Moscow, USSR, 1986.

I’ve been meaning to write about the prospect of further fraying at the edges of the Russian Federation. That prospect goes hand in hand with the recent Armenia/Azerbaijan flareup in the “while the cat’s away…” category.

Will more conflicts break out as the Russian Federation breaks down? Which is another way of asking, where else is Moscow “the cat” anymore? It shed its empire in the 90s. What’s left? A Georgian insurgency in occupied South Ossetia & Abkhazia? The Fascist/Islamic Republic of Chechnya would be novel, and if Kadyrov is to be believed (and he seldom is), he has some problems with mobilization.

Surely still around Tiraspol, for what that’s worth. It is too early for Moldova to try to reclaim Transnistria, but that, with respect, isn’t saying a great deal about Moscow’s superpowers. 

Can anybody argue in any direction on the ramifications for Kaliningrad of a Russian defeat in Ukraine? I’ve seen one report that even suggests how the exclave could become a liability for Moscow.

What about Lukashenka? Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s Belarusian Democratic Movement claims has been claiming to be revivified by the war but I’ve let it in one ear and out the other mostly, as just fog-of-war tough guy talk. It’s true enough that a Ukrainian victory would validate the striving against tyranny in the region. It’s also true they have a self-proclaimed government in exile and they claim that 200,000 people have signed on inside Belarus. What I don’t know is whether the anti-Lukashenka movement inside Belarus is real and strong enough to capitalize. 

Meanwhile, chatter on my Russia’s War on Ukraine Twitter list suggests shots fired and violence threatened today in Dagestan as a response to Putin’s mobilization efforts. Videos from the capital Makhachkala apparently show clashes between protesters and police. Just like the not so good old days of the rending of the Soviet Union.