Russia’s policy in the “frozen conflicts” of the post-Soviet
space: from ethno-politics to geopolitics
Andrei A. Kazantsev a
, Peter Rutlandb
, Svetlana M. Medvedevac
and
Ivan A. Safranchuk d
a
Institute of International Studies, Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Moscow, Russia;
b
Government Department, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA.; c
Department of Philosophy, Moscow
State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Moscow, Russia; d
Institute of International Studies, Moscow
State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Moscow, Russia
ABSTRACT
The article analyzes the evolution of Russia’s policy in secessionist
conflicts in the post-Soviet space in 1991–2018. The authors
differentiate the patterns of Russian policy between the “first” and
“second” generation of frozen conflicts. The “first generation”
includes four conflicts of an ethno-linguistic nature that arose out
of the collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s (Abkhazia, South
Ossetia, Pridnestrov’e and Karabakh). Most commentators
interpret Russia’s actions in the “second generation” conflicts as
centralized, directly controlled by the president of Russia, and
driven by Russia’s opposition to NATO expansion, and some
extend this logic back to the conflicts of the 1990s. However, this
article argues that this was not true of Russian policy for the “first
generation” conflicts in the early 1990s. In that period the policies
of the Yeltsin administration were a product of struggle of
different forces both in Moscow and outside of it. The “first
generation” conflicts all primarily originated as a result of local
grievances. Gradually, shifts in the broader geopolitical landscape
in Eurasia, especially the growing confrontation between Russia
and the West, led to a reconfiguration of the logic of these
conflicts, turning them into the elements of Russian-Western
geopolitical opposition.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 30 September 2019
Accepted 16 December 2019
KEYWORDS
Russia’s foreign policy; frozen
conflicts; Abkhazia; South
Ossetia; Nagorno-Karabakh;
Transnistria
The term secessionist (or “frozen”) conflicts in the post-Soviet space usually refers to four
conflicts of an ethnic or ethnolinguistic nature that arose out of the collapse of the USSR in
the early 1990s. They led to the emergence of four internationally unrecognized or “de
facto” states: Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Pridnestrov’e (Pridnestrov’e Moldovan Republic,
PMR;1
also Transnistria), and Nagorno-Karabakh; they later formed a “Commonwealth
of unrecognized states” (Lynch 2004). The existence of these de facto states is testimony
to two factors. First, they reflect the structural legacy of the Soviet Union’s ethno-territorial
federalism, which made possible the rapid emergence of local nationalist movements
during the political opening represented by Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika (1985–91)
(Beissinger 2002). Second, they are the result of the imbalance in military capacity
© 2020 International Association for the Study of the Caucasus
CONTACT Andrei A. Kazantsev andrka@mail.ru
CAUCASUS SURVEY
2020, VOL. 8, NO. 2, 142–162
https://doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2020.1728499
between the newly-independent states that fought to control the secessionist regions, and
the military assets of the Russian Federation, which were deployed (after intensive struggle
between different actors responsible for Russian foreign policy decision-making) to a
greater or lesser degree on the side of the separatists.
The existing literature concerning Russia’s policy towards the post-Soviet conflicts can
be divided into three main groups that roughly correspond to the three main theoretical
paradigms existing in IR: neorealism, liberal institutionalism and constructivism. The
liberal approach that treats Russia’s policy as a positive-sum game with other postSoviet
nations and major global actors is mostly absent from the scholarly literature on
the post-Soviet conflicts. The neorealist approach tends to describe Russia’s policy
towards these conflicts as a centralized, zero-sum policy representing Russia’s eternal
and monolithic geopolitical interests, such as Russia’s desire to control its neighbourhood,
to avoid NATO enlargement, and to prevent “colour revolutions” that could spread and
threaten Russia’s own political stability (Mankoff 2011; Stent 2019). Within a realist paradigm
Roy Allison’s Russia, the West and Military Intervention (Allison 2013) considers
this issue from a Western perspective, while Sergey Markedonov analyzes the issue
from Russia’s perspective (Markedonov 2009, 2015a, 2015b). Allison argues that Russia
objected strongly to the recognition of Kosovo in February 2008 by the US and many
European states, and went on to break with its own tradition by recognizing the sovereignty
of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in August 2008 (Allison 2013, 2017). The normative
legal approach that is contained in the volume edited by Bruno Coppieters and Richard
Sakwa, Contextualizing Secession: Normative Studies in Comparative Perspective (Coppieters
and Sakwa 2003) can be roughly attributed to the liberal institutionalism paradigm,
since the conflicts in the post-Soviet space are analyzed through the prism of “just war”
theory and other normative aspects of secession.
The majority of publications on this topic are written within the constructivist paradigm,
which can be understood to include critical geography and area studies. Russia’s
policy is seen in the context of specific historical, ethnic, cultural, identity or geographic
characteristics. The works of Laurence Broers, Christoph Zürcher, Karl Cordell and
Stefan Wolff, and Arsène Saparov describe the conflicts in the South Caucasus from
various historical and ethnic points of view (Cordell and Wolff 2009; Zürcher 2009;
Saparov 2015; Broers 2019). The publications of Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud are
devoted to identity issues and their connections with Russia’s policy towards different
conflicts in the post-Soviet space (Blakkisrud 2016; Kolstø and Blakkisrud 2016). The
works of Vladimir Kolossov, John O’Loughlin and Gerard Toal are written within the
paradigm of “critical geography”, which is very close to constructivism in IR (O’Loughlin,
Toal, and Kolossov 2016; Toal 2017; Kolossov et al. 2019).
All these works recognize that the international system is hostile to the emergence of
new states and would-be secessionists face a long and hard struggle for international recognition
(Pegg 1998; Hannum and Babbitt 2006). Of the 18 recent cases examined by Nina
Caspersen (2012), only two succeeded, two failed, and the remainder are “frozen” in a gray
zone of de facto sovereignty (control over the territory in question) without de jure international
recognition. With the passage of time, academic attention has shifted from the
initial secessionist conflicts to the question of how these de facto states work. These
would-be states are able to survive by building up their internal state capacity in terms
of the security and welfare of their residents along with some plausible narrative of
CAUCASUS SURVEY 143
legitimacy (Kolstø and Blakkisrud 2008). They also rely on support from their ethnic diaspora
and from outside states – though the latter are reluctant to grant formal recognition,
given the strong international norm of territorial integrity. Only in the case of gross violations
of human rights is the international community willing to grant recognition.
From our point of view the realist approach accurately captures the dynamics of
Russian policy in the late Putin period (and specifically the policy of Russia towards the
“second generation of conflicts” such as Crimea and Donbas). However, the authors of
this paper believe that the constructivist/area studies model is a better tool for understanding
developments, especially in the 1990s and in the early Putin period, given the regional
specificity of the “first generation” conflicts, the variability and incoherence of Russian
policy, and the role of non-state actors and regional political forces in driving Russian
policy. The ethno-linguistic conflicts of the “first generation” in Abkhazia and South
Ossetia were folded into Russia’s realist paradigm after 2008, while the same transformation
in the Transnistrian case was very slow, and in Karabakh it did not really happen
at all. Presumably, the policy shift towards the realist paradigm that occurred after 2008
could be reversed at some point in the future.
While all four conflicts have seen repeated and ongoing peace talks, none of them have
shown any substantial movement towards a negotiated settlement. That said, to describe
them as “frozen” is somewhat misleading, in that these conflicts did not stand still over the
past 30 years. The situation on the ground has continued to evolve, with important political
and economic developments. In some cases they experienced rapid “thawing” (as
in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008) before reverting to a new quasi-“frozen” condition.
Russian policy also underwent profound changes over time. At the beginning, in
the early 1990s Russia’s democratic leadership in part saw a common interest with the
leaders of the newly-independent states in preserving the territorial boundaries inherited
from Soviet federalism. By the 2000s, Moscow’s policy had shifted from managing ethnoterritorial
and ethno-linguistic conflicts on Russia’s periphery to geopolitical rivalry with
the West, which can be seen as a response to NATO’s eastward enlargement to include
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in 1999. The final policy shift was signalled
by Vladimir Putin’s speech to the Munich security conference in 2007 (Putin 2007). In
addition to NATO expansion, this change in Russian policy was the product of the consolidation
of power under President Putin, the revival of the Russian economy, and Putin’s
sense of betrayal by the West following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the “colour
revolutions” in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan (2003–05).
As a federal state where ethnic minorities account for 20% of the population, as a matter
of principle the Russian Federation itself had a strong interest in deterring secessionist
movements which might provide a precedent for separatist forces within its own
borders (such as Chechnya). However, the conflicts examined here are the product of
very specific local conditions, and Russian policy correspondingly reflected these local particularities.
Russian policy has been driven more by pragmatic calculations of national
interest than by adherence to abstract political or legal principles. At various times the
Russian authorities and policy intellectuals (such as the “Eurasianists”) have tried to
outline principles which might shape Russian foreign policy towards such conflicts, in
terms of protecting ethnic Russians, Russian-speakers, and “compatriots” (sootechestvenniki)
(Kazantsev 2014; Laruelle 2015; Rutland and Kazantsev 2016). But no consistent
144 A. A. KAZANTSEV ET AL.
doctrine emerged, and there were substantial differences over time in the pattern of
Russian interventions across the four conflicts of the “first generation”.
This article analyses the trajectory of Russia’s policy towards these four conflicts from
1991 to 2018, summarized in Figure 1. Three of them took place in the South Caucasus
(the fourth one, Transnistria is analyzed here for comparative purposes). Two other
conflicts that emerged in the former Soviet Union in the early 1990-s did not remain
frozen: they turned into full-scale wars – each of which did result in a lasting peace.
The Chechen wars for independence (1994–96) and (1999–2000) ended up with Chechnya
remaining in the Russian Federation (albeit with a high degree of informal autonomy).
The Tajik civil war (1992–97) resulted in a peace agreement and a power-sharing government,
brokered by Russia and Iran (Driscoll 2015). It should be noted that while the
conflict in Chechnya involved secession, the conflict in Tajikistan did not, although it
did have a sub-ethnic dimension.
The secessionist movement in Karabakh is quite distinct from the other “first generation”
cases. It was the first such conflict to erupt in the former Soviet Union, in 1988,
and Moscow’s policy from 1988 to 1991 was predicated on the imperative to maintain
the integrity of the Soviet Union. By the time the conflicts in Georgia and Transnistria
broke out in 1992, that logic had evaporated. Another important difference is that Karabakh
became a confrontation between the sovereign states of Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Broers (2015) suggests that it is more appropriate to see Karabakh in a deeper historical
context, as a product of an “enduring rivalry” rather than as a “frozen conflict”. Finally,
it is not so easy to fit the Karabakh conflict into the frame of geopolitical rivalry
between Russia and the West. The West had conflicting interests in the region: some
Western elites strongly backed Azerbaijan, because of its oil wealth and its potential as
a strategic buffer against Russia and Iran. Others backed Armenia, because of the legacy
of the Armenian genocide and the active presence of the Armenian diaspora. Likewise,
Moscow was conflicted: recognizing the value of Azerbaijan as a partner, but drawn
increasingly into a strategic alliance with Armenia (which was willing to grant Russia
rights to military bases on its territory). The Transnistrian conflict also has some specificity
since it was not purely ethnic one, it can be more accurately described as a “pro-Romanian
versus pro-Russian confrontation”.
If these are the “first generation” of frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space, the events
in Ukraine after the revolution of 2014 can be seen as “second generation” conflicts since
they erupted long after the dissolution of the USSR. Unlike the first generation, the Ukrainian
conflicts have not yet resulted in de facto states, since the Minsk accords treat the
Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) as part of
Ukraine,2
and Crimea is officially seen by Russia as its integral part (though this is not
recognized by Ukraine and most of the rest of the world3
). The “second generation”
conflicts in Ukraine also involved a high degree of Russian participation in the early
stages of the conflict, and were widely seen as the result of the geopolitical confrontation
between Russia and the West. Finally, the “second generation” conflict in Ukraine is not so
“frozen”, since low level military clashes continue in Donbas.
However, there are some similarities between the “first” and “second” generation
conflicts. As in Ukraine, over time Russia became heavily involved on the side of the
breakaway regions of Pridnestrov’e, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, while their opponents
in the Georgian and Moldovan governments mostly aligned themselves with liberal,
CAUCASUS SURVEY 145
Figure 1. Comparative analysis of Russia’s policy towards “frozen conflicts” in the Yeltsin and Putin
periods. The first period includes the Yeltsin presidency (1991–1999). The second includes Putin’s
first two presidential terms (2000–2008), Medvedev’s presidency (2008–2012), and Putin’s third and
fourth terms (2012 until now).
146 A. A. KAZANTSEV ET AL.
pro-Western forces. This similarity is especially obvious in the case of 2008 Russian-Georgian
war, which signalled a shift from the “first” to the “second generation” of conflicts in
the post-Soviet space.
Most commentators (especially realists) interpret Russia’s actions in the second generation
conflicts as centralized, controlled by one person (the president) and driven by
Russia’s opposition to NATO expansion (Mearsheimer 2014). But it is much harder to
make the case that geopolitical rivalry with the West was behind Russian policy
towards the first generation conflicts. Also, it is clear that in both the earlier and later
periods, Russian policy was largely driven by the vagaries of personal rivalries, bureaucratic
politics and “standard operating procedures” of the sort analyzed by Graham
Allison in his classic critique of the “rational actor model”, Essence of Decision (1971).
The super-presidential republic established in Russia under the 1993 Constitution formally
established a very high centralization of foreign policy decisions. However, in
reality the policies of the Yeltsin administration were a product of both public and
non-public struggles of various political forces in Moscow. In the early 1990s the
Russian governmental machinery was paralyzed by the battle between democratic (proWestern)
and conservative (anti-Western) forces. The political paralysis in Moscow
meant that many decisions concerning regional conflicts were made not in the nation’s
capital, but by separatist organizations on the ground (such as the Confederation of the
Peoples of the Caucasus, participating in the war in Abkhazia); by regional leaders
(such as those of North Ossetia and Krasnodar region); or by former officers and generals
of the Soviet Army who chose which side of the conflict they would support (in Pridnestrov’e,
Abkhazia, Karabakh and Tajikistan).
This helps to explain the sudden changes in policy of the Yeltsin government regarding
conflicts in Pridnestrov’e and Abkhazia. In Pridnestrov’e, Moscow initially approved the
transfer of Soviet weapons to the new Moldovan army and instructed the Soviet 14th
Army to adopt a position of neutrality; but the 14th Army subsequently joined the fight
against Moldovan forces. In Abkhazia Moscow at first approved giving Soviet weapons
to the Georgian army and backed President Eduard Shevardnadze against the deposed
president Zviad Gamsakhurdia, but later supported Russian volunteers fighting on the
side of Abkhaz separatists. After the separatists won the war, Russia then reversed again
by introducing an economic blockade of Abkhazia. Russia’s policy regarding the
conflict in Karabakh was ambiguous from the outset, driven by a desire to preserve a strategic
partnership with both Armenia and Azerbaijan.
It is clear that Putin’s policy has been much more centralized and consistent than that
of Yeltsin. Especially since Putin’s “Munich speech” in 2007 (Putin 2007), his strategic goal
of pushing back Western influence in the post-Soviet space is apparent. However, in
Putin’s foreign policy, even at the height of the “new cold war”, experts say that policies
were sometimes the product of hidden struggles of internal political forces (Minchenko
2015; Zygar 2016). Unfortunately, in the absence of reliable information about the
foreign policy decision-making process, Russia’s actions can be interpreted in completely
different ways by outside observers.
Many critics argue that Russia is not just a participant in the “frozen” conflicts, but that
it started all of them in pursuit of its strategic goals (Sivitskiy and Tsarik 2015). Evidence
for such a strategy is seen in the works of Russian conservatives and, especially advocates
of neo-Eurasianism such as Aleksandr Dugin (Laruelle 2008). The latter is often seen as
CAUCASUS SURVEY 147
the ideologist of the creation of a “Eurasian empire” headed by Russia. However, the extent
to which there is an ideological overlap between Putin and Dugin is unclear. Dugin criticized
Putin for not intervening more aggressively in the Donbas conflict, and as a result
Dugin was ousted from his position as department head at Moscow State University
(RBC 2014). On the other side, many Russia experts portray Russia’s policy as responding
to the actions of other players (Sakwa 2016). A survey of leading Russian international
relations scholars showed that a significant number assessed Russia’s policy as “reactive”,
responding to circumstances rather than forming them (Mel’vil’ 2009). Similarly, some
argue that Putin is more a tactician than a strategist, and lacks clear long-term policy
goals (Galeotti 2016; Ekspert 2017).
The goal of this article is to shed light on the patterns of formation of Russia’s policy on
the “frozen conflicts” by analyzing the evolution of Russia’s policy in each of the four “first
generation” conflicts in the post-Soviet space, each of which are complex and still highly
contested in the literature. First of all, we would concentrate on changes and inconsistencies
in Russia’s policy and the reasons for them.
Russia’s policy in the conflict in Abkhazia
In the early 1990s, at the same time that Russia was struggling to reassert sovereignty over
the separatist Muslim republic of Chechnya, it eventually found itself supporting the
efforts of the people of Abkhazia to secede from Georgia. This paradoxical outcome
was due, in no small part, to the role of independent actors in shaping Russian policy
towards the Abkhaz struggle.
In 1921 Abkhazia was initially proclaimed an independent Soviet Republic, and then
joined the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Republic (according to a union treaty
with Georgia). That body was dissolved in 1936, although by that time Abkhazia had
already become an autonomous republic within Georgia in 1931. During the Soviet
period, there was considerable migration of Georgians into Abkhazia. According to the
1989 census the 93,000 Abkhaz made up only 18% of the population of Abkhazia, and
Georgians 45% (Demoskop 2017). A Georgian law declaring Georgian the official
language was met by Abkhaz demands for an upgrading of Abkhazia to union republic
status. That in turn led to protests in Georgia, and the brutal suppression of one such
protest in Tbilisi on 9 April 1989 by Soviet troops, leaving 19 dead, was a turning point
in the movement for Georgian independence.
Vladislav Ardzinba, a historian and future president of Abkhazia, was one of the first
voices to speak up for the Soviet Union’s smaller ethnic minorities after he was elected
to the First Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR in 1989. As an intellectual connected
to the liberal Russian intelligentsia, he was not originally a part of any conservative,
anti-democratic and anti-Western political movement in the Soviet Union. He argued that
in the event of the withdrawal of a union republic from the USSR, any autonomous region
within that republic should have the right to self-determination (Ardzinba 1989). The
Georgian parliament passed a new law mandating that public institutions in Abkhazia
switch over to the Georgian language (as opposed to Russian, which had been the prevailing
language of instruction). Meanwhile, forces loyal to the central authorities in Tbilisi,
headed by Eduard Shevardnadze, were opposed in western Georgia by supporters of the
deposed president Zviad Gamsakhurdia. To combat them and to protect the railway
148 A. A. KAZANTSEV ET AL.
from Russia to Georgia, Shevardnadze sent Georgian troops into Abkhazia on 10 August
1992 – a plan that was agreed in advance with Moscow (Dzhindzholiya 2017). Russia gave
to the Georgian government a significant amount of military equipment, which proved
essential to the operation (see for example, the memoirs of Viktor Baranets, a member
of the Russian General Staff) (Baranets 1999, 238–247). At that time the Kremlin
viewed Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister, as an ally of Russia in the
fight against the ultra-nationalist supporters of Gamsakhurdia. Russia was also concerned
to secure road and rail routes through Georgia to Armenia (which was blockaded by Azerbaijan
and Turkey).
An important role in the unleashing of the conflict in Abkhazia was played also by the
Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, founded in August 1989 in Abkhazia’s
capital, Sukhumi. By 1991, it had its own armed detachments. Moscow feared that
this Confederation would promote separatism not just in the South Caucasus but also
in the North Caucasus, among the national republics that were part of the Russian Federation.
In September 1992, at the request of Georgia, Russian prosecutors arrested the
President of the Confederation Musa Shanibov on charges of terrorist activities.
However, after rallies in his support in the North Caucasus, Shanibov was released.
Armed detachments of the Confederation played an important role in the war in Abkhazia
in 1992–1994.
The paradox is that when the conflict began, the Tbilisi government was seen as
Russia’s ally, with Moscow adopting a position of benevolent neutrality. In contrast the
Confederation was seen as an opponent of the Kremlin. But over time the Abkhaz war
turned into a Russian-Georgian confrontation. This partly was due to the fact that
different players on the Russian side, including special services, supported different
sides of the conflict. Some of these actors were ideologically motivated, and others were
fighting for money (Izvestiya 2016). Russia’s control of its own military assets was very
weak in the early 1990s. The head of the Armed Forces of Abkhazia, Ardzinba, had a
relationship with the former head of the Analytical Department of the KGB of the
USSR, Colonel Otari Arshba (Abkhaz by nationality).4
There is also a view that some
Russian special services (GRU) were linked during the war in Abkhazia to the forces of
the Confederation of the Peoples of the Caucasus (Sirin 2011; Kozlov 2015). Chechens
and Adygeis made up the bulk of the Confederation’s volunteers from the North Caucasus.
The head of the Adygei volunteers, Sultan Sosnaliev, became defence minister of Abkhazia,
while Chechen field commander, Shamil Basaev, was deputy defense minister. (Basaev
later became notorious for his terrorist actions against Russia in the first Chechen war,
1994–96.) A number of Russian Cossacks also fought on the side of the Abkhaz, including
some who had taken part in the war in PMR. Pro-Western democrats in the Russian government,
who sympathized with Georgia, did not have the authority to prevent North
Caucasian militants or Cossacks from participating in the war. On the other hand, conservative
elements in the Russian state, including regional officials in the adjacent Krasnodar
territory, actively facilitated the transfer of militants and their weapons to Abkhazia (Krivosheev
2001; Khramchikhin 2008).
By 1993, Abkhaz forces had recaptured all the major cities and expelled the ethnic
Georgian population, some 240,000 people, from the province. In desperate straits, Shevardnadze
turned to Russia for help. He agreed to Georgia joining the CIS and allowed
Russia to keep their military bases on Georgia territory. In return, Russia ensured that
CAUCASUS SURVEY 149
the Abkhaz offensive would not cross over into the rest of Georgia, enabling the Georgian
army to suppress the Zviadist insurgency, which was happening simultaneously in
Georgia. On 14 May 1994, under Russian mediation, a ceasefire was signed and a force
of CIS peacekeepers – in reality the same Russian airborne troops already stationed
there – was established to patrol the 12-kilometre deep “safety zone” along the administrative
border between Abkhazia and Georgia, monitored by a UN Observer Mission.
The only area of Abkhazia that Georgia controlled was the southern part of the Kodori
Gorge.
To the mid-1990s the post-Soviet states that were facing secessionist conflicts deepened
their ties with European and, in general, Western structures, in the hope that
this support would help to resolve the conflicts in their favour. By virtue of international
recognition, these states had international legitimacy working in their favour. The year
1997 saw the creation of the GUAM bloc, comprising Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and
Moldova, as these countries sought a common solution to their problems. In 1999
Georgia and Azerbaijan left the CIS Collective Security Treaty, which was reformed
on Putin’s initiative into the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in 2002.
This trend of geopolitical polarization (between pro-Western GUAM and pro-Russian
CSTO) was exacerbated by the discussion of the prospects of Georgia, Ukraine and
Moldova joining NATO and/or the EU, and by the signing of association agreements
with the EU by several post-Soviet countries. These steps were seen by all parties
involved as an alternative to the integration proposed by Russia within the framework
of the CIS or the new Eurasian Economic Community (created in 2000, and replaced in
2014 by the Eurasian Economic Union).
This trend to reframe the “frozen conflicts”, including Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
under the broader geopolitical logic of the confrontation between Russia and the West
was reinforced by the emergence of a stronger, more centralized decision-making
process in Moscow after 2000, when Putin came to power. This geopolitical transformation
was vividly realized in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where the question of Georgia’s
possible accession to NATO led to the “five-day war” of 2008 between Russia and Georgia.
The trend reached its logical apex in Ukraine in 2014, when to a significant extent it was
the geopolitical rivalry between Russia and the West that in and of itself caused the
regional conflict. Similar trends of evolution of Russian policy can be observed in the
other first generation “frozen conflicts”.
Officially, until March 2008, in accordance with a CIS summit decision, Russia
maintained a ban on trade, economic and transport ties with Abkhazia, which
created serious economic difficulties for this de facto state. During the first few years
after its introduction (in the period of Yeltsin’s presidency) the ban was quite strictly
enforced, but it was gradually relaxed after Putin came to power. Moreover, the
majority of the population of Abkhazia in the period of Putin’s presidency received
Russian citizenship, enabling them to travel to Russia irrespective of the trade ban
and receive Russian pensions (Achba 2016). When Russia recognized Abkhazia in
2008, it stopped granting Russian citizenship to citizens of Abkhazia. On 26 August
2008, after the war with Georgia, Russia officially recognized the independence of
Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but very few other countries followed suit, leaving
them in limbo as “partially recognized states”.5
150 A. A. KAZANTSEV ET AL.
Russia’s participation in the conflict in South Ossetia.
It would be the political conflicts over the Georgian province of South Ossetia that triggered
in 2008 the first full-scale war in the post-Soviet space with the direct involvement
of Russian military forces. The Ossetians are historically divided between Russia (North
Ossetia) and Georgia (South Ossetia). According to the 1989 census 334,876 Ossetians
lived in Russian North Ossetia, 164,055 Ossetians lived in Georgia, 65,233 of them in
South Ossetia (alongside 28,000 ethnic Georgians) (Vsesoyuznaya 1989).
The conflict in South Ossetia has deep historical roots. After the fall of the tsarist empire
there were uprisings in the present-day territory of South Ossetia against the newlyformed
Georgian Democratic Republic. After the formation of the USSR in 1922
Georgia became a Soviet republic, with South Ossetia as an autonomous region within
Georgia, while North Ossetia became an autonomous republic within the Russian Socialist
Federal Soviet Republic.
The collapse of the Soviet empire “thawed” the conflict in South Ossetia. In August
1989 the Ossetian public movement Adaemon Nykhas (“The Word of the People”) protested
a new law mandating the use of the Georgian language, and proposed uniting North
and South Ossetia. In January 1992 South Ossetia passed a referendum declaring local
Ossetians’ desire to secede and join the Russian Federation, which led to a renewed
onslaught by Georgian militias authorized by President Gamsakhurdia. The conflict was
frozen due to the signing on 24 June 1992 by presidents Yeltsin and Shevardnadze of
the Sochi (Dagomys) agreement on the principles of conflict settlement. Moscow saw
North Ossetia as an important ally in the struggle to contain separatist sentiments in
the North Caucasus (especially the separatist movement in Chechnya, which had contacts
with Gamsakhurdia). A peacekeeping force of three battalions – Russian, Georgian and
North Ossetian – was deployed, along with an Organization for Security and Co-operation
in Europe (OSCE) Observer Mission.
The “Rose Revolution” of 2003 which toppled President Shevardnadze led to the first
“unfreezing” of the conflict. The new President Mikheil Saakashvili closed down the
wholesale Ergneti market, which gave traders from Georgia access to Russian buyers
and played a pivotal role in the South Ossetian economy. The prominent role of smuggling
in this cross-border trade indicates the substantial role that organized crime played in this
and other conflicts in the post-Soviet space. After the market was closed, armed clashes
resumed in July 2004. Saakashvili was vociferously anti-Russian: he blamed Moscow for
the Ossetian conflict, and demanded the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers. In 2006,
Georgia accused Russia of supplying South Ossetian troops with heavy weapons,
financing its ministry of defence and issuing Russian passports to the South Ossetian
population (Allenova 2008).
At the same time as Saakashvili was stepping up his efforts to reintegrate South Ossetia
with Georgia, he also pushed for NATO entry, holding a referendum on the subject in
January 2008. This was, of course, strategically very important for Putin’s government.
The US was prepared to offer Georgia (and Ukraine) a NATO membership action plan,
but that was thwarted by its European partners at NATO’s Bucharest summit in April
2008, where only a vaguer commitment to Georgia’s NATO membership was given.
Thus the South Ossetia conflict became submerged into the broader geopolitical
conflict between Russia and NATO. The latter entered a new phase in February 2008,
CAUCASUS SURVEY 151
when the US and other European countries granted diplomatic recognition to Kosovo,
over Russian objections. Kosovo had broken away from Yugoslavia in 1999 as a result
of NATO’s military intervention. Russia saw it as an example of the application of
“double standard” in the Western approach and as a precedent of a successful separatist
movement.
On 7 August 2008 the “five-day war” between Russia and Georgia broke out in South
Ossetia. The Russian (and Ossetian) and Georgian sides have opposing explanations of
why the conflict broke out. According to the Russian version, Saakashvili sent Georgian
troops to occupy South Ossetia, killing two Russian peacekeepers in the process (Cheterian
2011). Saakashvili on the other hand claimed he was reacting to Russian and Ossetian provocations.
Russia responded rapidly, driving back the Georgian forces with air strikes and
armoured columns, and military action spread to Abkhazia, with Georgian forces driven
from the Kodori gorge. French President Nicholas Sarkozy persuaded Moscow not to
occupy Tbilisi and overthrow Saakashvili. It is worth mentioning that Russian and
French (English) versions of the Medvedev-Sarkozy agreement differed,6
which created
the basis for consequent mutual accusations of violating the agreement. In the course of
the war the ethnic Georgian inhabitants of South Ossetia were expelled: as opposed to
Abkhazia the degree of forced displacement of ethnic Georgians in the first phase of the
conflict in 1991–92 had been quite limited, and Georgian communities still lived in
South Ossetia until 2008.
In the wake of the “five-day war”, on 26 August the Russian government announced
that it would grant diplomatic recognition to Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Since 2008
Russia has significantly strengthened military and economic ties with Abkhazia and
South Ossetia. Russian-Georgian relations improved after Saakashvili’s defeat in the
2013 elections, but this did not lead to a significant change in the situation in the
conflict zones. The geopolitical stand-off between Russia and the West meant that these
two conflicts remained “frozen”, with no immediate prospect of any change in the situation
on the ground.
Russia’s participation in the conflict in Pridnestrov’e (Transnistria)
Pridnestrov’e first arose as a special autonomous unit in the Soviet period. From 1924 to
1940 there existed the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR), part of
the Ukrainian SSR, on the left (east) bank of the Dniester (Nisriu) river. It had a capital in
Tiraspol and three official languages reflecting the main ethnic groups residing there (Moldovan,
Ukrainian and Russian). Some Moldovans considered themselves a separate ethnic
group, others – part of the Romanian people (Galushchenko 2002). In 1940 the Soviet
Union occupied Bessarabia on the right bank of the Dniester, formerly part of
Romania, after which the Moldavian SSR was established.
While the conflict in Transnistria was not ethnic as such, in the clash of pro-Romanian
and pro-Russian orientations it was also driven by some basic ethno-political elements.
During the perestroika period (1985–91) a significant part of the Moldovan intelligentsia,
who formed the Popular Front of Moldova, started arguing that Moldovans and Romanians
were one and the same people, speaking the same language – although Stalin had
ordered Moldovan to be written in Cyrillic script (Kharitonova 2008). These moves
were opposed by the inhabitants of Pridnestrov’e, which was majority Russian-speaking,
152 A. A. KAZANTSEV ET AL.
and who opposed a new August 1989 language law which declared Moldovan to be the
sole official language and converted it to the Latin script. But the protests in Pridnestrov’e
were more a social phenomenon, rooted in the region’s industrial complex, than an ethnic
movement, and was framed in a discourse of Soviet nostalgia (Mason 2009). In 1990, a
new parliament was elected in Moldova, in which the positions of the Moldovan nationalists
strengthened, and there were street clashes between Pridnestrov’e autonomists and
Moldovan nationalists. In the wake of the failed August 1991 coup, on 27 August Moldova
declared its independence. On 2 September 1991, a congress of the deputies of Pridnestrov’e
in the capital Tiraspol approved a new Constitution which recognized the USSR
constitution, and in November 1991 the Supreme Council adopted the name of Pridnestrovskaya
Moldavskaya Respublika (PMR).
Meanwhile, armed clashes continued and volunteers from different parts of Russia
began to arrive in Pridnestrov’e. They were conservative, pro-imperial forces hostile to
the Russian leadership headed by Yeltsin. (Later, many of them would participate in the
1993 anti-Yeltsin putsch in Moscow.) Some Ukrainian nationalist groups also took part
in the Pridnestrov’e conflict, fighting for the rights of Ukrainians and for the return of
the PMR to Ukraine (Sergeev 1992). On 18 December 1991 Russia recognized the independence
of Moldova, including the territory of Pridnestrov’e, followed by Ukraine on
21 December. Boris Yeltsin’s government saw the PMR forces as natural allies of proimperial
and pro-Soviet forces in Russia. In early 1992, Russia (as the legal successor to
the USSR), represented by General Evgenii Shaposhnikov, donated to the Republic of
Moldova arms and some units of the Soviet Army located on Moldovan territory controlled
by the Chisinau government. Meanwhile, fighting broke out in Dubossary, and soldiers
of the former Soviet Army located in PMR territory joined in on the side of the
separatists. They were given the status of “military formations, under the oath of the Commonwealth
of Independent States”, under the commander-in-chief of the CIS Shaposhnikov
in Moscow. On 1 April 1992, Yeltsin issued a decree subordinating these units to the
Russian Ministry of Defence, and they were allowed to swear an oath of allegiance to
Russia (though some instead swore loyalty to the PMR). In June 1992, officers of the
14th Army refused to obey their commander, General Iuriy Nemkachev, accusing him
of collaborating with the Moldovan Ministry of Defense (Kheresh 1998; Lebed 2000;
OA 14 2000). In response Moscow sent in General Aleksandr Lebed (a Ukrainian by ethnicity)
as commander. Lebed had played an important role in undermining the August
1991 coup in Moscow, but the Yeltsin government was happy to see him leave the
Russian capital.
On 8 July units of the 14th Army, on Lebed’s orders, shelled Moldovan troops and
forced them to pull back. Lebed was hailed in Russia as a peace-maker, though he later
fell into conflict with the PMR authorities, whom he accused of corruption, and resigned
in 1995. In Moldova, the nationalist wing was discredited by having incited and lost a civil
war: left-wing forces came to dominate the parliament. On 21 July 1992 in Moscow, President
Yeltsin and Moldovan President Mircea Snegur, in the presence of the head of the
PMR Igor Smirnov, signed an agreement on the principles of the settlement of the conflict.
Since then, however, despite numerous negotiations mediated by Russia, Ukraine and the
OSCE, no agreement on the status of PMR has been reached. Despite what Russia and
PMR regard as an economic blockade by Moldova, joined by Ukraine (Rossiyskaya
gazeta 2014), PMR has created its own economic system and is a regional player
CAUCASUS SURVEY 153
capable of blocking any initiatives for a peaceful settlement of the conflict that do not meet
the interests of the Pridnestrov’e elite. The PMR has also served as the informal leader of
the “CIS-2”, the bloc of internationally unrecognized states, including Abkhazia, South
Ossetia and Karabakh (Sergeev and Berezintseva 2000). Inter-ethnic relations within Pridnestrov’e
are relatively calm: there was no ethnic cleansing of minority populations
(Protsyk 2009). A September 1992 language law in PMR gave Russian, Ukrainian and
Moldovan equal status (though Moldovan must be written in Cyrillic). Meanwhile, in
Moldova itself by the end of the 1990s ideas of unifying with Romania had fallen off
the national agenda.
In 1995 Joint Peacekeeping Forces were established in the PMR consisting of 3100
Russian, 1200 Moldovan and 1200 PMR troops. At the OSCE Istanbul Summit in 1999,
the Yeltsin government promised to withdraw Russian troops from the PMR and
Georgia. Yeltsin was criticized for making this pledge in Russia by both conservative and
centrist forces. In 2003, Russia came up with a proposal for a federal state (named the
“Kozak Memorandum” after the lead Russian negotiator, Dmitriy Kozak), which gave
Russia the right to keep its troops in the PMR for 20 years as a guarantor of peace.
However, under Western pressure the plan was rejected by Moldova, even though the
left-wing government of President Vladimir Voronin initially supported the proposal.
Russia’s policy towards Pridnestrov’e has been complex and somewhat chaotic, with
competing factions in Moscow using the conflict to advance their interests. In the
1990s, the Yeltsin administration was inclined to compromise with the Moldovan government.
But gradually the interaction between Moscow and Tiraspol intensified, in part due
to pressure from Russian conservative and army circles, who came to see PMR as their ally
in the re-creation of the USSR, or at least in stopping Western influence. It is worth recalling
that creating a “land corridor” to Pridnestrov’e was a key part of the plan for a
“Novorossiya” (New Russia) on the territory of Eastern Ukraine that was floated by conservative
circles in Moscow in 2014 (Odesskii 2015).
Russia and the Karabakh conflict
Bloody conflicts between (Christian) Armenians and (Turkic and Muslim) Azerbaijanis
had erupted during and after the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 within the Russian
Empire. The genocide of Armenians in 1915 in neighbouring Turkey was a powerful
force shaping Armenian nationalism over the next century. Nagorno Karabakh is a mountainous
province predominantly inhabited by Armenians that became a part of the Soviet
Republic of Azerbaijan in 1923 as an autonomous region (oblast’). At various points
during the Soviet period Armenians asked Moscow to transfer the Nagorno-Karabakh
Autonomous Oblast’ (NKAO) to Armenia, without success. On occasion in the 1960s,
social and economic tensions in Karabakh escalated into riots.
Encouraged by glasnost, the Armenians formed a Karabakh Committee to press for
union with Armenia (Griffin 2004; de Waal 2013). On 20 February 1988, the NKAO
People’s Deputies formally requested a transfer from Azerbaijan to Armenia. That step
triggered communal violence in Azerbaijan (the Sumgait massacre), and inside Karabakh
itself. Some 400,000 Armenians would flee Azerbaijan and 700,000 Azerbaijanis left
Armenia, Karabakh and other districts of Azerbaijan controlled by Armenian forces.
154 A. A. KAZANTSEV ET AL.
After a devastating earthquake in December 1988, President Mikhail Gorbachev
imposed direct administration over the NKAO. The leaders of the Karabakh Committee
were arrested and interior ministry units cracked down on Armenian activists (Krivopuskov
2007, 394). However, in January 1990 Soviet troops violently suppressed popular protests
in Baku and other cities, which meant Azerbaijanis lost faith in Moscow as an ally.
Many of the Russian democratic forces in Moscow sympathized with the Armenians:
for example, the St. Petersburg liberal activist Galina Starovoitova was elected as a
People’s Deputy of the USSR from Armenia in 1989. In contrast to the case of Pridnestrov’e,
where conservative forces in Moscow supported the secessionists, in Karabakh
the conservatives wanted to keep Karabakh within Azerbaijan. The difference is in the
timing: Karabakh erupted in 1988–89, when saving the Soviet Union still seemed like a
viable strategy. By 1992, when fighting erupted in Pridnestrov’e, that was no longer the
case.
In summer 1989, Azerbaijan began a transport blockade of Armenia, and Armenia retaliated
by closing the border with the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan (located to the
west of Armenia). By 1990, the fighting had escalated to artillery fire across the Armenian-Azerbaijani
border. After the failed Moscow coup, on 28 August 1991 Azerbaijan
declared its independence from the Soviet Union, and on 2 September, the Karabakh
Council of People’s Deputies declared its independence from Azerbaijan, and proclaimed
the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR). In December 1991 Soviet interior ministry
troops withdrew from Karabakh, which opened the way to a full-scale war. Most of the
former Soviet army units in Transcaucasia were located in the territory of Azerbaijan,
so it received more equipment than Armenia.
Armenia was not formally a party to the conflict, but its support of NKAO was obvious.
Turkey closed its border with Armenia in retaliation for the occupation of Kelbajar by
Armenian forces in April 1993. Some international terrorists, including some from Afghanistan,
fought for Azerbaijan in Karabakh (Taarnby 2016). In May 1992 Armenia joined
the Russian-led CIS Collective Security Treaty at its founding meeting in Tashkent: Azerbaijan
did not join until 1994. Armenia became strategically dependent on Russia in order
to neutralize potential Turkish intervention in its dispute with Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, the
Armenian international diaspora mobilized in support of Karabakh (the 3 million Armenians
living in the Republic of Armenia are dwarfed by the estimated 8 million living in
diaspora, the two largest groups being in the US and Russia). Thanks to the Armenian
lobby, the US Congress passed an amendment to the Freedom Support Act in 1992 blocking
aid to the Azerbaijani government until Azerbaijan stopped its actions against Karabakh
(Cornell 2001; Gregg 2002). Thus, in the early stages of the conflict the position of
both Russia and the US regarding security guarantees for Armenia turned out to be quite
close.
Armenian military victories led to the ouster of two presidents of Azerbaijan in 1992
(the unelected Ayaz Mutalibov) and 1993 (Abulfaz Elchibey, the country’s first popularly
elected president), resulting in the return to power of the former Communist
leader Heydar Aliyev in June 1993. Aliyev met with Yeltsin, who made some serious
efforts to broker a peace settlement that would involve guarantees for Karabakh autonomy
while leaving it under Azerbaijani sovereignty. That was unacceptable to Karabakh,
and in October 1993 the fighting resumed. Russia brokered another cease-fire
agreement which came into force on 12 May 1994. The war left Armenian forces
CAUCASUS SURVEY 155
occupying seven districts of Azerbaijan beyond Karabakh itself, and they offered to
return those territories if Azerbaijan gave up its claim to sovereignty over Karabakh.
Baku refused to budge. In turn, the Karabakh Armenians did not trust the promises
of security and autonomy given by Baku if they recognized Azerbaijani sovereignty.
Karabakh did not merge with Armenia (something that was unacceptable to Russia),
and claimed to be an independent state, though it was not recognized by anyone. In
reality Armenia has played a key role in supporting the Karabakh Armenians, and
there was fusion of the Karabkah and Armenian political leadership (Kaufman 1998,
34). In 1993 one of the Karabakh military commanders, Serzh Sargsyan, was appointed
minister of defense of Armenia; Robert Kocharian, elected president of Nagorno-Karabakh
in 1994, went on to become president of Armenia in 1998. Sargsyan succeeded
him in that post in 2008.
In 1992, the OSCE established the Minsk Group to settle the Karabakh conflict.
Between 1992 and 2005, the Minsk Group presented four different proposals to the conflicting
parties, but no mutually acceptable compromise could be found. Russian President
Dmitrii Medvedev reactivated the process, holding joint meetings with the Armenian and
Azerbaijani leaders in 2008, 2010 and 2011. In 2009, at meetings in Switzerland brokered
by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Turkey and Armenia agreed to normalize relations,
but the deal fell apart after the Turkish parliament (due to significant Azeri influence)
insisted on solving the Karabakh dispute first. After that, Russia lowered its level of diplomatic
activity with respect to Karabakh. In April 2016, fighting again erupted on the 160mile
line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces, with numerous casualties.
Russia helped to de-escalate the crisis.
Azerbaijan’s oil wealth enabled it to cultivate ties with Western allies and outspend
Armenia on its military. As a result, over time, Armenia became even more strategically
dependent on Russia. In 2001 Putin signed a deal promising increased economic
cooperation with Armenia in return for a 10-year extension on the lease for its military
base in Gyumri. In 2010, the lease was extended until 2044 and Russia pledged support
in the event of an outside attack on Armenia. Due to its strategic dependency on
Russia, in 2013 Armenia agreed to join the Customs Union with Russia, Kazakhstan
and Belarus, ending its negotiations to sign an association agreement with the EU.
Thus, the growing opposition between Russia and the West in the post-Soviet space has
pulled Armenia deeper into Moscow’s orbit.
However, Russian policy in Karabakh retains elements of ambiguity. Russia supplies
arms to both Armenia and Azerbaijan, although Azerbaijan is unhappy that Russia delivers
weapons to Armenia at lower prices, or free of charge altogether within the framework
of the CSTO. Russia also has a strong energy relationship with Azerbaijan, which
exports some of its oil through a pipeline to the Russian port of Novorossiysk.
Although Armenia has a military alliance with Russia based on a bilateral agreement as
well as on Yerevan’s participation in CSTO, at the same time it tries to maintain good
relations with the West. After the 2018 democratic revolution in Armenia that deposed
the political influence of the so-called “Karabakh clan” of Sargsyan and Kocharian this
policy even strengthened. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, tries to develop relations with
both Russia and the West (especially through participating in various projects for the
transport of oil and gas to Europe as an alternative to Russia). So, as opposed to the
three other frozen conflicts (Transnistria, South Ossetia and Abkhazia), the Karabakh
156 A. A. KAZANTSEV ET AL.
conflict has a minimum degree of influence of the Russian-Western geopolitical
confrontation.
Conclusions
The first generation of “frozen conflicts” originated in legal and political ambiguities that
were structural features of Soviet federalism. The architecture of the Soviet Union provided
“titular” nationalities with cultural and political institutions in their autonomous
republics, which provided a foundation for the subsequent separatist movements. The
separatists themselves explain these conflicts in a narrative of historical grievances and
ethnic or ethno-linguistic antagonism (some of them pre-dating the Soviet era), an
account which has grown increasingly inflexible and dogmatic over time. Given that the
conflicts are couched in terms of existential identity politics, it has been hard to find compromise
solutions. Russia was involved in these conflicts to a greater or lesser extent from
the outset, and while claiming a role as an “honest broker” it came to be seen as a participant
favouring one side over the other.
In each case, the separatist movement won the status of a “de facto state” through force
of arms. The leaders of the internationally-recognized states which claimed sovereignty
over these territories believed, not without reason, that Russia made a serious contribution
to these military successes. In Georgia and Azerbaijan, the separatists’ success was aided by
the collapse of national governments (Zviad Gamsakhurdia in Georgia; Ayaz Mutalibov
and Abulfaz Elchibey in Azerbaijan) – developments which nationalists in those states
(especially in Georgia) also attributed to Russian interference. Russia’s role in the military
success of Karabakh is less clear-cut. In all cases an important role in mobilizing external
supporters was originally played by ethnic, historical, cultural or religious ties in neighbouring
states (or ethnically linked regions of Russia) or in the global diaspora – which
had originally no direct relation to the strategic interests of Russia or the Western powers.
These conflicts all had local origins, being triggered by mass grievances that provided a
platform for political entrepreneurs in the regions involved. Over time, as the conflicts
grew more intense they drew in external actors on one side or the other – with Russia
being the largest player in the post-Soviet space. At the same time, the local parties to
the conflicts showed great flexibility in interacting with various external players. Over
time, shifts in the broader geopolitical landscape in Eurasia (Kazantsev and Sakwa
2012; Lukin 2014; Lukin 2016), especially the growing confrontation between Russia
and the West, led to a reconfiguration of the logic of these “frozen conflicts” from
ethno-politics to geopolitics. The creation of GUAM by Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan
and Moldova in 1997 was the first sign of this geopolitical transformation.
Western support for GUAM member-states became clear for the Russian elite after the
OSCE Istanbul Summit in 1999, where under Western pressure the Yeltsin government
promised to withdraw Russian troops from Moldova and Georgia (South Ossetia and
Abkhazia). In Russia Yeltsin was strongly criticized for making this pledge by both conservative
and centrist forces, which was a sign of coming deep changes in the Russian
policy towards the former Soviet Union. The year of 1999 was not only the time of the
Istanbul summit, it was also a year when NATO’s eastward enlargement included
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, and it became clear that there would be
further enlargements. In 1999 the second Chechen war started, Yeltsin resigned and
CAUCASUS SURVEY 157
Putin became acting president of Russia. So, 1999 should be considered as a year when the
pattern of Russia’s policy towards the “frozen conflicts” started to change (although the
final change of the paradigm happened only around 2008).
The analytic narrative laid out in this article shows that there are general patterns in
Russian policy towards the conflicts in the post-Soviet space, which evolved over time,
from Yeltsin to Putin. At the same time, comparative analysis indicates that the specific
particularities of each case must also be taken into account. For example in the early
1990s the Karabakh movement was seen as a threat to the structure of Soviet federalism,
whereas the secessionists in Pridnestrov’e and South Ossetia saw Moscow as their saviour.
Moscow started to support South Ossetia from the beginning of the 1990s, but Yeltsin’s
government originally did not support the separatist movement in neighbouring Abkhazia.
In both cases it was connected to the dynamics of separatist movements in the Russian
North Caucasus. Putin gradually changed Russian policy towards “frozen conflicts”, but he
maintained the trade ban on Abkhazia until the Russian-Georgian war of 2008.
By the mid-1990s Russia had adopted a policy of “freezing” these conflicts: ending the
fighting but not bringing about a lasting peaceful resolution. At first, Russia benefited from
these conflicts, as the secessionist uprisings led to the fall of anti-Russian governments in
the respective internationally-recognized states, and their entry into some of the postSoviet
integration structures initiated by Russia (the CIS and its Collective Security
Treaty Organization). In the Yeltsin period, Russian policy was somewhat ambiguous,
and was driven by the actions of players on the ground and the barely-concealed struggle
between liberal (pro-Western) and conservative (anti-Western) forces within the Russian
state. The Yeltsin government, beset by internal divisions and in desperate economic
straits, was too weak to craft or impose long-term solutions to the conflicts in the
former Soviet republics (with the exception of Tajikistan). However, Russia’s failure to
resolve the “frozen conflicts” in the 1990s led the leaders of Georgia, Azerbaijan and
Moldova to increase their orientation to the West.
After Vladimir Putin’s accession to the presidency, we see more centralization in
decision-making; a more active role for Russia; and more direct strategic confrontation
between Moscow and the West, growing over time. In opposition to potential NATO
enlargement and later in the geopolitical context of the “new cold war”, Russia was
ready to “thaw” these conflicts, and use them to push back Western influence in the
region. This was evident in the Georgian “five-day war” in August 2008, and in the
second generation of conflicts that broke out in Donbas and Crimea in 2014. These
have now joined the ranks of the “frozen conflicts” of the “first generation”: no largescale
military operations, no discernable movement towards peaceful resolution and
high influence of geopolitical logic of the “new cold war”. The change of patterns of
Russia’s policy since 1999 (defined to a significant degree by Moscow’s response to
NATO enlargement) described in this paper is among the most important factors that
defined evolution from the first to the second generation of the “frozen conflicts”.
Notes
1. This is the name used by the current Pridnestrov’e administration, which in Russian means
“At the Dniester”. The full official title is the Pridnestrov’e Moldovan Republic (PMR).
158 A. A. KAZANTSEV ET AL.
Moldova refers to the territory as Transnistria (“Across the Nistru”), Nistru being the Moldovan
name for the Dniester river.
2. The Minsk accords, signed by Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the Donetsk People’s Republic
and the Luhansk People’s Republic on 5 September 2014, set terms for an end to fighting
in the disputed regions.
3. As of April 2018 eight states had acknowledged Crimea as part of the Russian Federation:
Afghanistan, Bolivia, Cuba, Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
4. Arshba, Otari Ionovich (biography), the author of the publication is unknown, http://
fedpress.ru/person/1770570. Accessed 6 January 2018.
5. Only six nations and five UN members followed Russia’s lead and recognized Abkhazia and
South Ossetia respectively, and Vanuatu and Tuvalu subsequently withdrew their
recognition.
6. The Medvedev-Sarkozy plan was originally written in French and then translated to Russian.
The English and French versions of point 6 gave international guarantees for security in
South Ossetia and Abkhazia (that is, these are the territories, where security should be guaranteed),
while Russian version could be understood as international guarantees of security of
South Ossetia and Abkhazia (that is, treating them as states or quasi-state entities, the security
of which should be guaranteed) (Lenta.ru 2008).
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) under
Grant № 1921-01-04 “Security issues and regional conflicts in Central Asia and South Caucasus:
the policies of the great states and the interests of local elites”.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This work was supported by Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) under
Grant № 1921-01-04 “Security issues and regional conflicts in Central Asia and South Caucasus:
the policies of the great states and the interests of local elites”.
ORCID
Andrei A. Kazantsev http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4845-1391
Ivan A. Safranchuk http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2214-6628
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