Russia’s Regional Policy: Unlearned Lessons of Local Conflicts

The goal of this article is to identify Russia's policy options during local conflicts in the post-Soviet space.Our research is empirical.The research question is how Russia chose its "involvement" options in post-Soviet local conflicts?The independent variable is Russian regional politics; the dependent variable is local conflict in a post-Soviet country (cases of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Chechnya).The hypothesis is that Russian politics played a significant role in post-Soviet local conflicts.Research triangulation was achieved through the use of several qualitative methods (documentary investigation, collecting data from media and secondary sources, Internet research, and discourse analysis).The first option of Russia's actions in the post-Soviet space is to fuel a local conflict and play the role of a "Peacemaker" to solidify its influence in the region.Russia employed such tactics in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia in the initial stage.The second option is "Invasion and the Creation of Quasi-States," which was applied in Chechnya, as well as in Abkhazia and South Ossetia after the Five-Day War against Georgia.A similar attempt was made in Ukraine under the project "Novorossiya," but it ended with limited success.Instead of a quasi-state stretching upon the entire southeastern part of Ukraine (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Kherson regions, and Crimea), the Kremlin managed to create only "the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics" (DPR and LPR), while Crimea, due to its special military-strategic value, was annexed by the Russian Federation through a rigged referendum.By using local conflicts, Russia seeks to regain its status as a great power.To achieve this, Russia plays out the same scenario in the post-Soviet space: igniting ethnic tensions, deploying a limited contingent, and endorsing territorial changes in favor of allies.The same instruments were applied again in Ukraine, but the international community failed to learn the lessons from previous conflicts and was unable to stop Putin before the onset of largescale aggression.