Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

An editorial in the Guardian on Saturday questioned the value of the EU’s ‘Eastern Partnership’ summit, held in Prague. Although an invitation to attend was initially extended to Russia, the Czech hosts have more or less acknowledged that the venture’s purpose is to prise six former Soviet republics away from Russian influence. The paper records the opinion that it will fail in this purpose, possibly whilst threatening to further polarise political divisions within the countries and sending out an ambivalent message about human rights and political freedoms. MT has written a thorough and detailed examination of the issues surrounding the summit. He is broadly in agreement with the Guardian’s analysis and he also challenges the initiative on the grounds that it wastes European tax payers’ money and seeks to establish an EU ‘sphere of influence’ whilst at the same time working on the assumption that Russia’s interests in its own locality are illegitimate and invidious. There is...

Russia’s influence on its neighbours is most often portrayed as lamentable and exploitative. As such it is unsurprising that Dmitry Medvedev’s efforts to broker a settlement between Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at best ignored and at worst portrayed as a cynical component of Russia’s attempt to establish energy hegemony over the west. Whilst states will naturally be most motivated by projects which accord with their own interests, Russia is in no way unusual in this regard and its mediating in the Nagorno Karabakh dispute should not be lightly dismissed. The conflict, like other post Soviet crises, has been bequeathed upon the states by a strategic piece of Stalinist arbitrariness. Karkakh, a region populated mainly by ethnic Armenians, was allocated to Azerbaijan’s administrative area under Stalin’s policy of divide and rule. Now Medvedev has the leaders of both countries signed up to solving their disagreements by negotiation. This is unequivocally a positive development. ...

Georgia’s president, Mikhail Saakashvili, has his own singular methods for dealing with opposition to his corrupt regime. Recent history which has been conveniently forgotten in the rush to acclaim his country as a bastion of freedom in the Caucasus. Saakashvili is not the only American client in the region. Azerbaijan is corrupt, anti-democratic, repressive and an important strategic ally of the US and Nato. Ilham Aliyev is currently holds the presidency which was conferred on him in much the same fashion as a family heirloom. On Comment is Free, Nina Ognianova highlights continued abuses of human rights, oppression of press freedom and the lack of democratic credibility which will attend forthcoming elections. Don’t hold your breath for a storm of western opprobrium. Azerbaijan is too conveniently placed geographically and too rich in oil and gas to consider rocking the boat. Now if the regime were pro-Russian, that would be a different matter.