Admire Russia’s provocative statecraft, even if its objectives are odious

Russian President Putin is feeling his oats. He is pushing against the West along a front that extends from the Baltics to Syria and possibly beyond. Here is an incomplete account of his maneuvers:

1. The Baltics: Russia has concentrated troops along its border with Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Moscow is also conducting menacing exercises and violating Allies’ airspace.
2. Belarus: Again lots of military exercises, but more inventively Putin has encouraged President Lukashenko to import Kurds from Iraq and try to push them across the border into Poland and thus the EU. This constitutes intentional weaponization of third-country nationals.
3. Ukraine: Moscow has (again) concentrated military forces on the border with the apparent intention of threatening an expansion of Russian-controlled territory inside Ukraine beyond Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea. Moscow is also raising gas prices and shipping more gas to the West avoiding Ukraine and thus reducing its revenues.
4. The Balkans: Russia is giving and selling arms to a vastly re-armed Serbia, is financing the Serb entity inside Bosnia and Herzegovina and encouraging secession talk there, and has gained vastly increased influence through proxies inside Montenegro.
5. Turkey: Moscow has sold its advanced air defense system to Turkey, which as a result has lost its role in manufacturing components of the American F-35 fighter and will likely look to Russia for modernization of its fighter fleet.
6. Syria: Russian air forces intervened in Syria in 2015, when rebels were seriously threatening the regime in Damascus. Russian forces have occasionally tested their mettle against the Americans and US-supported forces in the northeast.

Russian military forces have also taken on a “peacekeeping” role inside Azerbaijan after its 2020 clash with Armenian-supported secessionists in Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow’s troops were already stationed inside Armenia. Prior Russian interventions in Georgia and Moldova were explicitly aimed at preventing NATO and EU membership, respectively, and have resulted in separate governance of Russian-controlled territories within those states.

For Putin, not only NATO but also the EU is an enemy. He is right: the EU and NATO are committed to open societies, democratic governance, and the rule of law, which are anathema to Putin. He wants none of their members on Russia’s borders or even nearby. The Eurasian Economic Union is intended as the economic dimension of his fight against the West. He is also seeking to weaken the EU and NATO from within. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is Russia’s handmaiden within the EU. Montenegro risks becoming one inside NATO.

It is difficult to know how the West should respond to all this. Neither the EU nor NATO is skilled at anticipating and preventing trouble. Nor can they coordinate and focus resources as quickly as an autocrat can. But it is important to recognize that for Russia all these pieces are part of the same puzzle. Obsessed with being surrounded, Russia responds by trying to expand and establish autocratic hegemony in what it regards as its near abroad, even if that designation is no longer so commonly used. You have to admire Russia’s provocative statecraft, even if the objectives are odious.