Post-Soviet Russian military interventions
By ANA MARIA LUCA
October 22, 2015
October 22, 2015
NOW.
If in Syria the Russian intervention is seen as help the Assad government asked for, at the international level, Russia has transcended its regional games and aspires to again become a global player.
At the end of September, more than four years since the Syrian conflict began and Russia opposed any foreign intervention to stop the bloodshed, the Kremlin formally authorized airstrikes against opposition groups. Although initially the Russian officials spoke about fighting the threat of the Islamic State, it was soon obvious that the airstrikes were targeting all forces opposed to the Assad regime, be they Al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra or US-backed rebel brigades. The Russian intervention is seen in Syria as help for the government forces and their allies on the ground, such as Iranian-backed militias and Hezbollah. But at the international level, Russia has transcended its regional games and aspired to become a global player again, policing an area Western countries have hesitated to interfere in.
Moscow has a long history of seeking to legitimize its grip on foreign territories in its regional sphere. Here, NOW looks at how the Russian government frames its actions and look to legitimize its military interventions at the global level. Russia’s foreign interventions are usually framed as peacekeeping operations, such as in Moldova, or as fighting terrorism, such as in Tajikistan, and usually they result in frozen conflicts that linger for decades, such as in Georgia.
1991: Moldova
Russia’s efforts to maintain its regional influence started in Trans-Dniester, a sliver of land located, officially, in Moldova, on the left side of the Dniester River, on the border with Ukraine. The region still hosts 1,500 Russian troops that Moscow insists are peacekeepers.
The region seceded from Moldova in September 1991 during a strong political current in the Moldovan government that supported reunification with Romania. Most of the Moldovan territory, also known as Bessarabia, was part of Romania before 1939 and was taken by the Soviet Union after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. The Soviet Union later added the predominantly Russian-speaking Trans-Dniester region to Bessarabia and formed the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
When the reunification current started in Moldova after the implosion of the Soviet Union, Russian Cossack forces from all over the Russian Federation flooded the Tras-Dniester to help the secessionists. Armed clashes between the Moldovan government and the Trans-Dniester separatists escalated in the summer of 1992. Moscow intervened directly in the conflict.
The Russian 14th Army, stationed in Moldova and Ukraine since 1945, was estimated to have between 10,000 and 20,000 troops and, at the time, Moscow said that many soldiers deserted and joined the Dniester separatists, also taking military equipment with them. However, reports in Russian and international media quoted Russian officials as saying that the order for the 14th Army to get involved in the fighting had been given by the Kremlin in order to defend Russian-speaking areas.
By July 1992 the Moldovan government was outgunned by the secessionists and was forced to appeal to Moscow to intervene. In 1992 the violence ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire and an agreement on the neutrality of the 14th Army. In August 1992, 3,000 extra Russian troops were sent into Trans-Dniester to assist units of the 14th Army in peacekeeping. The Trans-Dniester republic remained an autonomous territory inside Moldova, where Romanian-speaking citizens were not welcome. In 2008, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly adopted aresolution urging Russia to "respect its commitments which were taken at the Istanbul OSCE Summit in 1999 and withdraw its military presence from Trans-Dniester.
As of 2015 Russia bases over 1,000 regular troops as part of an Operational Group in Trans-Dniester, while an international peacekeeping force and a mediated program of negotiations help keep a fragile calm. In May this year, Ukraine suspended the military cooperation treaties with Russia which allowed Moscow’s troops to cross Ukrainian territory. The move left the troops in Trans-Dniester stranded. The airport in Kishinev, Moldova’s capital, is Russia’s only access to its troops and Moldova has no legal requirement to allow members of the Operational Group onto its territory.
1992: Tajikistan
Of all of Russia’s interventions, the one in Tajikistan is the closest to the Syrian scenario. A poor and religiously-volatile country of about 5.2 million people, Tajikistan was the theater of a civil war in the 1990s.
In May 1992, a coalition of opposition forces overthrew the ex-communist, Moscow-backed Tajik government of Rakhman Nabiyev. He had been elected in November 1991, but by March-April 1992 the opposition took to the streets asking for new democratic elections. The political disagreements led to a bloody civil war between the Russian-backed communists and the Islamist factions, supported by the rebels in neighboring Afghanistan. Over 150,000 people died in the conflict.
With Russian support, the former communists seized Dushanbe in December 1992 and installed their own government under Emomali Rahmon. Russian and Uzbek troops not only armed the communists, they also participated in the battle of Dushanbe. Russia’s involvement occurred under the pretext that the Iranians and Afghans were trying to infiltrate Tajikistan to support the opposition.
The official motivation for the Russian intervention in Tajikistan was that Moscow would not tolerate outside intervention in Tajikistan. "Such a development would threaten the security not only of the Central Asian states but also of Russia," said then Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembski. He said Russian troops, which help guard Tajikistan's border with Afghanistan, were protecting about 16,000 refugees from the fighting.
Rahmon, a former cotton farm owner elected president in 1994, is still in power in Dushanbe. The country is still dependent on Russia economically and for security. However, the country is still battling an Islamic insurgency. Rahmon censured Central Asia's only Islamic party, a move that violated the peace agreement signed after the civil war.
If in Syria the Russian intervention is seen as help the Assad government asked for, at the international level, Russia has transcended its regional games and aspires to again become a global player.
At the end of September, more than four years since the Syrian conflict began and Russia opposed any foreign intervention to stop the bloodshed, the Kremlin formally authorized airstrikes against opposition groups. Although initially the Russian officials spoke about fighting the threat of the Islamic State, it was soon obvious that the airstrikes were targeting all forces opposed to the Assad regime, be they Al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra or US-backed rebel brigades. The Russian intervention is seen in Syria as help for the government forces and their allies on the ground, such as Iranian-backed militias and Hezbollah. But at the international level, Russia has transcended its regional games and aspired to become a global player again, policing an area Western countries have hesitated to interfere in.
Moscow has a long history of seeking to legitimize its grip on foreign territories in its regional sphere. Here, NOW looks at how the Russian government frames its actions and look to legitimize its military interventions at the global level. Russia’s foreign interventions are usually framed as peacekeeping operations, such as in Moldova, or as fighting terrorism, such as in Tajikistan, and usually they result in frozen conflicts that linger for decades, such as in Georgia.
1991: Moldova
Russia’s efforts to maintain its regional influence started in Trans-Dniester, a sliver of land located, officially, in Moldova, on the left side of the Dniester River, on the border with Ukraine. The region still hosts 1,500 Russian troops that Moscow insists are peacekeepers.
The region seceded from Moldova in September 1991 during a strong political current in the Moldovan government that supported reunification with Romania. Most of the Moldovan territory, also known as Bessarabia, was part of Romania before 1939 and was taken by the Soviet Union after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. The Soviet Union later added the predominantly Russian-speaking Trans-Dniester region to Bessarabia and formed the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
When the reunification current started in Moldova after the implosion of the Soviet Union, Russian Cossack forces from all over the Russian Federation flooded the Tras-Dniester to help the secessionists. Armed clashes between the Moldovan government and the Trans-Dniester separatists escalated in the summer of 1992. Moscow intervened directly in the conflict.
The Russian 14th Army, stationed in Moldova and Ukraine since 1945, was estimated to have between 10,000 and 20,000 troops and, at the time, Moscow said that many soldiers deserted and joined the Dniester separatists, also taking military equipment with them. However, reports in Russian and international media quoted Russian officials as saying that the order for the 14th Army to get involved in the fighting had been given by the Kremlin in order to defend Russian-speaking areas.
By July 1992 the Moldovan government was outgunned by the secessionists and was forced to appeal to Moscow to intervene. In 1992 the violence ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire and an agreement on the neutrality of the 14th Army. In August 1992, 3,000 extra Russian troops were sent into Trans-Dniester to assist units of the 14th Army in peacekeeping. The Trans-Dniester republic remained an autonomous territory inside Moldova, where Romanian-speaking citizens were not welcome. In 2008, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly adopted aresolution urging Russia to "respect its commitments which were taken at the Istanbul OSCE Summit in 1999 and withdraw its military presence from Trans-Dniester.
As of 2015 Russia bases over 1,000 regular troops as part of an Operational Group in Trans-Dniester, while an international peacekeeping force and a mediated program of negotiations help keep a fragile calm. In May this year, Ukraine suspended the military cooperation treaties with Russia which allowed Moscow’s troops to cross Ukrainian territory. The move left the troops in Trans-Dniester stranded. The airport in Kishinev, Moldova’s capital, is Russia’s only access to its troops and Moldova has no legal requirement to allow members of the Operational Group onto its territory.
1992: Tajikistan
Of all of Russia’s interventions, the one in Tajikistan is the closest to the Syrian scenario. A poor and religiously-volatile country of about 5.2 million people, Tajikistan was the theater of a civil war in the 1990s.
In May 1992, a coalition of opposition forces overthrew the ex-communist, Moscow-backed Tajik government of Rakhman Nabiyev. He had been elected in November 1991, but by March-April 1992 the opposition took to the streets asking for new democratic elections. The political disagreements led to a bloody civil war between the Russian-backed communists and the Islamist factions, supported by the rebels in neighboring Afghanistan. Over 150,000 people died in the conflict.
With Russian support, the former communists seized Dushanbe in December 1992 and installed their own government under Emomali Rahmon. Russian and Uzbek troops not only armed the communists, they also participated in the battle of Dushanbe. Russia’s involvement occurred under the pretext that the Iranians and Afghans were trying to infiltrate Tajikistan to support the opposition.
The official motivation for the Russian intervention in Tajikistan was that Moscow would not tolerate outside intervention in Tajikistan. "Such a development would threaten the security not only of the Central Asian states but also of Russia," said then Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembski. He said Russian troops, which help guard Tajikistan's border with Afghanistan, were protecting about 16,000 refugees from the fighting.
Rahmon, a former cotton farm owner elected president in 1994, is still in power in Dushanbe. The country is still dependent on Russia economically and for security. However, the country is still battling an Islamic insurgency. Rahmon censured Central Asia's only Islamic party, a move that violated the peace agreement signed after the civil war.
From the Russian government’s perspective, Tajikistan has a strategic position as it borders Afghanistan’s Kunduz Province. The civil war in Afghanistan has gotten dangerously close to the Tajik border, with fighting between government forces and the Taliban in the Imam Sahib District. In May the Russian Army, which still maintains troops in the country, organized large-scale war games at the border with Afghanistan. Moreover, Moscow deployed several Mi-24P attack helicopters to its Tajik airbase at the beginning of October.
Just this month, after a meeting between Putin and Rahmon, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “The current Russian presence in Tajikistan is in compliance with international law and bilateral agreements. It is intended to ensure stability and security in this truly tense region."
2008: Georgia
Early in the morning on 1 August 2008, a Georgian police truck was blown up allegedly by South Ossetia separatists. In response, the same day, Georgian snipers killed four Ossetians. The incident was the pretext for a short but intense conflict between Georgia and Russia that month.
Georgia declared its independence in 1991, and shortly thereafter the new government engaged in a secession war with the Moscow-backed separatists in an autonomous region of South Ossetia. The war resulted in a joint Georgian, Russian and Ossetian peacekeeping force policing the region. The same happened in Abkhazia, another autonomous region where Russian-backed separatists sought secession from Georgia in 1992-1993. The two conflicts remained frozen until 2008, when the Georgian government was in the middle of negotiations to join NATO. Russia interpreted the move as defiance and, against the backdrop of several diplomatic incidents between the two countries after the Rose Revolution that brought a pro-Western government to Tbilisi in 2003, led to the Russian intervention in Georgia’s internal conflict.
On 1 August, Ossetian separatists began shelling Georgian civilian areas. A week later the Georgian Army was sent to the region and retook the Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali. Russia accused Georgia of aggression against South Ossetia and launched a “peace enforcement operation” in Georgia. Russian and Ossetian troops managed to drive the Georgian Army out of South Ossetia in four days, while the separatists in Abkhazia supported by Russian forces also attacked Georgian territory. The Russian Navy also blockaded the Georgian coast.
In spite of a French-brokered ceasefire negotiated on 12 August, Russian troops occupied the Georgian cities of Zugdidi, Senaki, Poti, and Gori and pillaged Georgian military bases. Moreover, Russia recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent republics on 26 August. Moscow withdrew its troops from Georgia in October 2008.
Russia kept its troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in violation of the ceasefire.Georgia has recently accused Russia of violating international law after it erected new border markings in the disputed South Ossetia region, effectively seizing part of a British Petroleum oil pipeline in the process.
Inspired by the separatists in Crimea who voted for secession from Ukraine and unification with Russia in March 2014, the separatist leader of South Ossetia also recently spoke of plans to hold a referendum on whether the region should join Russia.
2014: Ukraine
After the 2014 crisis in Crimea, Russian soldiers dressed in civilian clothes reportedly helped pro-Russian separatists seize strategic positions and take control of infrastructure as Russia annexed the Ukrainian region after a controversial referendum. In March 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty absorbing Crimea into Russia. Ukraine described this as annexation.
Russia defended its annexation of Crimea as "returning" part of the territory. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev handed Crimea to Ukraine in the 1950s.
Immediately after the annexation of Crimea, pro-Russian groups started demonstrations in the Donbass area of Ukraine and tensions escalated immediately into an armed conflict between armed separatists and Ukrainian government forces. Russia denied military involvement in Ukraine — the Kremlin claimed it was volunteers and soldiers who were on vacation that fought alongside rebels in eastern Ukraine, but Kiev and Western organizations, as well as international observers, say Russia sent in troops. Russian military equipment was reported in Ukraine and, in August, Russian tanks reportedly crossed the border in several locations of Donetsk region. The incursion by the Russian military was seen by the government in Kiev as being responsible for the defeat of Ukrainian forces in early September 2014.
An OSCE Monitoring Mission observed convoys of heavy weapons and tanks in separatist-controlled territory. OSCE monitors also reportedvehicles disguised as humanitarian aid convoys transporting ammunition and dead soldiers across the Russian-Ukrainian border. The Kremlin tried to silence human rights activists who tried to raise awareness of the Russian soldiers who returned home in coffins.
A ceasefire was signed in February 2015, but none of the sidesrespected it. At the beginning of September, both the separatists and the government agreed to stop the violations and enforce the ceasefire.
Just this month, after a meeting between Putin and Rahmon, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “The current Russian presence in Tajikistan is in compliance with international law and bilateral agreements. It is intended to ensure stability and security in this truly tense region."
2008: Georgia
Early in the morning on 1 August 2008, a Georgian police truck was blown up allegedly by South Ossetia separatists. In response, the same day, Georgian snipers killed four Ossetians. The incident was the pretext for a short but intense conflict between Georgia and Russia that month.
Georgia declared its independence in 1991, and shortly thereafter the new government engaged in a secession war with the Moscow-backed separatists in an autonomous region of South Ossetia. The war resulted in a joint Georgian, Russian and Ossetian peacekeeping force policing the region. The same happened in Abkhazia, another autonomous region where Russian-backed separatists sought secession from Georgia in 1992-1993. The two conflicts remained frozen until 2008, when the Georgian government was in the middle of negotiations to join NATO. Russia interpreted the move as defiance and, against the backdrop of several diplomatic incidents between the two countries after the Rose Revolution that brought a pro-Western government to Tbilisi in 2003, led to the Russian intervention in Georgia’s internal conflict.
On 1 August, Ossetian separatists began shelling Georgian civilian areas. A week later the Georgian Army was sent to the region and retook the Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali. Russia accused Georgia of aggression against South Ossetia and launched a “peace enforcement operation” in Georgia. Russian and Ossetian troops managed to drive the Georgian Army out of South Ossetia in four days, while the separatists in Abkhazia supported by Russian forces also attacked Georgian territory. The Russian Navy also blockaded the Georgian coast.
In spite of a French-brokered ceasefire negotiated on 12 August, Russian troops occupied the Georgian cities of Zugdidi, Senaki, Poti, and Gori and pillaged Georgian military bases. Moreover, Russia recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent republics on 26 August. Moscow withdrew its troops from Georgia in October 2008.
Russia kept its troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in violation of the ceasefire.Georgia has recently accused Russia of violating international law after it erected new border markings in the disputed South Ossetia region, effectively seizing part of a British Petroleum oil pipeline in the process.
Inspired by the separatists in Crimea who voted for secession from Ukraine and unification with Russia in March 2014, the separatist leader of South Ossetia also recently spoke of plans to hold a referendum on whether the region should join Russia.
2014: Ukraine
After the 2014 crisis in Crimea, Russian soldiers dressed in civilian clothes reportedly helped pro-Russian separatists seize strategic positions and take control of infrastructure as Russia annexed the Ukrainian region after a controversial referendum. In March 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty absorbing Crimea into Russia. Ukraine described this as annexation.
Russia defended its annexation of Crimea as "returning" part of the territory. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev handed Crimea to Ukraine in the 1950s.
Immediately after the annexation of Crimea, pro-Russian groups started demonstrations in the Donbass area of Ukraine and tensions escalated immediately into an armed conflict between armed separatists and Ukrainian government forces. Russia denied military involvement in Ukraine — the Kremlin claimed it was volunteers and soldiers who were on vacation that fought alongside rebels in eastern Ukraine, but Kiev and Western organizations, as well as international observers, say Russia sent in troops. Russian military equipment was reported in Ukraine and, in August, Russian tanks reportedly crossed the border in several locations of Donetsk region. The incursion by the Russian military was seen by the government in Kiev as being responsible for the defeat of Ukrainian forces in early September 2014.
An OSCE Monitoring Mission observed convoys of heavy weapons and tanks in separatist-controlled territory. OSCE monitors also reportedvehicles disguised as humanitarian aid convoys transporting ammunition and dead soldiers across the Russian-Ukrainian border. The Kremlin tried to silence human rights activists who tried to raise awareness of the Russian soldiers who returned home in coffins.
A ceasefire was signed in February 2015, but none of the sidesrespected it. At the beginning of September, both the separatists and the government agreed to stop the violations and enforce the ceasefire.
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