Vladimir Putin is fearful. He worries that Nato and the wider West are encircling Russia with hostile populations and governments. This paranoid analysis is one explanation for his deployment of as many as 130,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, a move that could presage a major military assault on the country. Europe may be on the brink of its biggest conflict since the Second World War.
Fourteen states broke away from Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991: the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), as well as countries across eastern Europe (Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova), the South Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan). Today these countries vary enormously in their diplomatic relations, wealth and degree of democracy, but one general trend prevails: the citizens of almost all the 14 states have tilted away from Russia. “In every direction, peoples who used to see Russia as a friend are turning against it, or more precisely its leadership,” notes Maryan Zabblotskyy, an MP for Ukraine’s governing Servant of the People party.
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