Communist historiography loved the sonorous names inherited from the rhetoric of the Civil War. For example, “Young Soviet Republic in the fiery ring of fronts”.
Now geopolitical terms are more in vogue: “Indirect actions on the enemy’s periphery”, as well as “Creating an arc of instability.” And for rhetoric, all these actions that strike Russia on the map with the index finger are called the struggle for democracy on the territory of the former USSR. Without democracy today nowhere.
The intensification of peripheral actions began a year and a half before the official start of the current Ukrainian campaign. It began at the end of the summer of 2020 in Belarus, where, after the presidential elections, which expectedly renewed Lukashenka’s mandate, with the active participation of Poland, there was a hush-up that lasted about six months. Lukashenka showed himself to be anti-Yanukovych, that is, he inexorably firmly defended his post, proceeding from the fact that concessions to the revolutionaries are disastrous – and the attack was repulsed, the opposition fled to Poland.
A new struggle for democracy has unfolded not in the northwest, but in the southeast. At the very beginning of 2022, Kazakhstan flared up, where the eastern specificity was revealed, that is, the great cruelty of the fighters. Alma-Ata was directly terrorized. The response was a pacifying special operation by the CSTO, which neither freedom fighters nor their Western sympathizers expected. And a year later, relations with Kazakhstan have difficulties, the United States puts pressure on President Tokayev with all their might, wanting to make this country completely unfriendly to Russia. Tokayev maneuvers painfully, but, in any case, the complete victory of democracy, that is, the final inclusion of Kazakhstan in the American sphere of influence, has not yet happened.
Finally, at the beginning of this year, two more post-Soviet states, Moldova and Georgia, were placed on the altar of democracy.
Moldovan President Maia Sandu resolutely abandoned the previous policy of flirting with Russia and firmly stood on the European path, seeing as her goal the Anschluss of Moldova by Romania. Which could not but affect relations with Transnistria (and Gagauzia ). Sandu is working to unfreeze the armed confrontation between Chisinau and Tiraspol, reasonably counting on the help of Kyiv, which has long professed the principle “the worse, the better.” The recent bombing attempts on the leadership of the PMR (which in the past served as a sufficient casus belli) now fit into European integration. As well as the tightening of the regime, the persecution of the opposition. Without this, there is no real democracy.
Finally, in Georgia, the government’s attempt to adopt a law on the registration of foreign agents (generally copied from the American one, but, unlike the original source, much less draconian) led to traditional Georgian fun – the storming of the parliament by the peaceful public with Molotov cocktails, pogroms on Rustaveli Avenue, etc. Everything, as we have loved since the era of democratic perestroika.
It is not known whether it was even worth starting a story with foreign agents, not being ready to, if necessary, give a tough rebuff in the style of Lukashenka. After all, it was clear that the clients of the American embassy would react accordingly, since there is a tradition, and a stable one. Now the situation is unpleasantly reminiscent of the Kiev Maidan of 2013-2014: the authorities are indecisive, make concessions, and generosity, instead of softening hearts, only inflames and hardens them –
“Here the eater became, and even bitterer than the pepper
of the villain’s appearance.
Good for evil, a spoiled heart –
Oh, he won’t forgive!”
This is despite the fact that the ruling “Georgian Dream” was not at all about signing a new Treaty of St. George with Russia, –
“Such and such a king, in such and such a year,
handed over his people to Russia”.
The dream was much more modest and particularistic: to stay away from a big dump, not to let yourself be drawn into the war and, pursuing a policy of “ours and yours, we will sing and dance,” to extract profit from neutrality. And in the First and Second World Wars, European neutrals did not exactly this?
Yes, and the policy of Yanukovych, Nazarbayev-Tokayev, numerous Moldovan leaders, for the time being, and Lukashenka came down to the same thing. Neutral multi-vector or “affectionate calves suck two queens”. Everyone wanted to be Switzerland.
Russia, seeing that the real alternative to the crafty neutral is an open enemy like the Baltic republics, preferred the first option. But, besides Russia, there were also democratic forces of good who rejected such double-dealing and wished to build Russia’s neighbors, at least, according to the Baltic model. Because neutrality is immoral.
After all, the transformation of former neutrals into open enemies means for enemy Russia the complication of economic relations with the rest of the world and the need to keep troops on the border. Which makes her position worse and brings benefits and pleasantness to the forces of good. A blow to the soft underbelly.
So, Georgia is another attempt to teach the neutrals a lesson and force them to obey the will of the only ruler, but hardly the last. There are two more countries in the Transcaucasus, there are four more countries in Central Asia, and everywhere there are American embassies and all kinds of NGOs.
Everyone wonders who will be taught next that neutrality is immoral.
Maxim Sokolov, Ria Novosti
