A fourth issue was NATO expansion: to Moscow’s consternation, NATO—under American leadership—actively recruited and incorporated former Warsaw bloc countries and even former Soviet republics. Russia grew increasingly alarmed as NATO expanded eastward, encompassing former Warsaw Pact countries and former Soviet republics in the Baltics, with the ex-communist lands coming to comprise 40 per cent of NATO membership. Nor did the campaign show any signs of stopping: the United States vigorously supported the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia, especially after their ‘orange’ and ‘rose’ revolutions brought pro-Western regimes to power. Some European members of NATO opposed the American démarche, partly because of Russia’s opposition but also because neither Ukraine nor Georgia met the prerequisites for membership. Washington none the less extracted a NATO declaration of ‘intent’ to initiate the process of admission to NATO. Putin in turn protested that some in the West ‘have not been able to move on from the stereotypes of bloc thinking and prejudices, which are a carry-over from the epoch of global confrontation’. All this led to a famous Putin outburst about American hegemonism in a Munich conference in February 2007: ‘The United States has overstepped its borders in all spheres—economic, political, and humanitarian—and has imposed itself on other states.’
The mounting tensions with Washington encouraged Moscow to strengthen its ties to Europe. Not only was the latter its main trade partner, but it was also a natural partner for Russia as a ‘European’ country. Closer relations, however, proved elusive, in large measure because of recurring reports about military abuses in Chechnya and other human rights violations—which Moscow dismissed as unacceptable interference in its internal affairs. Tensions were also inflamed by Russia’s conflict with Ukraine over natural gas exports: Moscow’s decision to shut down the gas pipelines in January 2006 and January 2009 caused considerable hardship in Europe, which relied on Russia for a quarter of its natural gas and suspected that Russia was not only putting pressure on Ukraine but also indulging in political pressure and blackmail.
Amidst these complications, Putin—the ‘Europeanist’—gradually began to reorient strategy to the East, especially China. The latter was a major target of arms exports and shared many of Russia’s foreign policy aims—especially, its concern about the ‘unipolar hegemonism’ of the United States, the latter’s penchant for ‘humanitarian intervention’ and violation of state sovereignty, NATO enlargement, and the Islamist fundamentalism which threatened both Russia and China. In 2001, the ‘Shanghai Five’, established five years earlier by Russia, China, and three former Soviet republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan), was reconstituted as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), tasked not only with promoting economic relations but also with coordinating policy and enhancing mutual ties. In 2004 SCO established an ‘anti-terrorist centre’ to combat the radical Islamist movements and the following year resolved to reduce American influence and military presence in the region. In August 2005 Russia and China held their first joint military exercises, underscoring that SCO and their bilateral ties had moved significantly beyond the economic sphere.
The Putin government, with little success, sought to maintain its influence in the ‘near abroad’—the former Soviet republics—partly because these countries now held a sizeable Russian diaspora, partly for geopolitical reasons. It had no success whatsoever in the Baltic states, which hastened to join the European Union and NATO and flagrantly violated the rights of ethnic Russians on their territories. Relations with Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia steadily deteriorated. In Moldova’s case, Russia continued to support Trans-Dniester, a pro-Russian secessionist territory; despite agreements to withdraw Russian forces, Russia continued to deploy a military contingent and support the region’s demands for autonomy. Relations with Ukraine sharply deteriorated after the ‘orange revolution’ in late 2004, both because Moscow had backed the losing candidate for president and because the new government in Kiev tilted strongly toward the West. Apart from historical enmity (including Ukrainian demands that golodomor, the famine which accompanied collectivization in the early 1930s, be recognized as genocide), there were other, more urgent contemporary issues. One was the status of the Crimea (which Khrushchev generously transferred to Ukraine in 1954, but which had a population composed primarily of ethnic Russians). The two sides had earlier agreed to ‘share’ the Black Sea fleet, but that too became a point of contention. Economics, above all the price of natural gas, also played a role. Given Ukraine’s Western tilt, Moscow saw no reason to continue Ukraine’s 60 per cent discount on natural gas prices (a subsidy amounting to three to five billion dollars a year); Kiev’s refusal to pay old debts and to negotiate new rates led Russia to shut off gas deliveries on two occasions, which ended in temporary agreements, but did not remove the question as a source of future conflict. Relations with Georgia, especially after the ‘rose revolution’ in 2003, also became increasingly acrimonious. As Georgia strengthened its ties to the West, Russia bolstered support for two secessionist areas of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, populated by a non-Georgian majority; Russian peacekeepers had enabled both territories to remain virtually autonomous since the early 1990s. In August 2008, in a bid to reassert control (and with the promise of American support), Georgia launched an offensive in South Ossetia, but quickly suffered a devastating defeat at the hand of Russian forces. Russia’s action elicited much criticism, especially from the American administration, adding to the rancour in Russian-American relations. Russia (and only one other state, Nicaragua) formally recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, to the fury of officials in Washington and Tbilisi. Moscow’s action, however, should not have come as a surprise. Two years earlier, as the West prepared to recognize an independent Kosovo, Putin warned that such an action would provide a precedent: ‘If someone believes that Kosovo can be granted full state independence, then why should we refuse the same to Abkhazia or South Ossetia?’
Some areas of the former Soviet Union, however, maintained close ties to Moscow. Belarus, indeed, even sought some kind of quasi-political union; while such proposals were current in the 1990s, Putin was less enamoured and the public likewise became increasingly sceptical, given the Belarusian economy and the ill repute of its mercurial president Aleksandr Lukashenko. Moscow attached far greater importance to its relations with the countries of Central Asia, partly because of the sympathies of Russian and Russified populations there, but also because they shared a common desire to contain Islamist fundamentalism and terrorism.