In the Ukraine war, Russia is now trying to consolidate what it has conquered and convey determination with "referendums" about the annexation of the occupied territories.

But the country's reputation and influence have also been shaken in the post-Soviet space, which President Vladimir Putin sees as a sphere of influence.

The longer the war binds and reduces Russia's military and political forces, the weaker the country's role as a regulatory power in the region, which is already being challenged by China and Turkey.

Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

  • Follow I follow

Since Russian troops withdrew from large parts of the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, allegedly even fleeing “in panic”, two old conflicts between former Soviet republics have escalated into new rounds.

More than 200 people have died in Azerbaijan's struggle with Armenia in the past week;

they were the heaviest clashes since the most recent outbreak of war between the two states, in which more than 6,500 people were killed on both sides in autumn 2020.

In addition, at least 100 people have been killed in the border area between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan since the middle of last week.

There are clashes over and over again in the struggle for land and water.

But the images of destruction from the area are less reminiscent of earlier skirmishes this time,

As different as the conflicts in the South Caucasus and Central Asia are, what they all have in common is that earlier escalations were ended with Russian involvement.

Such is the ceasefire brokered by Moscow in November 2020 between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The latter is a member of the Russian-dominated defense alliance ODKB, and Russian soldiers are stationed in Armenia.

In the conflict over the Nagorno Karabakh region, Moscow traditionally secured influence by being on good terms with Armenia's enemies, for example by selling weapons to Baku.

Already in the 2020 war, Russia's old authority in the conflict seemed endangered when Baku won with Turkish backing;

the regime of ruler Ilham Aliyev sees violence as a means of enforcing demands on Yerevan.

Putin may have had reasons of his own in 2020

Resentment in Armenia about Russia

In the most recent escalation, however, in which the Republic of Armenia was at stake, but Armenian calls for the protecting power and the ODKB only resulted in appeals to both sides for moderation and an observation mission, Putin gave the impression even less that he could slow down Aliyev and his Turkish allies .

In Armenia, for example, there is displeasure with Russia.

In Yerevan, during the visit of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, last Sunday there was a demonstration (albeit a rather small one by Armenian standards with a few hundred participants) for the exit from the ODKB.

Pelosi, the senior US visitor to the country since 1991, gave Armenians what they thirst for: she condemned recent "attacks" by Azerbaijan, laid flowers at the memorial to those of many countries,

so the United States, classified as a genocide massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I down, tears dabbed from his face.

The development is not good for Moscow's position in the South Caucasus, and the ODKB appears again as a "paper tiger".

At the beginning of the year, Putin pulled off a coup with the first deployment of “peacekeeping troops” in the history of the defense alliance. At the beginning of January, he gave the ODKB practical significance by deploying it during the unrest in Kazakhstan.

Russia - which provided the majority of the troops - appeared as a "gendarme" in the alliance area, the ODKB as a multilateral cloak for Moscow's claim to leadership.

However, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are both members of the alliance, formally allies, and both founding members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which Putin wants to upgrade for his “multipolar world order”.

During the organization's summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, which took place during the recent clashes, the leaders of both states,

Tajik Emomali Rahmon and Kyrgyz Sadyr Shaparov agreed on a ceasefire, but fighting continued.

The Moscow-based ODKB secretariat offered to "mediate" between the two, which didn't help either.

If Russia wanted to establish “its” alliances as a counterweight to the West, Putin would have to work now to quickly end escalations like the recent one.

According to the Kremlin, Putin, who was also present in Samarkand, called Rahmon and Schaparov on the phone last Sunday and called for "no further escalation to be allowed".

The words came late, recalling appeals from the United States, the EU and the United Nations.

A new Kyrgyz-Tajik agreement followed on Monday evening, and the situation appeared calm on Tuesday;

but a new escalation should only be a matter of time.

While Russia risks losing its image of strength in the Ukraine war, its Central Asian partners for their own development have long been paying tribute to a country