domestic disputes into high-stakes geopolitical confrontations.
Toll said the recent unrest in Georgia over the Foreign Influence Act was in many ways a “local power struggle between different political networks,” but the war turned it into a “geopolitically induced war.”
But to some analysts, protesters view evidence of the government’s shift away from the West and Russia as a sign of narrowing concerns ahead of October’s election – such as having a Swiss bank unfreeze billions of dollars belonging to the country. It is Bitzina Ivanishvili, the founder of the Georgian Dream Party.
Mr Ivanishvili is embroiled in a long-running dispute with Credit Suisse over his funding. After winning several court cases and recovering some cash, the war in Ukraine has added a new hurdle, with $2.7 billion set to be frozen in 2022 over concerns it may have originated from Russia.
His party believes Washington imposed a freeze on the funds to align Georgia with the West against Russia.
Whatever the truth, de Waal said, the economic hit has strengthened his resolve to fight domestic enemies at all costs.
“He was paranoid and believed this was part of a global conspiracy against him,” he said.
