The Frozen Conflicts Within the Former Soviet Union

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Almost two decades ago two colleagues and I published a book on de facto states, polities that have asserted their independence but have not been internationally recognized by most other countries or international organizations as the de jure legal authority in that territory.

They have emerged because of wars and partitions, consequences of the demise of failed states. In each case, the de facto state broke away from a parent state that is internationally recognized and still claims sovereignty over it.

As we know, the biggest country to have disintegrated in recent decades was the once-mighty Soviet Union. The former Soviet space has a number of these statelets, which were born after its messy breakup in 1991.

When that federation was replaced by 15 new entities, all having been immediately recognized within their previous Soviet borders, various peoples within those newly sovereign jurisdictions in turn wanted their own independence.

Yet those same newborn countries refused to grant to the breakaway places that which they themselves had just acquired – political independence. So ever since, the secessionists remain on guard against attempts to defeat and reintegrate them. They remain entangled in so-called “frozen conflicts” which now and then heat up.

Four of these places have seceded from, respectively, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova. A fifth attempt, by the Chechens located within Russia itself, led to two vicious wars in the 1990s and ended unsuccessfully.

The separation of ethnically Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan led to ongoing hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia itself. The two territories formerly within Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both ethnically distinct, pulled Russia into a war with Georgia in 2008. Only Transnistria, which left Moldova, has so far not drawn Moldova into conflict with other countries.

The Soviet government first established the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan in the 1920s.The Karabakh Armenians, who call the region Artsakh, declared unilateral independence in 1991, and eventual unification with Armenia remains a popular option.

Initially, the Armenians were successful in fighting Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, and by 1994 Armenians were in possession not only of that region but also surrounding parts of Azerbaijan. But in 2020, the Azerbaijanis retook territory after a six-week long war that claimed the lives of more than 6,000 soldiers. Russia brokered the end of the fighting and placed 2,000 peacekeeping troops between the two sides.

 

A further flare-up of fighting last September also went against Armenia, and the breakaway territory lost the Lachin corridor from Karabakh to Armenia itself. It has since been running short of food due to an Azerbaijani blockade. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Jan. 17 stressed “the need for a swift and complete unblocking of traffic” but to no avail.

In August 2008 Georgia tried to retake its two breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia by force. A five-day Russian counter-offensive prevented Tbilisi from restoring control. Shortly thereafter, Moscow recognised them as independent states. The South Ossetian leadership aspires to join its bigger neighbor, North Ossetia, within Russia.

Abkhazia, on the Black Sea coast, also borders Russia. The region fought and won a war of secession with Georgia in 1992-1993, and formally declared independence in 1999. In 2009 Moscow signed a five-year agreement with Abkhazia to take formal control of its frontiers with Georgia, and in 2014 they signed a “strategic partnership” agreement.

The self-declared republic of Transnistria, wedged between Moldova and Ukraine, has been steered by Moscow for decades. In 1990, Transnistrians felt a newly independent Moldova, predominantly Romanian is ethnicity, was leaning too close to Romania. So they declared independence, and two years later, with the help of Russian troops, won their separatist battle against Moldova, creating a pro-Moscow island of Russian speakers.

Transnistria hosts a Russian military base housing some 1,500 troops. Meanwhile, once war with Russia began, Ukrainian closed its border with Transnistria.  The separatist regime responded with complaints about an economic blockade and called on Russia to step in and save the breakaway region.

In April, a string of mysterious bombings, including an attack on the Ministry of State Security in Tiraspol, the capital, rattled the little country.

All these countries invested heavily in the symbolic paraphernalia of statehood in an apparent effort to over-compensate for their lack of recognition. They proudly exhibit their flags, crests, stamps, and national anthems.

There is an international consensus that de facto authorities are to be treated as partners in negotiations on conflict resolution. After the 2008 war with Russia, the Georgian authorities sought to reframe the conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia as being Georgian-Russian conflicts. Yet they continue to talk to the Abkhaz and South Ossetians.

The Abkhaz authorities are signatories to ceasefire agreements, thus endowing them with certain responsibilities. In the Transnistria conflict, that country is accepted as one of the two sides alongside Moldova.

What hope do these territories have of being legalized or legitimized in the future? It seems that the strong aversion to recognizing unilateral acts of secession will remain in force. But at least one rebel territory, once an autonomous region in the former Yugoslavia, has gained some international recognition: Kosovo, which overthrew Serbian rule with the help of NATO, is now independent.

The former Soviet states, and Russia itself, see this as a precedent which should apply elsewhere as well.