Moscow’s recognition of breakaway Ukrainian territories has prompted comparisons with past Russian operations aimed at countering Western influence and bolstering its strategic depth in the former Soviet bloc.
After months of denying plans to invade Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian “peacekeeping” troops into the country’s separatist territories of Donetsk and Luhansk on Tuesday, recognising the two eastern entities – which Russian-backed rebels seized and occupied in 2014 – as republics independent of Kyiv.
Despite the specificities of the Ukrainian crisis, analysts were quick to note that Putin’s move fitted a recent pattern in Russian military operations, aimed at cowing neighbours into submission and thwarting their westward aspirations – in the process halting any further eastward expansion of NATO.
The Kremlin has long used so-called “frozen conflicts” to extend its reach beyond Russian borders. For the past three decades, it has backed a pro-Russian regime in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria. In 2008, it launched a conventional invasion of Georgia in support of separatist governments in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two provinces with large Russian-speaking populations. Six years later, Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine and began supporting an insurgency of pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas.
In each case, fears of a drift away from Russia’s sphere of influence precipitated Moscow’s actions, while the presence of ethnic Russian populations provided the Kremlin with a pretext to step in as the protector. The same logic was at play during Putin’s rambling speech late on Monday, in which he claimed, without evidence, that Ukraine’s…
Source : france24
