The following is an interview with Agnia Grigas, an expert on energy and political risk in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the post-Soviet region.
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MOTYL: Your forthcoming book, Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire, argues that Moscow’s expansionist policies are driven by a desire to in-gather Russian and Russian-speaking “compatriots” in the non-Russian states. How does this process work?
GRIGAS: This is an effort to use compatriots—the ethnic Russians and Russian speakers residing in post-Soviet space—to regain influence and territory in foreign states. Since the 1990s, and particularly since the 2000s, Russia has passed some 20 laws, policies, and acts calling for compatriot engagement and protection. My book traces how Moscow uses Russian compatriots from the Baltic states to Central Asia in a seven-stage re-imperialization trajectory involving (1) Russian soft power, (2) humanitarian efforts, (3) compatriot policies, and (4) the distribution of Russian passports to compatriots abroad. As (5) information warfare intensifies over the alleged maltreatment and suffering of the Russian compatriots, (6) Moscow calls for their protection. The final stage can involve (7) stoking separatism in territories where the compatriots reside or de facto or de jure annexing these territories, as in Crimea, the Donbas, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria.
MOTYL: So, in your view, NATO enlargement and Western aggression played little to no role in Moscow’s aggression?
GRIGAS: Some have argued that NATO expansion has driven Moscow’s aggression, but many of the policies related to Russian speakers were first tested in Moldova’s Transnistria in the late 1980s and early 1990s and further formulated and put in practice in the 2000s. Moscow consistently created Kremlin-loyal compatriot, economic, and media networks. There is evidence that, in Georgia and Ukraine, Russian compatriot policies intensified and took a more aggressive turn after the Rose and Orange revolutions brought pro-Western leaders to power. Subsequently in both countries, Moscow stepped up its policies of handing out Russian passports (in Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia and in Ukraine’s Crimea) and supporting militant organizations of separatists or Russian speakers.
MOTYL: Vladimir Putin is lucky to have come to power at precisely the time energy prices went rose dramatically, enabling him and his cronies to purloin vast amounts, build up the Russian military, devote some resources to popular needs, and squirrel away large amounts for a rainy day. In a word, gas appears to have made expansion possible.
GRIGAS: The Russian economy has long been based on energy exports, and oil and gas revenues have funded Putin’s regime and his popularity. Oil contributes four times as much revenue to the country’s budget as gas. However, gas exports, rather than oil exports, have given Russia and Putin’s regime leverage over much of the post-Soviet space and Europe. The gas market is quite different from the oil market. While oil is traded internationally and easily shipped by tanker, until recently most gas trade was conducted by pipelines, which created long-term fixed relationships between supplier and importers. Russia’s gas monopoly in much of Central and Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space, as well as its sizable gas exports to countries like Germany, gave Russia and Putin’s regime tools for influence, coercion, co-option, and corruption of foreign governments, elites, and interest groups.
MOTYL: The emergence of a global gas market—the topic of your next book, The New Geopolitics of Gas—appears to herald bad days for Russia and the possible end of its expansionism.
GRIGAS: Global gas markets are experiencing an extraordinary transformation. I believe we are on the cusp of the emergence of a global gas market. As a result, Russia’s influence will be much more limited. The American shale gas boom has made available vast new sources of gas; Canada and China are also pursuing shale exploration. The rapid rise of liquefied natural gas trade, with LNG import terminals now being built or planned in a number of European countries—such as Croatia, Lithuania, and Poland—that used to rely primarily on Russian gas, makes gas imports feasible by tankers rather than by Russian-controlled pipelines. Finally, EU regulation and the buildup of gas pipeline interconnectors between EU members are further constraining Gazprom’s position in many of its former monopolist markets. This does not mean that Europe will be completely free of Russian gas or that Russia will lose its energy revenues. However, it does mean that gas exports will be more commercially driven and that Russia will lose much of its gas-derived political clout, including the leverage it has exercised in the former Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe.
MOTYL: Taken together, your two books amount to an analysis of the rise and possible fall of Putin’s Russian empire, don’t they?
GRIGAS: That’s one possible way of interpreting these two books. However, I am not so certain that we will soon witness an end to Russia’s expansionist policies. The Russian compatriot issue will remain salient for Moscow as an instrument of influence and meddling in neighboring countries. After all, protecting the compatriots is one of the key pillars of the Putin regime’s legitimacy and one of its foreign policy priorities. Although gas will increasingly lose its salience as a political instrument, tougher economic times and a constrained policy toolkit are unlikely to curtail the foreign policy ambitions of Putin’s regime. I anticipate that tougher times for Russia may mean more aggression abroad and more repression domestically as the government tries to put on a strong facade and try to maintain power.
MOTYL: Who’s next—the Baltic states?
GRIGAS: Currently Russia pursues compatriot engagement and rhetorical calls for their protection in nearly all the former Soviet republics including the Baltic states. The examples of Ukraine and Georgia show that Russia’s territorial aggression via compatriots is most effective when three factors are present: (1) a sizable and concentrated population of compatriots who (2) reside on territories bordering Russia and (3) are receptive to Moscow. This would indicate that Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, and potentially even Belarus are potentially vulnerable to Russia’s compatriot-driven expansion. It is difficult to predict who is next, because an element of opportunism—international developments, the weakness or instability exhibited by the target states and their allies (meaning NATO and the US), Russia’s own domestic developments, and other factors—determines when Russia’s compatriot policies turn more aggressive.
MOTYL: Is Putin aware of the implications of the global gas market? Or will his ideological commitment to compatriots continue to drive his foreign policy?
GRIGAS: Putin’s regime has been more concerned with staying in power and regaining great power status than with the economy or markets. However, these things interrelate, and changes in the global gas markets and Gazprom’s weakening position in Europe have not gone unnoticed in the Kremlin. Gazprom has been trying hard to hold on to its European market by seeking to build the Nord Stream II pipeline and, before the conflict with Turkey over the downed warplane, also planning a Turkish Stream pipeline. Given Europe’s recent and energetic efforts to diversify away from Russian gas, Gazprom has been trying to strike a major gas deal with China—which still remains uncertain—and even made overtures to Japan. However, in this buyer’s market, and under the new conditions of gas markets, Beijing, and not Russia, will set the terms of their energy cooperation.
MOTYL: Isn’t this just a recipe for imperial overreach and ultimate collapse?
GRIGAS: Russian policies in the current global political, economic, and energy environment do seem like an overreach. There has even been pushback from compatriots in Russia’s near abroad who largely have no desire to become part of Russia, much less tools of Russian military aggression, and who now find themselves in war zones such as in eastern Ukraine. Having seen the Ukrainian example, many of Russia’s closest allies in Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Armenia are likely to be more wary of Russia’s diplomacy, soft power, and cultural outreach. Russia’s aggressive military antics and diplomatic rhetoric toward NATO members Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and other Scandinavian countries has, this far, only served to reinvigorate the alliance. Indeed, Sweden and Finland, two non-NATO members, are now reassessing their security needs and are openly debating the merits of membership. Finally, the energy markets are in a completely different state today than in the early 2000s when Putin’s regime emerged. Whether these conditions will result in the collapse of the current Russian government or system is difficult to say. On the one hand, a pushback by Russian society and elites against this downward spiral would be logical. On the other hand, having already experienced the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian government could try to desperately hold the current system together with any means at their disposal.
