It bullied Armenia into scrapping its European Union trajectory and joining the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union instead.
It seized Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula and created frozen conflicts in Georgia, eastern Ukraine and in Moldova, where it has never withdrawn its troops from the pro-Russia Transnistria region
It is trying to browbeat Belarus into letting it build an air base on Belarusian soil — and Minsk may be unable to ward off the pressure much longer.
Although it hasn’t tried to seize or create a frozen conflict in Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia, those Baltic countries are terrified of such a possibility, even though they’re NATO members.
Russia’s latest target is the Balkans country of Montenegro, which became independent after the disintegration of Communist Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
Except for a brief period, Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic has led the country of 600,000 for more than two decades, both before and after it became independent in 2006.
His government believes Montenegro, which has a lovely Adriatic Sea coastline, has a better future as a part of the European Union and NATO.
The population, mostly Slavic like Russia, is deeply divided over the issue, however, with polls indicating that slightly less than half the people want closer ties with Moscow.
Capitalizing on this division, the Kremlin is demanding that Montenegro hold a national referendum on EU and NATO membership. Given that it has a history of helping its political supporters in other countries win elections with fraud, there is a chance the pro-Russians, though not quite in the majority, could use dirty tricks to pull off a referendum victory.
Tension between the pro-EU and pro-Russia forces has increased since December 2015, when NATO invited Montenegro to start the formal process toward membership.
Pro-Russians have greeted the invitation with sometimes violent protests and appeals for Russian help.
Since fomenting internal discord has been one of Russia’s favored instruments for seizing control of neighbors since Soviet times, you can be sure Russian spies and insurrectionists are in Montenegro undermining the pro-EU government and generally stirring up trouble.
As with many former Communist states, the Montenegrin government is not helping itself. Even many of those who support it believe it is corrupt — an accusation its leaders deny but whose denials draw scorn.
A harrowing recent development in the Montenegrin political stand-off was a no-confidence vote that parliament held against the Djukanovic government on Jan. 27.
The prime minister’s Democratic Party of Socialists survived the vote — barely.
But it lost its longtime coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, in doing so. It won the vote by picking up the backing of the opposition Positive Montenegro Party, which, of course, obtained concessions for its support.
Moscow added to the Montenegrin turmoil in early February by demanding that Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin be allowed to visit, despite his inclusion on a list of Russians on whom the European Union, the United States and other Western countries have slapped travel bans.
Even though Montenegro has yet to become an EU member, it has adopted the sanctions the West levied against Moscow for invading Crimea and supporting the separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Montenegro’s refusal to admit Rogozin, a notorious provocateur, has generated snarls from the country’s pro-Russians and threats from the Kremlin.
There was no mistaking Rogozin’s message when he said that Montenegro would regret barring him. “I don’t mean the people (will regret it), but the small group of people who are making the decisions,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin propaganda machine has been working overtime to try to scare Montenegrins into repudiating NATO membership.
One story that many of these so-called news organizations have carried has maintained that if Montenegro joins NATO, it will have to send troops on NATO combat missions abroad, whether it wants to or not.
That is an outright lie. Many NATO members have refused to send troops to Iraq, for example, or have sent them for awhile, then withdrawn them.
The lie has gained a welcome audience in much of Montenegro, however. That’s because in the mid- and late 1990s NATO bombed territory in the former Republic of Yugoslavia that ended up becoming the independent country of Montenegro. The bombing was an attempt to prevent Yugoslavian genocide of Kosovo’s ethnic Muslims.
Many Montenegrins harbor deep resentment toward NATO because of the bombings, and are all too willing to believe that NATO could order Montenegrin troops into combat abroad, even if the country opposed a deployment.
How the West and Russia’s tug of war over Montenegro plays out remains to be seen.
Unfortunately for those who want to see democracy take root in former Soviet fiefdoms, the Russians are in good shape in this battle.
Nearly half the population is pro-Russian rather than pro-EU and pro-NATO, and many Montenegrins are still angry about the NATO bombing campaign in their country. And the Russian have proven to be excellent provocateurs, saboteurs and election stealers in neighboring countries.
In the 2.5 months since NATO invited Montenegro to begin its application process, tension in the country has ratcheted up substantially.
Many political observers fear it’s only the beginning.
Armine Sahakyan is a human rights activist based in Armenia. Follow her on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/ArmineSahakyann
