Tuncay YILMAZ
The famous Russian writer and publicist Alexander Solzhenitsyn described the idea of “collecting land” and the creation of the “Russian Union” in his essay “How We Equip Russia”, which will include Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and some regions of Kazakhstan. According to Solzhenitsyn, “New Russia” is an alliance of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, and the small ethnos of Russia and they should remain with the Russians, because otherwise they cannot survive. This essay was published in July 1990 and since then no action has been taken that denies the ideas of this statement. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia received security guarantees from NATO to preserve the Kremlin’s influence on Post-Soviet territories, as well as the non-expansion of the alliance in Eastern Europe and it assisted the implementation of neo-imperialist principles. Vladimir Putin spoke at the Munich Security Conference on February 10, 2007. His speech had a huge resonance. The President of the Russian Federation warned of the consequences of the construction of a unipolar world and the expansion of NATO, thereby outlining his positions on the creation of a “New Russia,” which will include the territories of the former Soviet Union.
What does mean by the concepts of “New Russia” or “Russian world”? The Kremlin pursued a policy of settling the territories of socialist republics with the Russian people during the existence of the USSR and they were secretly considered the state-forming ethnos of the Soviet Union, and now they considered as the title nation of the Russian Federation. From the point of view of Moscow, all military conflicts initiated by Russia were carried out in order to protect the “Russian world” and preserve security in the Post-Soviet regions. The first prominent example of protecting the interests of the “Russian world” after the collapse of the USSR was the armed conflict in Transnistria (1992). The next grandiose step to preserve the zone of influence was the First Chechen War (1994-1996). Russia initiated an armed conflict in Georgia in 2008 – a year after V.V. Putin spoke at the Munich conference, which is called in Russian sources a “peace enforcement operation” and “a response to Georgia’s aggression against civilians in South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers.” The creation of artificial republics such as Transnistria, South Ossetia and Abkhazia brought the Kremlin closer to the realization of the above mentioned goals and ideas.
The annexation of Crimea marked another act of “preserving the historical territories of Russia” and protecting the “Russian world” from the influence of Western countries in 2014. The list of artificial republics that serve the interests of the Kremlin was supplemented by the DPR and LPR – Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics. Currently, with the help of these republics, Moscow continues to implement a plan to create a “New Russia.” According to some Russian politicians, Russia is not going to stop there.
Belarus is also involved in plans to implement Moscow’s neo-imperialist policy. Alexander Lukashenko, refusing the Kremlin’s offer to deploy Russian military bases on his territories, showed fears about the takeover of his country and the creation of New Russia. It is worth noting that Belarus has not yet de jure recognized the annexation of Crimea and, in every economic conflict with Moscow, threatens Moscow with rapprochement with the West.
At the moment in all Post-Soviet countries there are parts that connected with Russia and which, will become perhaps the cause of the military conflicts in the future and we can notice there such slogans as “#we do not abandon our own people “, “For Motherland”, etc. Russia’s current actions have made it clear to the Post-Soviet republics what will happen with them if they try to leave the Kremlin’s zone of influence.