 "Vladimir Putin")
Slumped, underwhelmed and mildly irked, Vladimir Putin listened in silence as Tajikistan’s veteran autocrat Emomali Rahmon seized the opportunity presented by a regional get-together to berate the Russian president, issue rambling counsel and demand “respect.” It was a snapshot of Moscow’s current predicament, eight months into a supposed blitzkrieg in Ukraine — and more telling than either side intended.
Tajikistan is not just any ally. It’s a poor nation of some 10 million that’s home to Moscow’s largest overseas military base. Remittances made up more than a quarter of its GDP even during the pandemic, most of that from migrant workers toiling in Russia. In late June, when Putin needed safe destinations for a post-invasion tour abroad, he started with Rahmon and promptly proclaimed himself on “friendly soil.”
And yet, last Friday, came this awkward, discursive seven-minute-plus soliloquy — viewed well over eight million times on YouTube since it began circulating over the weekend. “We have always respected and respect the interests of our most important strategic partner,” Rahmon told Putin at a summit with other Central Asian leaders, index finger pointed. “But we want to be respected too.”
Central Asia, and Tajikistan in particular, isn’t breaking with Putin over Ukraine. Economic and trade ties with Russia are still vital to the wider region, indeed Rahmon was pushing for more investment and attention, not less. Yes, the invasion of a former Soviet neighbor certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed — especially by states like Kazakhstan, with a significant ethnic Russian minority and directly menaced by Kremlin hawks — but Rahmon didn’t discuss the war.
This was about Russia’s faltering military, economic and political might, and its implications. The effect may not be too different.
That the disastrous assault on Ukraine has distracted the Kremlin from its interests elsewhere has been obvious. It’s made it easier for hostilities to boil over, including between Tajikistan and neighbor Kyrgyzstan. Elsewhere, tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan have flared up, too. And yet there’s been no repeat of January’s show of force, when troops from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization were flown into Kazakhstan to help restore order after street protests. In an expression of unhappiness with the response in its own hour of need, Kyrgyzstan unilaterally cancelled “Indestructible Brotherhood” joint drills due last week. Armenia’s leader has come under pressure to withdraw altogether.
This is more than a temporary interruption. Moscow, long obsessed with its status as a great power, is permanently losing its pull.
Central Asia remains tethered to Russia through basics like trade and pipelines, and that won’t change overnight. Kazakhstan, for all its careful diplomatic balancing, is dependent on Russia for its main oil export route. And Moscow has long been able to use cultural and historic ties with elites to make up for the inability to engage in Chinese-style infrastructure diplomacy and economic persuasion. But Soviet memories fade, especially when an invasion and economy-crimping sanctions lend a hand.
It doesn’t help, of course, that Russia’s military has also been dealt a major reputational blow in Ukraine, one which simultaneously batters its credentials as regional policeman. Moscow’s ineptitude on the battlefield and its inattention have left the CSTO alliance — never quite the match for the Warsaw Pact that Russia hoped for — ailing.
And that’s before considering the impact of Russia’s clumsy mobilization drive on the region. The campaign has sent hundreds of thousands over the border to flee the draft, filling up every empty bed, driving up rents and other costs from Bishkek to Almaty. Kazakhstan alone said earlier this month more than 200,000 Russians had entered the country. Worse, short of their own, Russian recruiters have tried to catch central Asian migrants in the dragnet to make up the military numbers, promising generous salaries, citizenship (a new bill allows foreign nationals to become Russian citizens after serving for just a year) but also resorting to deportation threats and widespread deception.
Several Central Asian states, including Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, have warned citizens they risk jail if they join the fight.
It’s important to note that Rahmon isn’t by any means the only one pushing back — he’s just the latest. Kazakh leader Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, sitting next to Putin at a flagship event in St Petersburg in June, said he would not recognize the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk peoples’ republics of eastern Ukraine. He has banned Russian propaganda symbols and cancelled the May 9 Victory Day Parade. Out of all its neighbors, Belarus was the only ex-Soviet state to back Moscow last week in a UN vote to condemn Russia’s referendums in Ukraine. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan all abstained, while Turkmenistan did not vote.
Russia’s backyard isn’t what it was, and that’s creating opportunities for other powers.
China, its trajectory increasingly divergent from Russia’s, isn’t falling over itself to step into the breach. Contrary to popular belief, it would be quite happy for Moscow to continue to play its role as security guarantor while leaving Beijing room in other areas.
But China abhors a power vacuum, and it’s without question becoming increasingly assertive in an area seen as crucial to its security, and to projects like the Belt and Road infrastructure program. There’s a good reason the region was the first President Xi Jinping visited after his lengthy Covid isolation. In Kazakhstan, he pledged resolute support for “the defense of its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity” — a not-so-subtle warning.
Having battered the economy by bringing on crippling sanctions and inadvertently strengthened NATO, Putin finds himself tested now even by his most reliable, least democratic allies. The list of self-inflicted wounds is only growing longer.
