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Now what, post Georgia?

Newsweek explains and puts into context events in Georgia, where Russia stands in the scheme of things and how we can expect to see the world in at least the foreseeable future:

"The war in Ossetia is all about drawing a line under further NATO expansion—and sending a strong signal to Georgia, Ukraine and Europe that Russia won't be pushed around. And from the moment Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, Russia's neighbors started to take its threats more seriously. The invasion marked the end of Russia's browbeaten, humiliated post-cold-war era and the beginning of a new, more assertive, more imperial Russia. What will Russia's next move be? In Georgia, according to Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of Russia's General Staff, Russia will establish a "security zone along the administrative border of South Ossetia" that will include 18 strongpoints manned by Russian peacekeepers. Just where that border runs will be defined by Russia. On the ground last week, Russian backhoes were seen digging in just north of the Georgian city of Gori—well beyond the old front line, and close enough to Georgia's main east-west road to cut Georgia in half within minutes.

What worries Russia's neighbors now is that the messy breakup of the Soviet Union left millions of ethnic Russians stranded in other post-Soviet states. Ukraine is 17 percent ethnic Russian; Estonia and Latvia nearly 40 percent; Kazakhstan 26.1 percent. And there are signs the Kremlin is systematically reaching out to these Russian-speaking communities through a range of lavishly funded cultural programs designed to boost Russia's soft power in the region. Other programs are more overtly political: the Kremlin-backed annual Foros Forum convenes in Crimea, a majority ethnic Russian region in Ukraine, and aims to "shape a new generation of young Russian politicians," according to one of the organizers, Duma deputy Sergei Markov. A selection of young activists from Kremlin-created youth groups like Nashi and the Youth Guards join the leaders and activists of Ukrainian pro-Russian movements to listen to lectures by the likes of Aleksandr Dugin, a leading light of the Eurasia movement, which preaches a Russian-led power block as an alternative to the West. "People gather to support our fraternal Ukrainian nation, which is groaning under the pressure of NATO," says Gennady Basov, leader of the nationalist Russian Bloc Party, a pro-Moscow pressure group based in Crimea."

Read the full piece here.

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