With the Kremlin distracted by the more than 1,500-mile war in Ukraine, Russia’s dominium over its former Soviet empire shows signs of unraveling. Moscow has lost its aura and grip, creating a disorderly void that satellites of the former Soviet Union as well as China are having to fill.
On the ridge steppe of southwestern Kyrgyzstan, the result has been that only one remote village has been devastated: homes are in ruins, schools have burned down, and the stench emanating from the carcass of 24,000 dead chickens is rot.
Last month, they all fell victim to the worst violence to hit the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – a brief but bloody border conflict between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, both was a member of a military alliance led by Russia to keep the peace but did nothing. to prevent confusion.
“Of course, they are distracted by Ukraine,” lamented Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov in an interview in Bishkek, the Kyrgz capital.
Before President Vladimir V. Putin invaded Ukraine in February, Russia played a huge role in the affairs of Central Asia and also the volatile Caucasus region, in what had passed for a distant Pax Russica. sticky rice. In January, they sent troops to Kazakhstan to help the government there defuse a wave of violent unrest in the country. In 2020, it sent about 2,000 armed “peacekeepers” to the Caucasus to enforce the Moscow-brokered ceasefire between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Today, Armenia is fuming. Its president, Nikol Pashinyan, a former close ally, futilely appealed to Moscow last month for help to thwart new attacks by Azerbaijan. Angered by Russia’s actions, Armenia is now threatening to leave Moscow’s military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
The Kazakh government that Putin helped in January is going against the Kremlin’s script on Ukraine, and is seeking China’s help in securing its own territory, areas It is largely inhabited by Russians and Russian nationalists consider it to belong to Russia.
And here along the mountainous border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, long-running squabbles between farmers over land, water and smuggled goods escalated last month into an all-out conflict involving tanks. , helicopters and rockets, as the armies of the two countries clashed with each other. come to an impasse.
According to Kyrgyz officials, the conflict has killed scores of civilians and displaced more than 140,000 people from their homes. It has also led many residents and local officials in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, to question why Moscow – long seen as a thoughtful keeper of stability on the volatile fringes of the Soviet empire old – barely moved.
“Russia can stop all this in a second. But it doesn’t do anything. Why did it let this happen? ” Zaynaddin Dubanaev, a 75-year-old Russian language teacher at the burnt school in Ak-Sai, a village of Kyrgyzstan, near the fenced area of the Tajik territory, asked Zaynaddin Dubanaev.
Moscow’s security alliance has long been seen by Putin as Russia’s answer to NATO and an anchor for the role of the dominant (and often authoritarian) force across large swaths of the Soviet Union. old. But now this block barely works. Five of its six members – Armenia, Belarus, Russia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – have been involved in wars this year, while a sixth member, Kazakhstan, has seen violent internal strife force.
In response, China is just asserting itself, while the United States also sees loopholes, pressing Kyrgyzstan to sign a new bilateral cooperation agreement. It will replace one that was scrapped in 2014 after Russian pressure forced the closure of a US airbase outside Bishkek, which was set up to fuel fighter jets flying over. Afghanistan.
“Until Ukraine, China and Russia are not interested in open competition,” said Asel Doolotkeldieva, senior lecturer at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, a graduate research center focused on security issues. in Central Asia. “There has been an implicit division of labor: security for Russia, economics for China. But Russia doesn’t do its job anymore. It has shown that it is unable, or unwilling, to defend the area. “
Russia still has enormous leverage in Central Asia. Its largest foreign military base is in Tajikistan, and it has a small air base in Kyrgyzstan, a poor, remote country that is still heavily dependent on Russian energy supplies and remittances from over a million Kyrgyz workers in Russia.
President Japarov, aware of his country’s vulnerability, stalled the signing of a new agreement with the United States. Doing it in Moscow would be seen as “a knife in the back and they would be right”, he said.
Peter Leonard, Central Asia, said: “Russia is clearly focusing on other things right now, not Central Asia, but the moment they want to lower the law, it just suggests that it will make life difficult for them. migrant workers in Russia. editor for Eurasianet, a media agency covering the region.
But the recent border war between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan has upset long-held assumptions about Russian power. It broke out just as Mr. Putin was in neighboring Uzbekistan to attend the summit meeting of a Chinese-sponsored regional group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, attended by President Xi Jinping of China. , as well as the leaders of India, Turkey, Azerbaijan and the four Central Asian Countries.
Overshadowed by the Chinese leader, Putin endured a series of humiliating protocols that left him awkwardly waiting in front of the camera as other leaders, including Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, arrived late to meet him.
“Of course this was not intentional,” Japarov said. “No intention at all.”
But widely circulated videos of a Putin looking annoyed; a public rebuke from the prime minister of India, who declared that “in this day and age there is no war”; and an admission from the Russian leader that China has “questions and concerns” about the war in Ukraine, all of which reinforce the image of shrinking influence and diminishing appeal.
“Putin is no longer the invincible great leader that everyone wants to meet,” said Emil Dzhuraev, a researcher in Bishkek with the Crossroad Central Asia research group. “He’s lost his aura.”
In contrast, Mr. Xi has become more assertive. During a visit to Kazakhstan last month, he pledged to “resolutely support Kazakhstan in defending its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity”, a comment widely interpreted as a warning to with Moscow should not try anything.
A few days later, after the advance of Tajik forces, China made a similar commitment to Kyrgyzstan, backing Russia’s longstanding role of guarding the Central Asian border.
During the summit, China also sparked another confrontation by signing an agreement with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan that fixed a proposed new railway line to bring Chinese exports to Europe by overland without going through Russia.
The massive project, expected to cost more than $4 billion and still face major obstacles, has long stalled, largely because China already has rail links to Europe via Kazakhstan and Russia. , and did not want to risk Moscow’s wrath by building an alternative that would break its barriers to trans-Eurasian trucking.
President Japarov, a nationalist politician who often talks about the need to strengthen his country’s sovereignty, said he “did not ask Russia’s permission” to build the railway “and did not was told not to.” He added: “Even if they tell me not to, we will, God willing, build it.”
Mr. Japarov, the president of Kyrgyzstan, complained that when border fighting broke out with Tajikistan, the Russian military alliance “didn’t do anything”, adding that the Russians were “solving a lot of problems on their own”. .
Some officials in Bishkek wonder if Russia will wink at the military action of Tajikistan, a tightly controlled dictatorship ruled by the same leader since 1994, even longer than Mr. take control of the Kremlin or not. In contrast, Kyrgyzstan is considered the only Central Asian country with a true democracy and a relatively free press.
The view that Mr. Putin sided with Tajikistan – rather than an impartial arbiter between two members of his military alliance – gained further ground last week when the Kremlin announced that it would give Tajik’s veteran dictator, Emomali Rahmon, a prestigious state award. for his contributions to “the stability and security of the region.”
The Kyrgyz foreign ministry said the award announced by Moscow “while the blood of innocent victims has not yet cooled on Kyrgyz soil,” has caused “confusion”.
In Batken, the southwestern region of Kyrgyzstan, where border fighting broke out, rolling, rocky steppes perpetuated a jumble of rival ethnic groups—the peasants. Poor people and herders, armed with farm implements, for decades fought sporadically in what they called “shovel wars.”
But last month, this war quickly turned into a real war, with shells even landing in the region’s capital, Batken, kilometers from the disputed border.
Particularly macabre is the scene in the village of Ak-Sai, where the barns of a vast farm are now filled with thousands of dead chickens that appear to have died of suffocation when their mud and brick coop was set on fire.
According to local officials, the Kyrgyz business owner, who stayed behind to guard his chickens, was shot dead in his office while killing the Tajiks. Feathers and shell casings scattered on the ground outside.
“The bad aspect of this is that both sides are members of the same military alliance run by Russia,” said Leonard, editor of Eurasianet. “The days when Russia dictated the military posture of these countries are clearly past the window.”
The head of the district government, Jorobaev Imamalievich, said he was very disappointed.
“Russia is silent. It is busy in Ukraine and not noticed,” he said. “It’s just not here anymore.”
