Russia is likely to exploit rising instability in the Middle East and South Asia to reinforce its influence in Central Asia. These developments coincide with what Moscow characterizes as a deterioration of global security conditions and the erosion of the international security architecture by the “collective West.”
Erosion of Russian Influence in the Post-Soviet Space and Europe
Since the onset of the conflict in Ukraine in 2022, Russia has experienced a shift in the balance of power along its borders and a decline in influence across much of the post-Soviet space outside Central Asia. Finland and Sweden joined NATO, Bulgaria adopted the Euro, and EU trade with Russia fell by more than 83% by Q4 2025. The Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – have reduced trade with Russia by roughly 90% in value terms since 2022, while Moldova has intensified its relations with NATO and was granted EU candidate status in June 2022. Ukraine, meanwhile, has moved decisively out of Russia’s orbit since 2014, despite ongoing military pressure framed by Russia around neutrality, demilitarization, and “denazification.”
In the South Caucasus, Russia’s position has weakened further. Armenia froze its Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) membership in 2024 and has moved closer to Europe, culminating in the signing of Joint Declarations on Strategic Partnership with the UK and France in May 2026. Azerbaijan’s relations with Moscow deteriorated following the December 2024 Azerbaijan Airlines incident, while the EU simultaneously pursues strategic partnership with Baku. Georgia remains the exception, as the Georgian Dream government has moved the country closer to Russia and paused its EU accession negotiations, prompting the US to suspend its strategic partnership in November 2024.
Outside the post-Soviet space, Viktor Orbán’s election defeat in Hungary in April 2026 represented a setback for Russia, as his government supported close ties with Russian energy companies and often delayed or blocked EU aid to Ukraine. Across the Balkans, Russian influence has weakened as Serbia moves to diversify energy imports, Bosnia & Herzegovina deepens ties with the EU and US and moves to switch from Russian to US LNG, and Montenegro is firmly on track to become the next member of the EU.
Further abroad, Russia’s relationships with Syria and Venezuela have weakened, while partners such as Cuba and Iran face increasing US pressure. In this context, Central Asia remains one of the few regions where Russian institutional influence persists in structured form, becoming central to Moscow’s strategic focus as perceived instability in other post-Soviet regions reinforces its security-oriented approach.
Russia’s Narrative: Encroachment, Fragmentation, and Existential Threat
Russia’s response to these shifts cannot be understood without examining the narratives through which the Russian government perceives its strategic environment. These narratives draw on Soviet and post-Soviet rhetoric – including Putin’s 2007 Munich Security Conference speech – which described NATO expansion as a serious provocation that reduced mutual trust.
First, Russian officials consistently portray the West as deliberately sowing discord in various areas of the world to preserve the unipolar world order and weaken geopolitical competitors. Putin has repeatedly argued that “Western elites” are pursuing a “global confrontation” against Russia aimed at inflicting a “strategic defeat,” thereby posing an “existential threat” to the Russian state and identity.
This perception has been consistently applied to events in the post-Soviet space and former Soviet Bloc deemed unfavorable to Russian interests. Russia framed results in Moldova and Romania following their 2024 elections as externally manipulated, while arguing that the West orchestrated Ukraine’s 2014 political transition away from Moscow, portraying it as a “coup” that justified its armed intervention in 2022. It also accused the West of attempting coups in Armenia (2018 and 2026) and Georgia (2023), and portrayed the 2008 Russia-Georgia war as provoked by Western intelligence services. From Moscow’s perspective, Western expansion in the post-Soviet space creates a long-term encroachment problem.
Second, the Russian government frames strategic defeat not merely as a geopolitical loss, but as the fragmentation of Russia itself into smaller statelets. Putin alleges that the West seeks to “decolonize” Russia into five parts by fomenting ethnic and religious discord that could undermine national unity and territorial integrity. He reiterated such concerns in his interview with Tucker Carlson, claiming that the US provided direct military, financial, and intelligence support to separatists and terrorists in Russia’s North Caucasus, including Chechnya and Dagestan. This perception shapes how Russia interprets instability at home and across its sphere of influence.
Third, the Russian government frames this existential global conflict being perpetrated by Western elites as driven by “Russophobia, racism, and neo-Nazism,” thereby justifying extraordinary measures to defend the Russian state and its people. This narrative strengthens its domestic legitimacy by fostering patriotism and statism, while supporting a more assertive posture in the post-Soviet space.
Against this backdrop, Central Asia has become increasingly valuable to Russia. Unlike Eastern Europe and much of the Caucasus, it remains a region where Russia-led institutions function and its governments remain comparatively receptive to Russian security leadership, even while diversifying economically.
Leveraging Structural Dependence in the Post-Soviet Space
Russia’s strategy is put into action partly through institutional mechanisms that convert historical ties into structured dependencies. CSTO, Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) form the core of Russian-led regional integration. Although multilateral, these institutions are asymmetrically structured around Russian leadership.
Moscow transforms security and economic relationships into mechanisms of strategic consolidation. The cases of Belarus and Armenia illustrate how Russia seeks to exploit political and economic vulnerabilities to deepen structural dependence and coerce countries within its defined sphere of influence into continued reliance on Russia.
Following Belarus’ 2006 presidential election and subsequent EU sanctions targeting Belarusian leadership, Russia consolidated influence through energy leverage, including doubling gas prices and acquiring full control of Beltransgaz between 2007 and 2011. Although President Lukashenko resisted proposals for deeper political integration under the Union State framework in 2002 and 2019 – with Russia advocating the establishment of a “single state in the full meaning of the word” – Belarus’ post-2020 isolation, growing Western sanctions, and the Ukraine war accelerated integration with Russia and revitalized the Union State as an EU-style supra-state entity.
Cooperation within the Union State has since expanded through security guarantees, and the deployment of Russian nuclear-capable missile systems on Belarusian territory. Though Belarus was not absorbed into Russia, Moscow leveraged Minsk’s limited alternatives following the 2006 and especially 2020 elections to deepen economic, institutional, and security dependence.
Regarding Armenia, Putin warned Prime Minister Pashinyan in April of Armenia’s structural dependence while cautioning against closer integration with Europe. Putin argued Armenia could not participate meaningfully in both the EAEU and the EU for “purely economic” reasons, while emphasizing the country’s structural dependencies on Russia, including remittances, subsidized gas, pro-Russia opposition, and expanding EAEU trade. While Putin claimed Russia was “completely relaxed” about Armenia developing relations with the EU, the reality is much different.
Following Armenia’s strategic partnership agreements with the UK and France and its hosting of President Zelenskyy in May, the Russian government sharply criticized Yerevan, accusing it of abandoning historical ties, disregarding the will of the Armenian people, and reneging on prior “promises” to Moscow, while succumbing to Western pressure by aligning with “Brussels’ anti-Russian line” – a shift that it warned would carry political and economic consequences.
This rhetoric – emphasizing weakened sovereignty, Western patronage, a disregard for the will of the people, and a betrayal of historical ties – echoes narratives Russia invoked to justify its interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2022) following their declared NATO aspirations. It also harkens back to Soviet justifications for intervening militarily in Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).
Regional Instability as Strategic Opportunity
Regional instability in and around Central Asia increasingly presents Russia with both security challenges and geopolitical opportunities. In particular, spillover risks from Afghanistan remain a central concern for Russia, China, and Central Asian governments. Russia positions itself as a stabilizing actor through institutions such as the CSTO, CIS, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), promoting dialogue with Afghanistan, humanitarian assistance, and deeper economic engagement. This includes the pursuit of a full-fledged partnership with Afghanistan and deepening Afghanistan’s economic dependence through a proposed annual purchase of two million tons of Russian petroleum products.
At the same time, Russia securitizes regional developments, framing Afghanistan-related instability, Iran-US confrontation, militant activity, transnational crime, and the possibility of foreign military presence as justification that Central Asia faces growing threats requiring closer regional security coordination.
Building on this threat narrative, since 2024 Putin has articulated plans for a Eurasian security architecture aimed at countering Western unilateralism and advancing multipolarity. As Russia’s relations with much of its post-Soviet space have deteriorated, Central Asia has emerged as the principal region capable of underpinning this alternative to the Western-led “Euro-Atlantic” order. In Moscow’s view, this shift reinforces the need to expand ties with the Global South and accelerate Russia’s geopolitical reorientation as a matter of survival for the Russian state and its people.
This institutional consolidation is increasingly reflected in deeper coordination among Russia-led and Eurasian security frameworks. Trilateral cooperation between the CSTO, CIS, and SCO has intensified, following the September 2025 signing of a cooperation roadmap, and is expected to culminate in a trilateral conference in late 2026 to discuss Central Asian and Afghanistan security issues. In parallel, the CSTO is preparing a high-level meeting in May 2026 under Russian chairmanship, to promote multipolarity and modernize the CSTO under the theme “Collective Security in a Multipolar World.”
Central Asia has become Russia’s principal zone within the post-Soviet space, serving both as a security buffer and as a transit corridor that diversifies Russia’s transit routes beyond overreliance on China and what it increasingly considers politically risky regions. Central Asia’s significance is reinforced by intensifying geopolitical competition, including China’s expanding economic footprint, renewed Western engagement following the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the diversification strategies pursued by Central Asian states.
The proposed Eurasian security framework is therefore designed to limit Western influence and military presence in Central Asia – consistent with Russia’s 2023 Foreign Policy Concept – and aligns with narratives portraying Western encroachment as an existential threat that fuels conflict and seeks to weaken and fragment Russia. Russia’s Defense Minister has described attempts by “extra-regional states” to establish a military presence in the region as “unacceptable.” This position is consistent with Russia’s earlier opposition to US military presence in Kyrgyzstan (2001-2014) and Uzbekistan (2001-2005), following what it considered to be the end of NATO’s major combat operations in Afghanistan.
Institutionally, the CSTO and SCO translate these strategic objectives into operational dependence by embedding Central Asian security structures within Russian-led frameworks. Joint initiatives such as defense and security support along the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border illustrate how shared threat perceptions are converted into coordinated defense arrangements. These mechanisms enhance regional capacity but reinforce reliance on Russian military systems, training, etc., and constrain diversification of security partnerships, such as with the US.
Nevertheless, Russia’s practical security concerns within Central Asia are not fabricated. Instability in Afghanistan and broader regional tensions pose genuine risks to Central Asian governments, many of which actively seek Russian support to maintain stability and manage cross-border threats. Russia is therefore likely to leverage this to expand its role as a security provider under a new Eurasian security framework, involving the CSTO, CIS, and SCO. This can enable Moscow to consolidate its influence through institutional dependence.
Russia’s Likely Moves in Central Asia
Russia’s strategy in Central Asia is shaped by declining influence in other post-Soviet and Soviet Bloc regions, existential narratives of Western encroachment and Russia’s potential fragmentation, as well as genuine concerns over regional instability. Although Central Asian states continue pursuing economic diversification and balancing relations with China and extra-regional actors, Russia is likely to leverage regional insecurity to reinforce its role as the primary security guarantor. By reinforcing regional dependence through institutions such as the CSTO, CIS, and SCO, Moscow will likely seek to consolidate long-term influence while limiting Western military and political influence in what it increasingly views as a strategically indispensable region as it pursues the creation of a multipolar world order.
