Ukraine Isn't the Only Target

The Kremlin-led assault on democracy in Ukraine, ongoing these past few months, is the latest and most visible move in a strategy that extends to the entire EU/NATO neighborhood, even targeting incipiently some countries in the Euro-Atlantic community. A new type of threat to international security has taken clear shape across the entire area from the Baltic states to Georgia. This new threat stems from Kremlin efforts to attack or distort electoral processes and constitutional setups, with a view to regaining influence and control through the use of local antidemocratic clients.

While this threat must count as a new one in the typology of threats to national and international security, the strategy itself began emerging almost two years ago. The West has yet to conceptualize this problem and adopt a proactive approach -- as opposed to reacting late or being blindsided altogether by the Kremlin's moves in one country or another of this vast area, where variations of the overall strategy can be seen operating according to local circumstances.

In Lithuania last year, for example, elements of Russia's intelligence services and organized crime (intertwined factors in Russia) infiltrated the electoral staff of presidential candidate Rolandas Paksas and then his staff when he became president. Mr. Paksas, and after him several other Russian-connected politicians, led a populist challenge to Lithuania's free-market economics, parliamentary democracy and staunch Euro-Atlantic orientation. The country experienced months of political turmoil before its democrats and democratic institutions proved their strength this year by impeaching and removing that president from office.

Moscow plays the "ethnic Russian card" against Estonia and Latvia in attempting to change these countries' legal setups. It would like to turn them into binational states with parallel societies -- by deepening and legalizing the ethno-linguistic divide -- instead of promoting integration of local Russian communities into these Baltic countries.

Notwithstanding the fact that the European Union finds Latvia's and Estonia's legislation on citizenship, language, and education fully in compliance with the EU's criteria, Moscow continually attacks these Baltic states in international forums -- as well as though propagandizing to local Russians -- to pressure Latvia and Estonia into changing that legislation. It hopes that preserving and codifying those ethnically-based societal divisions would provide scope for manipulation of these countries' internal politics.

A distinct variation on Moscow's strategy can be observed in Belarus, as well as in the satrapies of Transdniester in Moldova and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia. While in other countries of the region, Russia is an anti-status-quo power, seeking to roll back democratic gains, in these places, Russia is a status-quo power, defending the dictatorships. Although the dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus irritates President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government by milking Russia's economy, the Kremlin is content to subsidize the loyal dictatorship, and rallies to its defense in international forums.

The Kremlin's solidarity with those dictatorships is on every-day display, in a common antidemocratic front. When President Putin congratulated Ukraine's presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych a few days ago on his phony "victory," Mr. Lukashenka followed suit immediately. So did Igor Smirnov of Transdniester.

[Continuing] It is a measure of Western incomprehension or obliviousness that, even after such moves, Mr. Smirnov's Russian-armed regime is still considered by U.S. diplomats and the European Union as eligible for legalization and official empowerment in a "federalized" Moldova.

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