More than a week of renewed vicious fighting has passed in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, with the death toll brought to over 230 this past weekend. Many civilians were hit in bombings and attacks in the disputed territory as well as in other places. Yet even as many countries have called for peace, the two belligerents, Azerbaijan and Armenia, seem to be stepping up their fight.

Armenia vs. Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan claims the disputed territory, which has a long history of confrontations between Armenian and Azeri ethnicities, while the territory is home to a majority of Armenians. While these Armenians demand unification, Azerbaijani officials called them “occupiers” and said that there will be no end to the conflict so long as they stayed.

Armenia and its military forces “need to leave our territory, and then the war will stop and the conflict will come to an end,” Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev declared.

Echoing President Aliyev’s statement, Turkey’s leader Recep Erdogan also called for an end to the “occupation” of the disputed territory by Armenians and said Turkey was at the disposition of Azerbaijan “with all its resources and heart”.

Russia as a Mediator

Russia has long been the main player in the decades-long Nagorno-Karabakh dispute and thought it had it under control. In came Turkey, however, and the regional settings were disrupted.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan are former Soviet Republics, and even in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s Russia has remained deeply influential on both countries.

A member of the OSCE’s Minsk Group, Russia has been calling for an end to the conflict since the re-establishing of national borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Over the years, it succeeded in tipping the balance between the antagonistic neighbors, mainly by selling to each of them weapons and maintaining a more or less equal influence on their affairs.

Yet the recent outbreak of renewed fighting, which marks a spike in decades of intermittent fighting between the two sides, has compelled Russia to put more efforts into settling the urgent question. Moreover, Turkey’s coming into the game puts Russia in an even tighter and delicate spot – Putin must make a one-sided and clear decision now about what Russia will do.

The Turkish Factor

Azerbaijan, which appears to be prevailing, rejoiced in the adamant support from Erdogan. Both France and Russia have accused Turkey of deploying Syrian militiamen to fight along Azerbaijani forces in the conflict. In addition, Turkey is said to have provided drones and warplanes to Azerbaijan, which is now far superior in the air.

Soon after the war was declared, Armenia said that Turkey had a “direct presence on the ground” and that Turkish military experts were “fighting side by side” with Azerbaijan.

Thus, like in Syria and Libya, Russia finds itself in a standoff – and a proxy fight – against Turkey. Its relation to both Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as its influence on them, is at stake and depends on Turkey’s next moves. Moreover, whichever decision Russia makes will favor Turkey to some extent.

Russia’s Dilemma

Russia, by decisively backing Armenia – which it is more inclined to do – will lose ground in Azerbaijan, a country to which Moscow has been steadily growing closer politically over the years. Furthermore, by doing so it will also bolster the Turkish influence in Azerbaijan to the detriment of Putin’s relation to the Azeri political elite and his authoritarian counterpart Aliyev.

Doing nothing about the conflict, on the other hand, or backing Azerbaijan – which is conspicuously out of the question – will largely be read as a sign of weakness from Putin, not least because Armenia and Russia are bound by exclusive military agreements.

Russia has a military base in Armenia, and Armenia is a member of both the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union, all of which are led by Moscow.

Moscow is all the more compelled to act in a timely manner as the conflict flares up, considering the current international context where the United States is preoccupied with the upcoming November presidential elections and Europe is grappling with a second wave of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

L'articolo Turkey’s Interference in Nagorno-Karabakh Puts Russia in a Delicate Spot proviene da InsideOver.

The Putinian Pax has been guaranteeing the pacification and return to stability of Russia’s most problematic regions since the end of the Second Chechen War but, under the climate of apparent peace, a new season of separatism seems ready to begin in the next future. Indeed, ethnic and religious separatism in North Caucasus and Siberia never died completely and anti-Russian attitudes keep being very present in historically insurgency-plagued regions, such as Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Tatarstan, Circassia, and recently have started extending to Bashkortostan, Kuban and Siberian regions.

The evergreen influence played by Islamic nationalism kept the secession ambitions alive even in the post-Chechen war, as shown by the large-scale irregular warfare carried out by the Al Qaeda-linked Caucasus Emirate since 2007 and by the impact of the global rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State on North Caucasus. Indeed, thousands of Russian citizens travelled to Syria and Iraq to join Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s army, of which at least 14,000 are believed to have come from Chechnya.

The situation may prove detrimental to Russia’s national security and territorial integrity as it could be easily exploited by foreign powers interested in bringing the country to experience a Soviet-style collapse with permanent and profound consequences. The question should not be underestimated because in the United States this scenario is matter of talk among experts and strategists since the Cold War times and, for instance, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Russia-targeting vision succeeded in many fields and is still a work in progress.

The Pan-Turkic shadow

Ankara’s foreign agenda for Caucasus and Central Asia is set to undermine Moscow’s hegemonic role over the Turkic-speaking post-Soviet space and to feed separatist movements within Russian borders as it seeks to exert a stronger influence on them. The separatist wave is shaking many autonomous republics, but the most emblematic case studies are Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.

Pro-secession movements and political organizations that pursue anti-national goals are present in both republics and, essentially, promote the unification of all Turkic peoples under the same flag and/or the primacy of Turanism or Pan-Turkic identity over Russian legacy. Tatarstan’s Turkic agenda is essentially led by The Union of Tatar Youh and All-Tatar Public Center, while Bashkortostan’s one is led by Bashkir Kuk Bure.

Turkish influence over Tatarstan alarmed Moscow has taken several efforts to contrast the Pan-Turkic rising appeal within civil society and public opinion. The republic’s right to have a free foreign policy has been recently limited to reduce the range of action of Ankara-backed organizations such as the International Organization of Turkic Culture, which authorities claim to be playing a role in, both in the resurgence of Tatar nationalism and in the radicalization of Muslim community.

More recently, both mosques and local-based organizations have clashed against the central government’s decision to protect the teaching, the use and the primacy of Russian language in the republic, and have started offering free-of-charge courses of Tatar, no longer written in Cyrillic but in Latin, and lobbying for the signing of a new Kazan-Moscow agreement providing more autonomy to the republic.

Furthermore, the Islamist organization Hizb-ut Tahrir is very active in Tatarstan and other Tatar-inhabited republics, such as Crimea, and keeps operating despite the strict monitoring from the secret services and the police. The organization promotes the Islamization of the West and the re-establishment of the caliphate; in Russia it is banned since it has been a protagonist of terrorist attacks and religious violence since the early 2000s and pursues a pro-Tatar agenda. Nonetheless, HuT operates freely and legally in more than 50 countries worldwide.

Bashkortostan is affected by the secessionist wave as well. On 1990 it adopted a declaration of sovereignty to achieve full independence, the issue was eventually solved with an autonomy-granting agreement. But in recent years the secessionist goals have been resumed, on the background of the aggressive Turkish influence over the republic.

The republic is mostly inhabited by Tatars and Bashkirs, which together account for more than 60% of the population, and the relations with the ever-declining Russian minority are growingly more difficult and complicated by Moscow’s efforts to stop the cultural and linguistic de-Russification of the republic.

The society is being recorded as a dangerous ethnic-based polarization, which is particularly intense and is a source of clashes and misunderstandings between Russians and Bashkirs. The former reclaim their right not to see Russians disappearing in schools and other public spaces, while the latter are growingly indifferent towards the 1990 autonomy agreement and any central government’s interference.

The Siberian question

Russia would look profoundly different without Siberia: it would be resource-poor, geographically small-sized, Europe-focused, and it could not aspire to any global-level power status. Indeed, Siberia is Russia’s founding pillar: it makes up 77% of national territory, hosts the world-largest deposits of diamonds, rare earth elements, precious metals, such as gold, silver and platinum, base metals, such as nickel, copper and zinc, and contains about 70% of the country’s developed gas and oil fields.

Apart from being extremely resource-rich, Siberia has always been problematic due to its severe climate conditions which have been impeding any serious population growth-aiming and re-settlement-based plan and infrastructure development project since the imperial times. As a consequence of this, Siberia is the world’s most sparsely populated area with an average population density of three inhabitants per square kilometre: it accounts for 77% of the country’s size but is home of less than 27% of Russia’s population.

Even the most recent Kremlin’s effort to re-populate Siberia have failed and now the region is even more exposed to the risks coming from China’s aggressive presence related to wood exploitation and from the growingly, but still poorly followed, separatist movements.

In early 2010s bottom-up civic organizations started appearing in the main regions of Siberia, from Tomsk to Novosibirsk, to promote a regionalist agenda that took the form of awareness campaigns, neuromarketing-based merchandising, manifestations, academic events, online activism, and growing popular calls for referendums.

Among the events that worried the Kremlin the most was the seminar held at the Irkutsk State University focusing on Siberia’s possible independence which was sponsored by the US-Siberian Department of the institution and the “Regionalistic Alternative” movement, and the 2013 exhibition “The United States of Siberia”, held in Novosibirsk.

Separatism is taking root among Siberia’s inhabitants and is going beyond internet borders and universities and the above-mentioned Novosibirsk is confirming to be heart of this cultural ferment. The city hosted the recent era-most impressive separatist rally in 2011 and a replica, set to take place in August 2014, was eventually banned by the authorities.

Since then, both the central and local governments are monitoring very closely the regionalist and separatism environment as shown by the increasing pressure put on front-line activists Dmitry Margolin and Artyom Loskutov. Also officials accused of being too close to the pro-Siberian movement, such as Viktor Tolokonsky, are being experienced the same kind of pressure and forced to change attitude and/or moved away from their power positions.

What is next?

The Turkish protagonism over Northern Caucasus has been playing a key role in the re-appearance of secessionist movements in the region’s insurgency-plagued republics and is posing a growingly dangerous challenge for Moscow’s legitimacy before Turkic peoples. Anti-government protests are taking place more often, mosques and NGOs are backing the Ethno-nationalist resurgence, which is increasingly linked to both pan-Turkism and Islamic nationalism, and the relations with ethnic Russians are experiencing a severe worsening as a consequence.

To date, Russia’s response to secessionism and regionalism is being based on more centralization and suppression, but the risk is to exacerbate further the situation and unwittingly make the separatist season start. The Kremlin needs to re-think globally its strategy over the Turkic-inhabited world, which is not limited to the Russian-ruled North Caucasus, to avoid the fall into a new decade of bloody instability and to alienate the support from the post-Soviet “-stan countries”.

The situation is likely to worsen on the eve of the next presidential elections, set in 2024, which are to mark the entrance of the country into a new era full of both opportunities and dilemmas.

L'articolo Russia: Is a New Season of Separatism Coming? proviene da InsideOver.

What do the anti-Russian riots in Georgia have to do with the economic policy of Moscow? Why has President Putin‘s internal approval rating collapsed to historic lows? The answer to these and other questions provides a picture of today’s Russia that is not at all idyllic, and the reasons for this situation lie in the marginalizing policy of the West that the Kremlin has tried to cope with, albeit with a culpable delay.

Before going into an analysis of the socio-economic situation in Russia, we should give an overview of the current situation, and Georgia represents a relevant starting point.

The Caucasus: centre of the Russian sphere of influence

Georgia, a small Caucasian republic and part of the former Soviet monolith, has represented for Moscow, in recent years, the centre of its concerns regarding the control of its immediate geography, and as such it is closely linked to the fate of Moscow.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Tbilisi in recent days to protest against the presence of a deputy from Moscow in the Georgian parliament, turning back the clock by about ten years, when Russia took control of some autonomous regions of Georgia that it considered vital, which were occupied by the Georgian army at the time. The brief conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008 were resolved, like many other conflicts in former USSR countries, in a freezing of the situation, which stalled with no solution.

Historically, the whole turbulent Caucasian region has always been considered vital by Moscow and not just because of the presence of endless fossil fuel fields. The Caucasus is the southern gate of Moscow, the bridge between Russia and the Middle East, and above all the first “barrier” that protects the boundless expanses of the Sarmatic lowland, just as Ukraine is the gateway – and barrier – to the West.

The Chechen conflict, which has lasted for several decades and is still not completely resolved, with the last pockets of Islamic fundamentalist resistance still to be eliminated, is a good indicator of Moscow’s mood in dealing with the tensions that affect its fundamental sphere of influence, and Georgia, like the other republics of the former Soviet Central Asia, has the same importance.

Fear of the domino effect

The stability of those former USSR independent states under Kremlin domination is important, indeed essential, to Moscow’s politics and to its strategy to control its borders.

The reason for this particular posturing, which we could call imperialist, lies in the Russian fear of a “domino effect” which, starting in the periphery, could lead to a subversion of the internal order of Russia with a socio-economic revolt violent enough as to cancel Russian political/cultural structure.

Directly controlling neighbouring states, such as Georgia, Ukraine or Belarus – which will probably be the next crisis front for Moscow – becomes vital to curb “Western” penetration that would result in the end of the Russia created by President Putin, and the cultural leadership currently in power.

This concern is also, in part, key to the Russian intervention in Syria. Supporting and saving the government of al-Assad is not only conducive to the control of oil export routes or to safeguard the Russian fleet’s access to the Mediterranean through its base in Tartus, but it is also a way of stabilising an area very close to its own borders. This region, if it fell into the hands of the United States-friendly petro-monarchies of the Gulf, would become a foothold for penetration into Russian territory.

An economic war

With the attempt to subvert the regime in Damascus having failed, and with a conflict in Ukraine at a stalemate through Moscow’s desire not to let go of a region it considers vital, the United States can only try to isolate Russia economically. They can do this by leveraging on its intrinsic economic fragility, while at the same time trying to forge links with those former Soviet republics, such as Georgia or the Baltic Republics, which are rife with strong Russo-phobic sentiment.

International sanctions post-annexation of the Crimea have been detrimental to President Putin’s economic revival process, and have created a real socio-economic time-bomb, whose effects are only now emerging.

President Putin’s approval rating, even in the face of unpopular measures such as raising the retirement age by 5 years, has fallen to historic lows in the last 12 months, going from 77% in the last election to 64% last May, then down to a current 51% as reported by some opinion polls.

Russia seems to be going through a phase of profound popular discontent, which translates into street demonstrations, strikes and protests by certain employment sectors that until 2014 were solidly aligned with the President.

It cannot be ruled out, in fact we consider it highly likely, that this is the result that the United States hoped international sanctions would have, and as such the Kremlin has tried to remedy it, albeit with some culpable delay.

Putin’s “May Decree”

Is the economic situation really so grave? Russia is not Iran or Venezuela, which, despite depending on fossil fuels, have an economic/industrial system classed as backward not only by Western standards. The process of relaunching industry and the economy through new shipbuilding, infrastructures and social safety nets has been strongly penalised by the international sanctions but has nonetheless given a boost, from an organizational point of view at least, to the Russian economy.

However, what was done from 2014 to 2018 was not enough to circumvent the sanctions and some choices, such as the raising of the retirement age, were forced in order try to put a stop to the financial suffering caused by a similar manoeuvre, as we know, accompanied by a heavy devaluation of the rouble.

Therefore, social tensions, whose first signs may have perhaps been underestimated, are manifesting themselves in a serious way and the latest provision of President Putin to try to revive the economy further, the “May Decree”, could have come too late.

In the decree, the Kremlin plans to earmark 391 billion dollars (25,700 billion roubles) until the end of its mandate to give new impetus to the economy. In particular, between now and 2024, 8,000 billion roubles will be put aside to build infrastructure and deal with various social problems.

Infrastructure not connected to the energy sector will receive most of the funds (about 6,400 billion roubles), followed by the road network with 4,800 billion, the environment with 4,000 billion and demographics 3,100 billion. Within the Kremlin’s plan, 13,100 billion roubles will be allocated from the federal budget, 4,900 billion from the regional budget and 7,500 billion from “extra-budget sources”.

On paper this is a real economic revolution, which outweighs, in real terms, even the “five-year plans” of the old Soviet Union. A programme that is certainly ambitious but that seems, in our opinion, to arrive late given the current Russian social situation, struggling with tensions never before seen in the Putin era.

There is a serious risk that for the population these will remain only empty promises, as the fruits of this new Russian economic strategy will be seen in at least five years – if ever – too long for a population that wants reforms and quality of life now.

Translation by Laura Flower

L'articolo From the Caucasus to Sanctions: This is How the West Besieges Putin proviene da InsideOver.