Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 24 – Moscow is “completely ignoring” the soft power resources it still has in the former Soviet republics, a neglect that has created “an ideological vacuum that “other players, including the European Union, Turkey and even China” are rushing to fill, often with remarkable success, Vsevood Shimov says.
The advisor to the president of the Russian Association of Baltic Research says that this is clear from the example of Ukraine when “what would seem to have been the closest country to Russia culturally and historically in the course of a few years was transformed into a bastion of Russophobia” (svpressa.ru/politic/article/426680/).
Other commentators like Dmitry Rodionov of Svobodnaya Pressa and Sergey Prokopenko, an historian at the Belarusian State University agree. They say that all the post-Soviet states have to maneuver between Russia, on the one hand, and Russia’s competitors, on the
“The ‘cautious’ position of the former Soviet republics regarding Russia and Belarus,” Prokopenko says, “is arising because of the uncertainty of the political elites of these countries about the final victory of Russia in its conflict with the West,” and because they cannot afford to break completely with Russia regardless of their assessment of its prospects in that conflict.
At the same time, he continues, “none of the elites of these countries needs an unqualified victory of Russia as that would strengthen beyond measure Russia in the international arena and lead to an increase on themselves of pressure by the Russian Federation.” Consequently, they will seek to strike positions in between.
And Prokopenko concludes: Russia will have “real levels of influence” on this situation “only after the victorious conclusion of its conflict with the West.” But he does not say what will happen if Russia doesn’t manage to achieve that.
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