Russian military interventions since the disappearance of the USSR

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has intervened militarily in several conflicts, all except for the case of Syria in the territory of countries that were part of the former USSR, as in the offensive it launched last morning on Ukraine.

Georgia

After the disintegration of the USSR and the declaration of Georgia as an independent republic, two regions located on its territory, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, refused to join it and proclaimed their autonomy, which was not accepted by Georgia.

The growing tension led to two armed conflicts: the one in South Ossetia that took place between 1990 and 1991 and left 2,000 dead, and the one in Abkhazia, between 1992 and 1993, cost more than 10,000 lives and the exodus of 300,000 Georgians who lived in the region. In both cases the separatists had the support of Russia.

In August 2008, Georgian troops attacked Tskhinval, the capital of South Ossetia, and other towns, triggering the intervention of Russian military forces in support of South Ossetian militias and forcing the Georgians to withdraw. The conflict lasted for five days and caused more than 600 deaths. Two weeks later Russia recognized the independence of the two territories.

Chechnya

Russia has intervened in the two bloody secessionist wars that this republic in the Russian Caucasus has suffered, and which has left tens of thousands dead.

The hostilities began in 1994 when Moscow broke into this territory that had proclaimed its independence in 1991, just a month before the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, signed the demise of the USSR.

The intervention ended in 1996 with the withdrawal of the Russian Army, the disarmament of the guerrillas and the possibility of starting a process of self-determination, which was frustrated in 1999 with the arrival of Vladimir Putin to power and a chain of attacks in Russia and the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan, which Moscow blamed on Chechen terrorists.

In February 2000, Russia seized Grozny, while hostilities continued, which the Kremlin officially ended in 2009.

Kyrgyzstan

The interim government of Kyrgyzstan asked Russia in 2012 to send peacekeepers to control the situation in the Kyrgyz city of Osh, where armed clashes had taken place between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks that had resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of wounded.

Russian troops have remained in Kyrgyzstan ever since, and Russia has been the Central Asian republic’s main ally since Kyrgyzstan’s authorities ordered the 2013 closure of the US airbase at Manas International Airport. In 2017 the two countries agreed to extend the Russian presence for another 15 years.

Ukraine

In addition to the conflict in Donbas, in March 2014 Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, which had been part of the former Soviet republic of Ukraine and remained under Ukrainian rule when the country became an independent republic.

On February 22, 2014 and after three months of protests, the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, who took refuge in Russia, was overthrown. Pro-Russian armed groups then seized the seats of the Crimean Government and Rada.

Russia’s annexation came after a referendum on the peninsula not recognized by Ukraine or the international community that was held in March of that year amid a bloodless Russian military intervention.

The President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, elected in 2019, announced on August 23, 2021 the “countdown” for Russia’s de-occupation of Crimea.

Kazakhstan

On January 2, 2022, Kazakhstan was the scene of massive protests, the most serious in its post-Soviet history, due to the rise in the price of liquefied petroleum gas, which led to violent riots with an epicenter in the country’s largest city, Almaty, which They were repressed by the Kazakh forces, leaving a balance of 240 dead, 4,600 wounded and 10,000 detained.

The country’s president, Kasim-Yomart Tokáyev, requested help on the 5th from the post-Soviet military alliance led by Russia, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), to quell the “terrorist threat”, as he described the violent protests.

The members of the organization, in what was their first intervention in twenty years, sent 2,000 soldiers, most of them Russian, who left the country days later, once order was restored.

Syria

In 2015, the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, after four years of civil war, asked Russia for military help, which on September 30 of that year began an intervention with air strikes against the positions of the Islamic State. The course of the war has changed since then with successive defeats of the jihadists and rebel factions against President Assad.

In December 2017, Putin announced the defeat of the Islamic State in Syria when the last jihadist positions on both sides of the Euphrates River were destroyed. On December 11 he traveled to Syria and ordered the beginning of the withdrawal of Russian troops.

Russia remains present in Syria, where it has two military bases, at the Hmeimim airfield and the port of Tartus.