Global temperatures are rising, but the former Soviet Union¡¯s frozen conflicts show no sign of a thaw. On the contrary, the ice is expanding.
Russia¡¯s support for the election held by separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk ¡ª key cities in Ukraine¡¯s Donbas region ¡ª indicates that the Kremlin has decided to create another semi-permanent ¡°mini-Cold War,¡± this time in rebel-controlled areas of Russia¡¯s most important neighboring country. But freezing Ukraine¡¯s legitimate government out of the region is potentially far more destabilizing than the Kremlin¡¯s support for the other ex-Soviet breakaway territories: Moldova¡¯s Transnistria and the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
By blurring its border with Ukraine, Russia is creating a new relationship with an anomalous, internationally unrecognizable entity that belongs, culturally and historically, not to the imaginary ¡°Novorossiya¡± (New Russia) proclaimed by the separatists, but to the ¡°undead¡± Soviet Union. The question is why Russian President Vladimir Putin and his entourage view a frozen conflict in Donbas, created to preclude a political settlement or lasting peace, as a positive outcome for their country.
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