There are also economic motives behind Russia’s imperial hold on the post-Soviet space. Russia has worked hard to maintain the post-Soviet states in its economic fold by its Eurasian Customs Union and Eurasian Economic Union projects. However, the alternative of EU membership also held appeal for a number of CIS states, including Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, which defied Moscow and started negotiating association agreements and working to meet the conditionality requirements. It is no coincidence that flashpoints between Russia on the one hand and Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Ukraine on the other occurred when these countries were seeking closer ties to the EU. The resulting conflicts and challenges to Moldova’s, Georgia’s, and Ukraine’s territorial integrity will serve as a significant hindrance to these states’ aspirations to join the EU in the future.
When assessing Moscow’s economic interests and motives for reimperialization, it is imperative to understand that the Russian economy is driven by natural resources. Countries that either possess such resources or provide land and sea routes to export them to other markets are and historically have been potential targets of Russia’s expansion. Through the territories of Ukraine and Belarus, pipelines export Russian energy sources to European markets. The pipeline crossing Ukraine transports up to half of Russian gas exports to Europe, while the ports of Crimea offer quick access to the eastern Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Middle East. The ports of the Baltic States have historically served to transport Russia’s oil and oil products to European markets until the mid-2000s. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan themselves possess vast resources of coal, oil, and gas. Through Georgian territory runs the competing Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, the second longest of the former Soviet Union, which brings Caspian (instead of Russian) oil to Turkey and the Mediterranean.47 Russia’s own vast energy resources have served as powerful means of influence in the near abroad. Members of the Russian diaspora have played their part in this great game of energy influence. Looking across the CIS states, the Baltic States, and beyond, politicians and businessmen loyal to Moscow (often but not always ethnically Russian and with connections to the Kremlin) have benefited from lucrative energy contracts and advantageous deals.48 Corrupt deal-making has allowed Moscow to put in its pocket a number of politicians not only from its near abroad but increasingly from the EU.49
This raises the question why Moscow would opt for potentially more costly and challenging militarized and territorially acquisitive neo-imperialism, when its own energy levers have enabled it to maintain an economic imperial project in neighboring countries. The answer here probably lies in the fact that Europe and even some former Soviet states have been increasingly pursuing strategies of energy diversification. Since 2009, EU regulation has constrained Russia’s gas monopoly in member states through its Third Energy Package, which has already resulted in splitting up some of Gazprom’s European assets. In 2015, after a three-year investigation, the European Commission released its antitrust charges against Gazprom’s practices. The Baltic States and Ukraine among others are looking to liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals to gain access to alternative sources of gas, while Central Asian and Caucasus states have seen some success in leveraging their own energy resources and exporting them via non–Russian-controlled pipelines to China and Europe. Meanwhile, in North America, the U.S. shale boom has made the United States into a leading global producer of oil and gas in the 2010s. American LNG export and import technologies will make it possible for countries to import gas from almost anywhere in the world, which in the future could reduce dependence on old Russian-controlled gas pipelines. Finally, while Moscow has still been able to maintain the loyalty of some post-Soviet regimes with sweetened energy or economic deals struck with the elites and Kremlin-friendly interest groups, today the publics of a number of post-Soviet states are increasingly (though not always consistently) calling for transparency, reforms, and change. In some regards, Putin’s regime has less leverage over the post-Soviet space than that of Yeltsin, but rather than peacefully withdrawing, it raises the specter of further aggression via the remaining lever of Russian compatriots.
Moscow’s efforts at imperial revival will certainly incur economic costs. While Russia’s ongoing energy stranglehold has somewhat curtailed the West’s ability to impose biting economic sanctions following Crimea’s annexation in 2014, even moderate sanctions made a significant impact in less than a year. Throughout 2014, Russia’s economic and fiscal numbers took a beating with the ruble trading at record lows, while inflation soared and the Central Bank raised interest rates. In 2014 official capital flight from Russia totaled more than $130 billion, but unofficial estimates were much higher.50 Collapsing global oil prices of 2014 brought more woes, since oil and gas revenues are the backbone of Russia’s economy, contributing to more than half of its revenues. The year closed with global oil prices trading at a five-year low of $60 per barrel, in strong contrast to the Russo-Georgian war when in July 2008 oil was trading at its record peak of $147 per barrel. According to the Russian Finance Ministry in 2014, Russia is poised to lose some $140 billion a year due to declining oil prices and Western sanctions.51 Indeed, the re-imperialization trajectory is easier for Moscow to implement when oil prices are high and Europe is energy vulnerable, but as the case of Crimea demonstrates, economic costs do not deter aggression.
These costs notwithstanding, there has been no sign that either economic pressure or international isolation has deterred Russia’s expansionist strategy post-Crimea. This suggests that historical-ideological, domestic political, and security issues, rather than economic drivers, have been paramount in Putin’s efforts to challenge the borders of the former Soviet republics. As the seemingly more liberal President Medvedev stated in August 2008 after the Georgian war, “We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a new Cold War.”52 Likewise, both policy developments of 2014 and 2015 suggest (and Kremlin insiders confirm) that Putin is less interested in the economy than in great power politics, and most of all interested in remaining in power.53 Since Crimea, Moscow has been increasingly bolder in sending its troops and weapons to eastern Ukraine despite NATO’s pressure, the tragedy of the downing of Flight MH17 by Russian-supported militias, the Minsk I cease-fire agreement, the rocket attack on civilian targets in Ukraine’s southern city of Mariupol, and even the Minsk II agreement of February 2015. Moreover, the intensity and gravity of incidents involving Russian and Western militaries and security agencies visibly increased. In 2014 there were over forty incidents from the Baltic Sea to the High North and Canada, which involved violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles, narrowly avoided midair collisions, close encounters at sea, simulated attack runs, and other dangerous actions occurring on a regular basis.54 In October 2014, NATO reported that it had intercepted more than one hundred Russian aircraft, three times more than in 2013—many of them intruders into the airspace of the Baltic States.55 Indeed, there are no signs to suggest that high economic and diplomatic costs will lead Putin to abandon his imperial revival project in the years to come.
OVERVIEW
The next chapter sets out my proposed seven phases of the reimperialization policy trajectory. The discussion will highlight the tight connection between Russia’s softer means of influence and its hard power tactics that may result in territorial annexation. The proposed trajectory should be viewed as an explanatory tool rather than a timetable for further Russian adventurism or expansionism.