Grappling With Reality From the Baltic to the Bering
By:
The first quarter of this century has proven that relations within Eurasia as a region and its relations with the rest of the world are unpredictable and volatile. The factors dividing this region often appear far more salient than any similarities. The work of the Eurasia team at The Jamestown Foundation is dedicated to understanding the challenges and divergences of the actors and people throughout this area in their own words and on their own terms. Such work is essential now more than ever.
One of the core experiences that this entire region shares is a simultaneous and individual new beginning after breaking from an oppressive past in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For many, the task of achieving the goals and expectations developed at that time remains in progress and, for some, has reached an inflection point. While not all comprehensive, the following briefly highlights inflection points from examples currently on my own analytical radar that illustrate a few essential themes and developments across Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia.
Unexpected Futures
The appointment of Vladimir Putin as acting president of Russia after the sudden departure of Boris Yeltsin in 1999 sparked much anticipation for what the future of Russia and the region would hold in the new millennium. Putin’s ascent to power was, at the time, considered by world leaders as a possible turning point that could usher in hope for positive international relations, stability, growth, and democratic progress (see The Monitor, January 3, 2000). Over time, however, Russia’s trajectory has become one of tightening domestic control and human rights violations, mounting tensions with the West, and wars against its neighbors.
Ukraine is experiencing such a critical point in its long struggle to defend its democracy and independence, starting with the 2004 Orange Revolution, continuing with the 2014 Maidan Revolution, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the conflict in the Donbas region, and, more recently, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since 2022, the people of Ukraine have come to more fully understand “what independence is. How difficult it is to revive it. How difficult it is to defend it,” as argued by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on last year’s Independence Day (President of Ukraine, August 24, 2024).
Ukraine’s defense of its territorial integrity and independence has created a ripple effect across the region. This is evident as Poland is attempting to balance its close relationship with the United States and its commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) amid a changing attitude in Washington toward the United States’ role in European security (see EDM, February 20). Warsaw remains firm in its support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and NATO membership and is wary that a reduced U.S. military presence in Europe could create a leadership vacuum, leaving Eastern Europe vulnerable to Russian aggression. This aggression has recently been extended toward the Baltic Sea and the Arctic as Russian hybrid attacks against critical undersea infrastructure are inducing new types of proactive cooperation among European and NATO partners (see EDM, February 5; U.K. Ministry of Defense, February 20). In another response to Russian malign interference, all three Baltic states have desynchronized from the Soviet-era electricity grid, BRELL, opting to join their partners in the European Union via Poland’s LitPol Link (see EDM, February 20).
Geopolitical Alignments
The Baltic states’ decision to pursue deeper integration with the West has often placed them at odds with Russia as well as with nearby Belarus. Under President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, incumbent since his election in 1994, Belarus has teetered between authoritarianism and partial elements of democracy. At times, a few positive indicators of Belarusian democracy have appeared in the form of civil society activism and improving relations with Europe and Western countries. In early 2020, the United States named its first ambassador to Belarus since 2008, and then-U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo visited Lukashenka in Minsk (President of the Republic of Belarus, February 1, 2020; U.S. Embassy in Belarus, accessed February 20). Since then, however, the nature of Belarusian foreign policy, human rights, and prospects for democratization have deteriorated. Sham presidential elections, nationwide mobilization in 2020 by civil society and the democratic opposition, subsequent political repressions and human rights violations by the government, and Minsk’s complicity with Russia in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine are evidence of this backsliding.
Compared to Belarus, a different trajectory has developed in the South Caucasus. Armenia’s era of attempting a multi-vector foreign policy doctrine, known as complementarity, appears to be coming to an end (Republic of Armenia, National Security Strategy of the Republic of Armenia, 2007). Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has increasingly aligned with the West, particularly the United States, as he emphasized in a recent visit to Washington that “Armenia is striving for democracy, we are trying to deepen and make our democracy institutional, make it sustainable” (The Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia, February 7). This comes in parallel with the freezing of Armenia’s participation in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) last year and the recent adoption by the Armenian parliament of a bill on accession to the European Union (Armenpress, February 11, 12). In Moscow, this is considered to be “the beginning of Armenia’s possible exit from the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU),” led by Russia, because membership in the European Union would, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, be “incompatible” with membership in the EAEU (TASS, February 12; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, February 14).
Pashinyan has also recently proposed to dissolve the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, which is dedicated to resolving the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh and co-chaired by France, Russia, and the United States (CivilNet, January 9; Armenian Weekly, February 19). The proposal is part of a twelve-point plan to establish “lasting stability and peace in the region,” which one Azerbaijan official has characterized as “just a facade” (Facebook/Nikol Pashinyan, January 9; Trend.az, February 13). This comes as cracks are appearing in the relationship between Baku and Moscow as skepticism grows over the reliability of Russia as an international partner given its lack of transparency and accountability when an Azerbaijani Airlines flight was accidentally downed by a Russian surface-to-air missile in December (see EDM, January 15).
Mistrust, Interference, and Invasions
Armenia and Azerbaijan’s neighbor in the South Caucasus, Georgia, is familiar with Russian military hostilities. In 2008, “Europe’s first war of the 21st century” broke out when Russian military forces entered Georgia to support the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (Emerson, Michael. Post-Mortem on Europe’s First War of the 21st Century, August 2008). For many in Georgia, the struggle for full sovereignty continues with the recent election of the “Georgian Dream” party, which suspended integration discussions with the European Union and enacted new legislation restricting the freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and human rights (see EDM, February 11, December 10, 2024). As former President of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili argues, “This is not what the people of Georgia dreamed of for the past 30 years after gaining independence” (JAMnews, January 25). Protests have continued since late 2024 after the suspension of the EU accession process (Civil.ge, February 19).
In Romania, allegations of Russian interference have called the legitimacy of the government and the recent 2024 presidential election into question. After President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence documents indicating that Russia was behind thousands of TikTok accounts that were interfering with the election process by increasing the popularity of Calin Georgescu, the Romanian Constitutional Court canceled the elections (Romania Journal, November 28, 2024; President of Romania; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, December 4, 2024). Since then, tens of thousands of protestors have demonstrated against the canceled elections (Romania Journal, January 13, February 10). On February 10, one day before he was due to face an impeachment vote, Iohannis resigned.
Political unrest and democratic experimentation have been a theme in Kyrgyzstan, often referred to as Central Asia’s “island of democracy” since its independence (24.kg, November 22, 2018; Investment Portal of the Kyrgyz Republic, July 11, 2019; see Jamestown Perspectives, July 1, 2024). Kyrgyzstan’s political environment, however, has grown increasingly repressive in recent years. The Kyrgyz government issued a new “Law on Amendments to the Law on Non-Commercial Organizations,” which took effect in April 2024 (Supreme Council of Kyrgyzstan (Жогорку Кеңеш, Jogorku Kenesh, in English here, March 14, 2024). The law requires nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the country to register as foreign agents, including those advocating for human rights and independent media, if they receive funding from abroad or are “performing the functions of a foreign representative.” Reportedly, 90 percent of the text’s wording is derived from the foreign agents law adopted by Russia in 2012, which was updated and expanded with Federal Law No. 255-FZ in 2022 (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 9, 2024). Further to this, President Sadyr Japarov’s administration has enacted an “unprecedented crackdown” on human rights and civil society, targeting journalists, activists, and NGOs (Amnesty International, February 8, 2024; 24.kg, December 18, 2024). Human rights organizations around the world have called the detention and imprisonment of journalists in Kyrgyzstan “a new, severe blow to … fundamental freedoms” (Amnesty International, October 9, 2024).
In neighboring Kazakhstan, where the “highest degree of democracy is the triumph of the rule of law,” the overnight doubling of the price of liquified petroleum gas in 2022 caused popular anger. This prompted a violent crackdown by President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev with the aid of CSTO troops and the “complete withdrawal of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev from Kazakhstani politics” (see EDM, January 20, 2022; Astana Times, January 3). Elections in Kazakhstan are considered neither free nor fair, yet Tokayev has since issued an Action Plan on Human Rights and Rule of Law to deliver a “New and Fair Kazakhstan” (President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, June 3, 2022; Astana Times, December 11, 2024). The idea of a New Kazakhstan has mostly been symbolic, as little action has taken place, and “the Nazarbayev family’s people are sitting in the old posts” (Congressional Research Service, August 16, 2024; ORDA, January 15).
Conclusion
Given these complexities, the first quarter of the twenty-first century has demonstrated that regional dynamics are informed by far more than the actions of a single, powerful state. The issues examined provide a glimpse of what will be a new editor’s column called Panorama as I join Jamestown as a Fellow and the new Editor of Eurasia Daily Monitor and Eurasia Digest. The goal of Panorama is to bring together broad outlooks, as presented in this piece, to an analytic understanding of the facts and the ways in which they are experienced and understood by actors in the region. Having contributed to and been an avid reader of Eurasia Daily Monitor for several years now while conducting my own research and work throughout Central and East Europe and Eurasia, I am eager to join both new colleagues and long-time friends as we continue the Jamestown tradition of providing primary-source analysis on global developments of strategic importance to the United States and its allies. Dealing with reality is to identify the pursuit of sovereignty and independence for what they are and recognizing that there are those who would threaten these unalienable human aspirations.
