SIx Other Countries Putin Might Have His Eye On

There several other countries of the former Soviet Union large Russian speaking populations which like Crimea Vladimir Putin use the threat of harm against those people as a reason to annex them into Russia.

 

Eastern Ukraine

The most immediate, alarming question is whether Putin has sights on pushing into the tinderbox of eastern Ukraine — heavy with the ethnic Russians he claims to be protecting and industrially vital to the Ukrainian economy.

Russia has said that it has no designs on the Ukrainian mainland. But it has put 20,000 troops, heavy armor and aircraft on the Ukrainian border, raising serious concerns at the Pentagon, U.S. officials said Thursday. One Pentagon official told NBC News: “It’s like they’re on a hair trigger.”

Moldova and Kazakhstan

Russia experts say these are the next two countries to watch. Neither is part of NATO, which guarantees that it will defend against an attack on any of its member states.

Moldova, a sliver of 3.6 million people between Ukraine and Romania, has a rebellious region of Russian speakers called Transnistria that considers itself independent but is not recognized by the rest of the world.

Russia already has a small contingent of so-called peacekeepers there, looking after old Soviet weaponry. The president of Moldova warned Russia this week not to try anything.

“The Moldovan government has tremendous concern right now about what the situation in Ukraine is going to mean for them,” said James Goldgeier, dean of the School of International Service and American University.

Kazakhstan, which sits between Russia and China, has a large percentage of ethnic Russians — roughly a quarter.

The president there, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is a strong advocate of Kazakh sovereignty but has “played both sides of it,” Pomeranz said. Last week he told Putin over the phone that he understood Putin’s logic in Ukraine.

As Kazakhstan has strengthened its national identity in the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, some ethnic Russians have come to feel that their status and their role in the country’s affairs have been diminished.

The Baltics

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are all members of NATO, and are sufficiently anxious about Russia that Vice President Joe Biden made a trip to Lithuania this week to reassure leaders there. The defense minister of France is headed to the region on Friday to talk about ways to boost their security.

Russia made waves on Wednesday when an official expressed concern for the large minority of ethnic Russians in Estonia, the same justification it gave for invading Crimea.

Biden told the president of Estonia that the U.S. may conduct military training exercises in the region. The United States has already added fighter jets to patrol the skies over the Baltics.

Putin has made clear, and signaled again in a defiant speech on Tuesday, that he is deeply irritated by NATO’s expansion to the east. By menacing the Baltic states, he may think he can sow doubt about “whether their membership is worth what they think it is,” Goldgeier said.