Kazakhstan

If Vladimir Putin’s goal is to reestablish Russian influence, his ambitions are on track for another major setback. Far less high-profile than the war in Ukraine, a slow and quiet revolution has been brewing south of Russia’s borders in Central Asia and the Caucasus. These nations, members of the former Soviet Union, have traditionally been in Russia’s sphere of influence. That, however, is now changing. At the start of the year, it looked like Russia was ascendant. Putin had over 150,000 troops waiting to invade Ukraine, and was receiving a steady stream of Western visitors pleading with him to step back. When Kazakhstan was engulfed in popular protests, Putin stepped in and deployed about 2,500 Russian troops after an appeal by the Kazakh president to help quell the unrest.

Almost every night in Russia, it seems, a government building bursts into an unexplained fire. Fuel depots, office buildings, infrastructure hubs — and once a bridge. No doubt people have their theories. Insinuation abounds. "Karma is a cruel thing," one Ukrainian official has said on Telegram. But in the main, both the Russian government and Ukraine maintain an eloquent silence. The metaphor is apt. The fires are an unexpected consequence of Russia’s war in Ukraine, an eventuality, no doubt, that no one in the Kremlin inner circle anticipated, or planned for. And yet they burn merrily nonetheless.

However much it is denied, we still live in an imperial age, at least metaphorically. Just as the withdrawal from Afghanistan registers the momentary decline of the American empire, it registers the momentary rise of the Russian and Chinese ones. America failed in Afghanistan because its military, while capable of fighting high-tech wars on land and sea, could not fix complex Islamic societies on the ground. Indeed, Afghanistan demonstrated how the deterministic elements of geography, culture and ethnic and sectarian awareness can vanquish Western ideals of democracy and individual liberty.