Long adept at stoking unrest in the West, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sent troops to the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan on Thursday to try to extinguish the latest in a series of dangerous fires to engulf the lands of the former Soviet Union, territory that Moscow views as its own sphere of influence but has struggled to keep calm. But if the turmoil in Kazakhstan has once again exposed the vulnerability of the strongman leaders the Kremlin has trusted to keep order, it has also presented Russia with yet another opportunity to reassert its influence in its former Soviet domain, one of Mr. Putin’s most cherished long-term goals. The arrival in Kazakhstan of 2,500 troops from a Russian-led military alliance amid continuing spasms of violent protest was the fourth time in just two years that Moscow has flexed its muscle in neighboring states — Belarus, Armenia and Ukraine being the other three — that the West has long tried to woo. The spectacle of a country like Kazakhstan “that seems big and strong” falling into disarray so quickly has come as a shock, said Maxim Suchkov, acting director of the Institute for International Studies at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. But it has also shown how, with the exception of Ukraine, in the former Soviet republics that have tried to balance between East and West, “boom, you get a crisis and they turn to Russia.”

Source: New York Times January 06, 2022 23:44 UTC