By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Why Russia Is Losing Its Near Abroad

Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine is one piece of a broader campaign to restore a sphere of influence in post-Soviet Eurasia. The 2022 invasion came as a shock to many of Russia’s neighbors in eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia, confirming their fears that Russia remained a threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of their countries. Yet because the war in Ukraine has been a massive drain on Russian attention and resources, it has also presented many of these countries with an opportunity. Taking advantage of Moscow’s distraction, they have enhanced their cooperation with one another, cultivated and deepened partnerships outside the region, and loosened some of the bonds tying them to their former imperial hegemon.

Although many governments in the Eurasian interior have been cautious about criticizing the Russian invasion, they are creating facts on the ground that reinforce their sovereignty and independence—a key objective of U.S. policy in the region since the 1990s. As the Russian military’s demand for weapons has left Moscow unable to fulfill promised exports, countries such as Armenia are turning to other suppliers in Europe and India; other regional states are purchasing weapons from Turkey and even China. And as Russia has withdrawn forces and equipment from its military bases in the Caucasus and Central Asia to redeploy them to Ukraine, countries in both places are resolving conflicts that Russia has long exploited for its own benefit. Improved cooperation within the wider region is also creating new opportunities to enhance trade connectivity and build alternatives to transit through Russia. By reducing the dependency that once defined their relationship with their former hegemon, countries in the region have become increasingly capable of engaging Russia (and other powers) on favorable terms.

And yet if history is any guide, Moscow could go to extreme lengths to preserve its regional dominion. In 2014, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia annexed Crimea and intervened in the Donbas region; earlier, in 2008, it invaded Georgia. Today, the Kremlin maintains a proprietary view of not only Ukraine but also many other countries. Ukraine and Belarus remain Moscow’s top priorities, but the Kremlin also aspires to a kind of suzerainty over Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Moldova and maintains a more distant postimperial regard toward the remainder of Central Asia. The 2023 Russian Foreign Policy Concept, the strategy document outlining parameters and priorities for Russia’s foreign policy, resurrected the term “near abroad” to describe these countries, pointing to their “centuries-old traditions of joint statehood, deep interdependence … a common language, and close cultures” as a justification for efforts to keep them within Moscow’s sphere of influence. Once the fighting in Ukraine winds down, the Kremlin will almost certainly ramp up its attempts to coerce other neighbors to join Russian-backed multilateral bodies, strengthen economic ties, adopt Russian-style laws targeting civil society, and accept a larger Russian military and intelligence presence on their territory.

The Eurasian interior may be increasingly interconnected, cooperative, and even taking steps toward peace, but it needs to keep moving in this direction if it is to resist future Russian efforts to reassert authority. That is why the United States, together with the European Union and countries such as India, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, must make new investments in cross-border infrastructure, supply chains, defense, and sustained diplomatic engagement to reinforce regional stability. Countries in the region will continue to search for their own ways to reduce their historic reliance on Moscow—but Washington and its partners should help tip them the scales.

 

Power Vacuum

Russia’s pivot of attention and resources to Ukraine initially created a vacuum in the Caucasus and Central Asia that encouraged greater instability and conflict. During the fall of 2022, cross-border tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan and between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan flared up violently. Although Russia had previously been the primary broker keeping these conflicts from expanding, it was in no position to do so at that moment, as it was busy pulling forces out of both the Caucasus and Central Asia to shore up its frontlines in Ukraine.

Moscow’s inability to intervene in a significant way initially enabled long-running Kyrgyz-Tajik border clashes in the Fergana Valley to escalate. The clashes left more than 100 dead, including at least 37 civilians, and more than 10,000 displaced before petering out. But afterward, Moscow’s absence proved beneficial. The two countries’ leaders deliberately negotiated without Russia at the table. Earlier this year, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan finalized an agreement to settle their border disputes in the Fergana Valley. The agreement led to the first summit of leaders from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, held in March 2025 in Khujand, Tajikistan, to discuss enhancing cooperation in the territory that all three share.

The situation in the South Caucasus proved more explosive than the one on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia withdrew some of the peacekeepers it had deployed to Armenia under the terms of a 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani cease-fire and refused repeated requests for military assistance from Armenia, a fellow member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a regional security bloc nominally committed to defending its members from attack. Azerbaijan, expecting that Russia would remain on the sidelines, invaded what remained of Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh in the spring of 2023. During the offensive, Azerbaijani forces even fired on Russian peacekeepers. Baku ended up fully reconquering Nagorno-Karabakh and dissolving the Armenian-run breakaway state there. Almost all the region’s ethnic Armenian inhabitants fled.

The fall of Nagorno-Karabakh profoundly reshaped the region’s geopolitics. The remaining Russian peacekeepers departed, and Baku and Yerevan began the difficult process of making peace. Armenian and Azerbaijani negotiators have now met multiple times, and in March they announced an agreement on the text of a peace treaty that would normalize relations and resolve conflicting territorial claims. It would also ratify the departure of foreign peacekeepers, guarding against future efforts to redeploy Russian forces. Although the deal is not yet signed and could still fall through, the progress made so far is encouraging.

Both the Armenian-Azerbaijani and the Kyrgyz-Tajik talks have proceeded without mediation from Moscow. The Kremlin’s strategy for regional influence has long entailed managing conflicts among its smaller neighbors to maintain their dependence; an old joke has it that in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the side Russia always supported was the conflict’s. But in Moscow’s absence, diplomatic breakthroughs have become possible. Post-Soviet Eurasian states have exercised greater agency, chosen cooperation, and found themselves capable of resolving their own disputes.

 

Filling the Void

The war in Ukraine has also created space for other countries to get involved in Russia’s traditional sphere of influence. Although most of them have decent relations with Russia and do not claim to be trying to balance Moscow, the fact of interior Eurasia’s increasing connection to the wider world reinforces the independence of the smaller states from Russian authority. Armenia, for example, has sought to end its reliance on Russian weapons by buying new systems from France and India (choosing the latter, in part, to counterbalance Pakistani support for Azerbaijan); Yerevan purchased $1.5 billion in Indian weapons in 2022–23 alone. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are investing in green energy and agriculture in Azerbaijan, and an Emirati firm made the largest real estate investment in Georgia’s history in January. The EU adopted its first Central Asia strategy in 2022 and is now the region’s largest source of foreign investment.

The most prominent non-Russian player, especially in Central Asia, is China. Chinese trade with the five Central Asian countries rose from $89.4 billion in 2023 to $94.8 billion in 2024, more than twice the value of those countries’ trade with Russia. China is also driving investment in key infrastructure projects, including gas pipelines from Turkmenistan through the rest of Central Asia and a railway from the city of Kashgar in China’s Xinjiang province to Andijon, Uzbekistan. Last year, a Chinese-Singaporean consortium won a tender to construct a new deep-sea container port at Anaklia, Georgia, after Tbilisi cancelled an earlier agreement with a U.S.-Georgian consortium. Central Asia has rapidly become an important market for Chinese automakers, especially producers of electric vehicles.

Alongside its growing economic presence, Beijing is also quietly expanding its security footprint. Security ties have progressed furthest in Tajikistan, where Beijing has deployed forces from the People’s Armed Police, China’s main paramilitary force, along the frontier with Afghanistan; China also sells weapons and equipment to the country and participates in joint trainings and exercises with Tajik counterparts. Other Central Asian states have signed agreements to purchase Chinese air defense systems, and, according to defense officials in Tashkent, Uzbekistan is close to finalizing a deal for Chinese-Pakistani-produced fighter jets.

An expanded Chinese presence in interior Eurasia may raise concern in Washington about trading Russian influence for Chinese. But it does help protect the countries in the region against the more immediate threat of a revanchist Russia. The Anaklia port, for example, could significantly enhance Georgia’s trade not just with China but also with other partners, reducing the country’s economic dependence on Russia. And despite its close relationship with Moscow, Beijing has made clear that it opposes Russian activities that could disrupt its economic interests, including threats to a trading partner’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Another power player in the region is Turkey, a NATO member. At Ankara’s behest, the Organization of Turkic States—an organization originally set up to foster cultural ties among Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the Turkic-speaking states of Central Asia—is increasingly pushing for trans-Caspian energy cooperation, including a potential project to export Turkmen natural gas to Europe and another to jointly invest in new production capacity on both sides of the Caspian Sea. Turkish support in modernizing Azerbaijan’s army was instrumental in its defeat of the (nominally) Russian-backed Armenia in both 2020 and 2023. Azerbaijan’s crushing victories garnered substantial attention across the region. They offered proof that a Soviet-legacy military could both be remade along Western lines and afterward win a war. With Turkey’s support, other countries in the region may also be able to promote institutional and cultural change within their militaries and develop along NATO lines.

For many countries, Azerbaijan’s triumph has also generated new interest in Turkish defense technology. All the Central Asian states except Tajikistan have now purchased Turkish drones, and last fall the Turkish drone producer Baykar agreed to set up a production site in Kazakhstan. Ankara is also pursuing other forms of security cooperation with these countries, including training, advising, joint exercises, and providing professional military education. Even in Armenia, which has a fraught historical relationship with Turkey, some senior officials are contemplating defense cooperation with Ankara after a peace agreement with Azerbaijan is signed. By normalizing relations, opening the long-closed Turkish-Armenian border, and unlocking greater Turkish investment, an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal could substantially enhance Turkey’s influence in the South Caucasus—which is one reason Moscow may now be picking fights with both Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (following the accidental downing of an Azerbaijani jet by the Russian air force) and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan (over allegations of Russian support for a possible coup plot) to prevent a final accord.

 

New Networks

New trade and transit patterns have also emerged to connect the Eurasian interior to global markets. As the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline did in the early 2000s, the expansion of east-west pipelines, railways, and roads over the past decade gives the smaller states of the Caucasus and Central Asia additional revenue from transit fees and opens up new markets for the region’s energy exporters. This income and market access reduce their economies’ dependence on Russia.

Much of the initiative for building new infrastructure comes from countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia themselves. After Moscow repeatedly interfered with shipments of Kazakh oil through the Tengiz-Novorossiysk pipeline to signal displeasure with Astana’s criticism of the invasion of Ukraine, Kazakhstan started sending more of the oil it delivers to Europe through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, bypassing Russia. Washington and Brussels had lent strong political and economic support to the construction of this route, which opened in 2006. In March 2024, Kazakhstan signed a new agreement with Azerbaijan to further expand deliveries via the pipeline.

Europe’s shift away from Russian natural gas after 2022 could be a further boon for producers and transit states in the region. In July 2022, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Aliyev signed a memorandum of understanding to double Azerbaijan’s gas exports to the EU. Turkmenistan has since agreed in principle to send gas to Europe through Azerbaijan and Turkey—aided by a 2021 agreement between Baku and Ashgabat to resolve their differences over sharing Caspian resources. European companies and governments are also looking to the region as a potential source of green energy, with Azerbaijan in particular pushing to develop solar and wind capacity to reduce its dependence on oil and gas exports.

The most important new transit initiative may be the Middle Corridor, a route inaugurated in 2013 by transportation companies from Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan that connects China to Europe through Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus. Challenging economics, a lack of infrastructure, and intraregional disputes have long slowed development along this route; much of the transcontinental trade that did occur passed through Russia’s Northern Corridor, where infrastructure is in place and border crossings are fewer. But with the imposition of Western sanctions on Russia and the departure of many foreign companies from the country after 2022, shipments across the Northern Corridor have plummeted, and trade volumes along the Middle Corridor have grown substantially. According to the Asian Development Bank, the number of Chinese container trains passing through the Middle Corridor has expanded by a factor of 33 from 2023 to 2024, while freight volumes handled by Azerbaijan’s and Kazakhstan’s Caspian seaports grew by 21 percent.

To reach its full potential, the Middle Corridor needs more investment to loosen bottlenecks and simplify regulations. During the EU-Central Asia Summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in April, Brussels pledged an additional ten billion euros as part of its Global Gateway Initiative to enhance regional connectivity. Meanwhile, the Houthis’ attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, the Taliban government’s stated interest in opening Afghanistan to foreign investment, and long-term uncertainty about Russia are all strengthening interest in this route. But if Western states begin removing sanctions on Russia following a cease-fire agreement in Ukraine, and if transit across Russia becomes less risky, governments and development banks may have less inclination to act.

 

Playing Both Sides

None of these developments suggest that Russia will cease to be a key player in what it regards as its traditional sphere of influence. Thanks to geographic proximity, familiarity between elites, and the long legacy of imperial and Soviet domination, Russia retains significant hard and soft power across the Caucasus and Central Asia. Leaders of most countries in the region value good ties with Moscow, even if they oppose the invasion of Ukraine. Many of these states have profited from Russian efforts to evade Western sanctions since February 2022. The U.S. and European governments have sanctioned dozens of companies in the region for facilitating the export of dual-use items to Russia. In many post-Soviet Eurasian countries, remittances from migrant laborers working in Russia provide vital revenue, as well as a source of Russian leverage, even after Russia began cracking down on irregular migration following the March 2024 terrorist attack at a Moscow concert venue.

Russian political influence remains, too. Putin meets regularly with Aliyev, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, and other leaders (and sometimes leaders’ children who are being groomed as possible successors). The Kremlin has consolidated its de facto protectorate in Belarus and fostered close ties with politicians in Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, and the Moldovan opposition. Last year, in a stark shift in Tbilisi’s political orientation, Georgian Dream adopted a Russian-inspired law cracking down on civil society and suspended EU accession negotiations. Moldova’s fate, too, remains in the balance, with a Moscow-backed candidate narrowly losing last year’s presidential election and Russian-backed groups seeking to unite ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for this September.

Far from being locked out of the region’s emerging transit infrastructure, Russia is also participating in and benefitting from these new structures. Even as Kazakhstan seeks to export more hydrocarbons to Europe, for instance, the government awarded a contract for Kazakhstan’s first nuclear power plant to the Russian state-owned firm Rosatom in June. Russia is working with Azerbaijan and Iran to build out the International North-South Transport Corridor—a road, rail, and sea route that would connect Russia to the Indian Ocean through Azerbaijan, India, and Iran, none of which have sanctioned Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. Azerbaijan’s centrality to both this route and the Middle Corridor is indicative of many countries’ approaches. Rather than taking sides in the confrontation between Russia and the West, they aim to seize the opportunities that this competition affords.

 

Win-Win

In a 1997 speech at Johns Hopkins University, then Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott argued that the United States wanted “to see all responsible players in the Caucasus and Central Asia be winners,” rather than for the region to become an object of great-power contestation as it was during the nineteenth-century Great Game. Developments over the past three-plus years have moved post-Soviet Eurasia closer to realizing that vision, even as the world (and the United States) has changed dramatically.

Today, the Caucasus and Central Asia remain peripheral to U.S. strategy, especially given Washington’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific and President Donald Trump’s apparent openness to great-power spheres of influence. Yet the Trump administration has devoted some attention to the region; amid Armenian-Azerbaijani talks this month, for example, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack suggested that a private U.S. company operate the route connecting mainland Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia. The idea of a neutral third party overseeing the route had been discussed in earlier rounds of talks, but Barrack’s statement was the first time a U.S. official suggested Washington could play a role. A more comprehensive regional strategy could help the administration access energy resources and check its great-power rivals without overburdening the United States with new commitments.

To be sure, the United States is not likely to be central to developments in the Eurasian interior. But it can and should encourage the EU, Turkey, and other allies and partners to maintain an active presence in this part of the world. Washington, moreover, can give a boost to efforts already underway. It should discreetly encourage governments in the South Caucasus and Central Asia to pursue greater regional coordination. It can contribute to regional dealmaking if asked but should otherwise allow local actors to take the lead. It can also work with countries in the region to lower barriers to trade and facilitate the involvement of Western firms, including American firms, in new energy, infrastructure, and critical minerals projects. Such trade and investment deals should be the focus of the next C5+1 ministerial conference, an annual meeting of U.S. and Central Asian foreign ministers held since 2015. A C5+1 summit of presidents has only been held once, in 2023; the Trump administration should take up the mantle of convening another one.

Above all, the United States must recognize that it shares a key objective with countries in the Eurasian interior. Their domestic political systems may not all be to Washington’s liking, and many of them will want productive relations with Moscow, Beijing, or Tehran. Given their geography, they have little choice. But these countries and their populations will also resist the Kremlin’s attempts to incorporate them into a reconstituted Russian sphere of influence. For the United States, preventing the region’s domination by Russia or other revisionist powers means supporting post-Soviet Eurasian countries’ pursuit of diversified economic and political ties. Even though those efforts do not always happen on Washington’s terms, their contributions to a freer, more open region align with Washington’s strategic interest.

 

 

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