Ukraine: The context, the case of Crimea, and Moscow’s commitments to annexed territories

The Russo-Ukrainian War cannot be examined in isolation from other conflicts in post-Soviet states, in part because Russia’s military and diplomatic interventions in this space serve to solidify its hegemonic influence in the region (Chausovsky, 2022). This includes Russia’s backing of Abkhazian and Ossetian secessionists in Georgia and its leading role in advancing regional peace agreements that reinforced it as a “security guarantor” (Kofman, 2018). As an example, Russia plays a significant role in the Nagorno Karabakh region in the South Caucuses, where, together with Turkey, it brokered a settlement between Azerbaijan and Armenia to halt the violence that resurfaced in late 2020, and sent a peacekeeping force (Aslund, 2020). Similarly, in Central Asia, Russia deployed forces as part of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) to Kazakhstan at the president’s request to support the government to ‘stabilise’ the country and suppress protestors after violence erupted in Almaty (Kazakhstan: Why are there…, 2022). Its role in the CSTO and support of allied ruling governments reinforce Moscow’s status and interests in the region and demonstrate Russia’s concern over losing influence in the former Soviet region, in particular to the West (Dubnov, 2022).