August 18, 2026
Newsweek - Moscow’s Former Colonies Are Done Taking Orders From Putin
For three decades after the Soviet Union collapsed, governments across Central Asia and the South Caucasus made foreign-policy decisions with one question always in mind: What will Moscow allow?
They have stopped asking.
Kazakhstan supplies rare earths to America and tells Vladimir Putin to end his war. Armenia has written EU membership into law and stopped showing up to Russia's military alliance. Azerbaijan hosts conferences on Russian colonialism and helps build Ukraine's railways. Moscow has found no way to make them start asking again.
The war in Ukraine, which has consumed the military and economic resourcesRussia used to police its periphery, is only part of the explanation. The deeper problem is how Russia managed these relationships in the first place. Putin relied on coercion: frozen conflicts on their territory, trade embargoes when they strayed, and the standing implication that Russian troops could arrive if matters went far enough. Russia's economic presence was real but built to bind rather than to build—stakes in export pipelines, control of transit routes and power grids, leverage over the migrant labor on which several economies depend. Russia never became a source of technology, capital or security that made these countries stronger. Influence of that kind requires the capacity to frighten. Ukraine drained the capacity, and little else was holding them.
Read the full article on Newsweek.
Joseph Epstein is Director of the Turan Research Center.