Moscow Failing to Maintain Its Position in Post-Soviet Space Let Alone Expand It, Platoshkin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 9 – The election in Kazakhstan and the political turmoil in Moldova, both reflecting the expansion of Western clout in the post-Soviet space, Nikolay Platoshkin says, highlight the Kremlin’s lack of a policy toward the CIS countries and its “ostrich-like” approach to its loss of influence there.

            The specialist on international relations at Moscow’s Humanities University argues that “if Russia will continue its ostrich-like policy in the CIS countries, sticking its head in the sand where it seems everything is warm and good,” things are going to get worse because “Russia now has no policy for the CIS” (https://svpressa.ru/politic/article/235077/).

                “We support some odious regimes which the people then overthrow as in Armenia,” he says. “Thus, we have problems. And we bet on such strange figures who are not pro-Russian.” Moscow should be openly supporting pro-Russian people like Dodon in Moldova especially in the upcoming parliamentary elections given the weakness of the office of the president there.

            Russia is losing influence not only because the US and the EU are seeking to expand theirs but because the Kremlin isn’t fighting for it. “Our ruling elite … lives in another world: they live in Miami, on the French coast or somewhere else. What is some Kazakhstan for them? They are interested only in having money and spending it in the West.

            Much could be done if there were political will and a desire to do so, Plastoshkin says, but there isn’t much of either.  Moscow talks about imposing sanctions on Ukraine but it hasn’t gone very far lest its business types lose money, and it has failed to respond to Nazarbayev’s decision to shift to the Latin script and discriminate against Russian speakers.

            Many people in the Russian government like Gref and Golikova, the Moscow specialist says, “want to spit on the CIS. They are anti-Soviet; for them, the Soviet Union is something hateful. And they view any integration processes in the CIS as moves toward the restoration of the USSR. They are against that.”