# Post-Soviet States The **post-Soviet states** are the fifteen countries that emerged from the [[Soviet Union]] in 1991 — [[Russia]] and the fourteen republics Moscow calls its "near abroad." Thirty-five years on, they no longer form a bloc in any meaningful sense. This page sorts them by where they stand with Moscow as of September 2026 and pulls out what the sorting shows. > [!tip] The one-sentence version > Russia has lost most of its *security* grip on the former Soviet space since invading [[Ukraine]] — but its *governing model* has travelled further than its troops, and the two need to be tracked separately. ## The scorecard (September 2026) | Country | Russian forces on its soil | Russia-led blocs | Western anchor | Direction | |---|---|---|---|---| | [[Estonia]] | None since 1994 | None | NATO and EU since 2004 | Exited | | [[Latvia]] | None since 1994 | None | NATO and EU since 2004 | Exited | | [[Lithuania]] | None since 1993; a German brigade instead | None | NATO and EU since 2004 | Exited | | [[Ukraine]] | About 19–20% of territory occupied; no ceasefire | Left CIS bodies 2018 | EU candidate | At war | | [[Moldova]] | About 1,200–1,500 troops in [[Transnistria]] | Leaving CIS (final April 2027) | EU negotiations opened June 2026 | Pulling away | | [[Armenia]] | 102nd base at Gyumri (Putin offers to leave) | [[Eurasian Economic Union]], CIS; CSTO frozen | EU application announced August 2026 | Pulling away | | [[Georgia (country)]] | Bases in [[Abkhazia]] and [[South Ossetia]] (about 20% of territory) | None since 2009 | EU candidate; talks frozen by its own government | Converging on Moscow's model | | [[Azerbaijan]] | None since June 2024 | CIS only | NATO partner; U.S. partnership | Autonomous | | [[Belarus]] | Russian forces; Oreshnik declared on duty | Union State, CSTO, Eurasian Economic Union, CIS | None | Locked in | | [[Kazakhstan]] | Baikonur lease to 2050 | CSTO, Eurasian Economic Union, CIS | U.S. minerals deals; Abraham Accords | Multi-vector | | [[Kyrgyzstan]] | Kant air base | CSTO, Eurasian Economic Union, CIS | None; EU sanctions target | Dependent | | [[Tajikistan]] | 201st base, about 7,000 troops, to 2042 | CSTO, CIS | None; China is chief creditor | Dependent | | [[Turkmenistan]] | None | CIS associate only | None; neutrality, China buys its gas | Isolated | | [[Uzbekistan]] | None | CIS; Eurasian Economic Union observer | U.S. minerals deals | Autonomous | ## Five ways out of the empire **1. The exits — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.** The only three that never joined the CIS and the only three inside [[NATO]] and the [[European Union]]. Leaving did not end the pressure; it changed its form. The Baltics now absorb the Kremlin's sub-threshold toolkit — airspace violations, cut undersea cables, GPS jamming, sabotage by proxy, migrants pushed across the [[Belarus]] border — calibrated to stay below NATO's Article 5. See [[Hybrid Warfare]]. **2. The contested — Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia.** Three countries trying to leave against active Russian resistance. Ukraine is fighting for it. Moldova did it by election, against documented Russian vote-buying, with margins as thin as 0.7 points. Armenia did it by concluding that its treaty ally was worthless: when Azerbaijan attacked in September 2022 and Armenia invoked the [[Collective Security Treaty Organization]]'s mutual-defence clause, the alliance declined to act. **3. The convert — Georgia.** Formally the most anti-Russian government in the region — no diplomatic relations with Moscow since the 2008 war, a fifth of its land under Russian occupation — and yet the one whose domestic politics have moved furthest toward Moscow's model: foreign-agent laws, a disputed election, the EU path frozen by its own government, and a lawsuit to ban the entire parliamentary opposition. See [[Georgia (country)]]. **4. The captured — Belarus.** The only state that has gone further *into* Russia's structure since 2022: Union State, every Russia-led bloc, and a declared Russian nuclear-capable missile deployment. Its one hedge runs to Washington, not Brussels, in the form of prisoners traded for sanctions relief. **5. The hedgers — Azerbaijan and Central Asia.** These governments are mostly no more democratic than Russia, and mostly not trying to join the West. What they have done is diversify. Azerbaijan fought a public diplomatic war with Moscow over a downed airliner and won an admission and compensation. [[Kazakhstan]] signs alliance declarations with Moscow and minerals deals with Washington in the same year. [[Uzbekistan]] stays out of both of Russia's integration projects. [[Kyrgyzstan]] and [[Tajikistan]] remain dependent on Russian security and Russian labour markets — but their counterweight is [[China]], not the West. ## Two axes, not one The usual question — *is this country in Putin's orbit?* — conflates two things: | | Authoritarian | Competitive elections | |---|---|---| | **Aligned with Moscow** | Belarus, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan | — | | **Not aligned with Moscow** | Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan — and Georgia, converging | Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia | The empty cell is the finding. No former Soviet republic is both aligned with Moscow and governed by competitive elections. But the reverse does not hold: a state can leave Russia's orbit without leaving Russia's model, and adopt the model without rejoining the orbit. Georgia is the proof of the second; Azerbaijan of the first. This is why the vault tracks *governance* through [[Illiberal Democracy]] and [[Democratic Backsliding]] independently of *alignment* — and why the same distinction applies to the American right's relationship with [[Hungary]] and with Russia itself. ## Russia's levers | Lever | Where it still works | Where it has failed | |---|---|---| | **Troops in frozen conflicts** | Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, occupied Ukraine | Karabakh — peacekeepers gone by June 2024 | | **Bases by treaty** | Tajikistan (to 2042), Kyrgyzstan, Belarus | Armenia — Putin now offers to leave Gyumri | | **Bloc membership** | CSTO, Eurasian Economic Union | Armenia froze the CSTO; Moldova is leaving the CIS | | **Energy** | Kazakhstan's oil runs through Novorossiysk; [[Rosatom]] builds Kazakhstan's first nuclear plant | Transnistria's gas cut off January 2025; Uzbekistan cooling on Rosatom | | **Labour migration** | Central Asian remittances | Used punitively after the [[Crocus City Hall Attack]] — 770,000 migrants ordered out, by the Duma speaker's count | | **Trade bans** | Armenian cognac, wine and mineral water in 2026 | — | | **Election money** | Moldova — about $39 million to 130,000-plus voters in 2024 | Moldova's pro-EU party still won outright in 2025 | | **Passports and "compatriots"** | Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Donbas | — | The CSIS assessment in June 2026 was that Russia's *security* grip on Eurasia has weakened as resources shifted to the war, while its *economic* engagement grew — but mostly through sanctions-evasion trade that may reverse when the war ends. ## The architecture | Body | Founded | Members today | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) | Belovezha Accords, 8 December 1991; Alma-Ata Protocol, 21 December 1991 | Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Moldova (leaving); Turkmenistan associate | Baltics never joined; Georgia left 2009; Ukraine left its bodies 2018 | | [[Collective Security Treaty Organization]] | Treaty signed in Tashkent 15 May 1992; organization 2002 | Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan; Armenia frozen | Azerbaijan, Georgia and Uzbekistan left 1999; Uzbekistan rejoined 2006, left 2012 | | Eurasian Economic Union | Treaty 29 May 2014, in force 1 January 2015 | Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia | Observers: Uzbekistan, Moldova (nominally), Cuba, [[Iran]] | | Union State | 8 December 1999 | Russia and Belarus | — | ## The "near abroad" doctrine *Blizhneye zarubezhye* — "near abroad" — entered English in early 1992 as the Russian foreign-policy term for the other fourteen republics, a category that is neither fully foreign nor domestic. The doctrine built on it has three load-bearing statements: - **Putin, 25 April 2005**, annual address: the collapse of the Soviet Union was "a major geopolitical disaster of the century" in the Kremlin's own translation — rendered more often, and more loosely, as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe." - **[[Dmitry Medvedev]], 31 August 2008**, two weeks after the Georgian war: "There are regions in which Russia has privileged interests… countries with which we share special historical relations." - **The 2023 Foreign Policy Concept** (31 March 2023) makes the near abroad Russia's top regional priority, commits to preventing "color revolutions" there (see [[Color Revolution]]), and describes Russia as a "civilization-state" at the centre of the "Russian world" — the [[Russkii Mir]] concept, with [[Eurasianism]] and [[Foundations of Geopolitics]] as its intellectual background. The working instrument is the passport. Russian citizenship was distributed in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria from 2002, and fast-tracked in the Donbas by a 2019 decree — creating "compatriots" whose protection then justifies intervention. ## RWKB angle **The region is being reorganized by deal, not by doctrine.** The second [[Donald Trump]] administration's engagement with the former Soviet space has been transactional throughout: sanctions relief traded for Belarusian political prisoners; a transit corridor across Armenia branded the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity; critical-minerals and Boeing deals at the November 2025 White House C5+1 summit; Kazakhstan's announced accession to the [[Abraham Accords]]. Some of those deals carry family interests — see [[Kazakhstan Tungsten Deal]] for the stake taken by a firm tied to the president's sons. Russia's retreat in the South Caucasus is real and partly an American achievement; it is also being booked as a portfolio. **The illiberal template is portable.** Georgia's 2025 foreign-agents law was modeled on the American [[FARA]] — a democracy's statute borrowed to answer democracies' criticism. The Kremlin's model travels between capitals that have nothing else in common — which is why the vault reads it as a *method* rather than a *network*. The same caution the [[Russia]] page applies holds here: convergence is not command. ## See Also - [[Collapse of the Soviet Union]] — how the fifteen became fifteen - [[Soviet Union]] — the predecessor state - [[Russia]] — the centre of gravity - [[Russian Influence]] — operations directed at the United States - [[Collective Security Treaty Organization]] — the alliance and its Armenian rupture - [[Eurasian Economic Union]] — the economic counterpart - [[Frozen Conflict]] — the five Russian-backed cases compared, and how each is ending - [[Transnistria]] — the frozen conflict under the most pressure - [[Abkhazia]] and [[South Ossetia]] — Georgia's Russian-held regions; South Ossetia's 2026 treaty is annexation in all but name - [[Russkii Mir]] — the "Russian world" concept - [[Countries Hub]] — every country page in the vault