The death of the planet "Scoop"

Russia is trying to control a non-existent space

Russia won the Olympics, but lost to Ukraine? It was easy to see from the president's face at the closing ceremony of the Sochi Games which of the two events shocked him more. The Ukrainian events, regardless of how the Russian authorities try to win back in Ukraine (in this case, exactly “on”, and not “in”), raise the question of the end of the post-Soviet space, even as a phantom empire. The trouble is that Russia is still building its foreign and domestic policy based on a fundamental geographical and psychological mistake: it considers the shadow of the USSR to be real, and real independent, albeit extremely weak, states on its territory are fiction.

The Russian government in its geopolitical aspirations does not actually recognize the independence of the post-Soviet states, with the exception of the Baltic countries, which have taken refuge in the European Union and NATO. That is why Russia behaves as if Kazakhstan and Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine are still parts of one state. Especially Ukraine.

That is why Ukraine does not even have the right to dream about Europe, and Georgia - about its own territorial integrity and attempts to somehow integrate with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. That is why the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan is being created, known to ordinary citizens mainly by the ban on lace underwear, and the idea of ​​the Eurasian Union, which he used not only as a real project, but as a PR of the country in the world, is borrowed from Nursultan Nazarbayev.

In reality, there is no homogeneous post-Soviet space, even despite many similar features of the regimes in the former Soviet republics. It is no longer in any sense a general entity. It is obvious even to the Russian authorities that the Baltic countries have long been outside the post-Soviet space. With gigantic costs and territorial losses, Georgia crawled out of it, already having an initialed association agreement with the EU. Even under Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan fell out of the post-Soviet space, having officially received the status of a neutral state from the UN. Statehood in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is such that they are balancing on the brink of existence, but these are definitely not Soviet republics. Kazakhstan, undoubtedly, behaves in Central Asia as an independent regional power, becoming a country of labor migration from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, developing its own contacts with China and, if possible, buying up assets in neighboring countries.

Against this background, the Eurasian project is utopian. It forces Russia to build the foundation of its foreign and domestic policy on erroneous geography and parallel history. We want to be the commander of a non-existent army. Commandant of a long-disbanded camp.

From the point of view of ideological coordinates, Syria and Venezuela are even more of a “post-Soviet space” than Moldova or Ukraine.

Even if Russia takes Crimea back by force, it will not become either the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire.

... By the way, the non-recognition of Ukraine's independence by the Russian authorities has another paradoxical consequence. As soon as revolutionary upheavals that the Kremlin does not like occur in a neighboring country, the Russian authorities immediately begin to consider this a direct threat to themselves. As if Russia is dependent on Ukraine.

Space and time are intertwined. For the Russian authorities, the post-Soviet space is just a way to stop time in Russia itself.