Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 21 – Yana Amelina, a
well-connected Russian analyst, says that Moscow’s annexation of Crimea is “a precedent
for South Osetia and the entire post-Soviet space,” the most expansive Russian
interpretation yet of what Putin intends and an indication that the breakaway
republic in Georgia is now in the Kremlin’s crosshairs.
In two articles on the Regnum.ru this
week, Amelina, who is a senior analyst at the influential Russian Institute for
Strategic Studies and a frequent bellwether of Moscow policy particularly in
the Caucasus, makes it clear that Crimea is a beginning and not an end (regnum.ru/news/polit/1779297.html
and regnum.ru/news/polit/1780438.html).
According
to Amelina, the results of the Crimean referendum “leave not the slightest
chance for misinterpretation.” The
peninsula’s residents voted overwhelmingly for joining with Russia, and the
Crimean Tatar leadership proved unable to keep participation rates down, despite
the hopes of its “Kievan and Western fellow-travelers.”
Given
the opposition of the existing leaders of the Crimean Tatars to the new order,
Amelina continues, “the Russian and Crimean leadership will deal with a new
generation of Crimean-Tatar youth, one which pragmatically assesses the current
and future status of their people and sees it as being within the Russian
state.”
Of
course that does not mean “any repressions or deportations,” she says, “but any
further efforts to use the Crimean Tatars as a weapon against the ethnic
Russian majority of the peninsula” and especially its Islamic element will be
suppressed and “ended” by the new authorities.
“The
non-recognition of the results of the Crimean referendum by the West, Ukraine
and Georgia,” the Russian analyst continues, “demonstrates
only the failure by these states to understand both their own place in the
world and that this very world has irreversible change and never again will be
what it was before.”
Moreover, everyone needs to
recognize that there are three reasons why “Russia in no way can be limited to
a single Crimea.” First, she says, there
are millions of Russian speakers in Ukraine who are suffering from repression
and need to be protected. “Moscow will
not leave its brothers to the caprice of fate.”
Second, Moscow must “solve the fate
of Trandniestria” now caught “between Ukraine and Moldova, and “this will be
possible only after the re-unification of Russia and Novo-Rossiya,” in short,
although she does not use this term, by Russian occupation of all of southern
Ukraine and possibly more.
And third, “the entire post-Soviet
space, above all in the Trans-Caucasus direction awaits reformation” by Russian
action. Georgia which has been Ukraine’s
ally should “reflect upon the further existence of its state or more precisely of
what [currently] remains of it.” Given Iranian and Turkish interest in a
transportation corridor in this region, “’the Georgian question’ again is
acquiring particular importance.”
The “Crimean precedent” is “extremely
important not only for Russia but for South Osetia and Abkhazia. The South
Osetians have long wanted to join the Russian Federation, and this can be
managed by a referendum which would allow them to join Russia not as part of
North Osetia but as yet another federal subject.
Abkhazia has been less interested,
preferring instead to seek to strengthen its “own independence.” But that is
not the end of the story, Amelina insists. Instead,, there “exist a whole
series of possibilities for strengthening inter-state relations,” including
confederative or association agreements.
According to Amelina, “the return of
Crimea to the Russian Federation has essentially strengthened the position of
Russia in the world, has boosted the Eurasian integration policy to a new
level, and has significantly increased the prestige of the Eurasian Economic
Union and the Russian Federation as a whole.”
That development, she says, means that
what is required now is filling these institutions with a more clearly defined “ideological
and worldview content,” the next step of what she describes as the process by
which Russia is restoring “its former geopolitical power” and preparing to go
beyond that.
And she concludes with a pointed
warning to Georgia. After Crimea, she
says, “the issue of the further fragmentation of the Georgian state is acquiring
particular importance. It is no accident
that there are concerns in Tbilisi that after resolving the Crimean issue, Moscow
‘will turn in the Georgian direction,’” and complete what it began in 2008 by
occupying Georgia and “establishing there a marionette pro-Russian regime.”
Given that under current
circumstances, “this is the only way not to allow the Euro-Atlantic integration
of a neighboring state,” the RISI analyst says,
“such a variat is becoming the foundation for the definition of Russian
strategy regarding Georgia.”
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