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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians

7. Military invasions: Russian forces poured into Georgia through its two breakaway territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, during a brief conflict in 2008. In 2014, Russian troops occupied Crimea, oversaw a stage-managed referendum on annexation there, and unofficially entered eastern Ukraine en masse to support a supposedly indigenous rebellion by ethnic Russian separatists.

8. Frozen conflicts: The term "frozen conflict" indicates a condition in which active fighting has ended or subsided but there is no peace agreement beyond a tenuous cease-fire. Under Putin, Russia has perpetuated or created frozen conflicts that affect Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. In each case, the Kremlin retains for itself the capacity to subdue or escalate tensions as needed to maximize its political influence over the relevant country.

Moscow applies these tactics according to its objectives for a particular country or region. For nearby EU and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states, the goal is to remind local political leaders that Russia can play a disruptive role, and to inject a measure of fear into foreign policy calculations. While the Kremlin holds out the possibility of military invasion as an option, its preference thus far has been to promote instability and uncertainty.

Russia's message is meant both for the target country and for its more distant allies. The target country is effectively warned that challenging Russian interests could provoke serious reprisals. For allies like the United States, Britain, or Germany, the message is that solidarity with the target country could entail a heavy cost, including the possibility of a shooting war in which they are obliged to defend small NATO member states like Estonia and Latvia.

The 'Russian world'
A favorite theme of Kremlin propaganda is the so-called Russian world, a cultural or civilizational space that extends beyond Russia's political borders. This deliberately flexible and nebulous concept suggests that Russia claims the right to intervene wherever its perceived brethren—ethnic Russians, other Russian speakers, Orthodox Christians—are under threat.

Putin has spoken of one million Russians cut adrift by the collapse of the Soviet Union. He has said it is his obligation to protect these people, and he has tried to appeal to them through culture, history, and the media. His press spokesman, Dmitriy Peskov, has said that "Russia is the country that underlies the Russian world, and the president of that country is Putin; Putin precisely is the main guarantor of the security of the Russian world."4

In 2014, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Putin dredged up the tsarist-era term Novorossiya to describe a large swath of southeastern Ukraine that he hinted might be annexed. Suddenly, the Novorossiya idea began appearing in Russian media, complete with maps, while Russian-backed separatists moved to write the "history" of the region into textbooks.5 Eventually Putin dropped Novorossiya from his speeches, having successfully stoked fears that the Ukraine conflict could widen beyond Crimea and the Donbas. The international community was then apparently meant to feel grateful that Russian forces did not press their attack any further.

In practice, Putin has invoked the idea of a greater Russian world to intimidate only countries that have embraced democracy and seek closer ties to the EU and NATO. He has shown little interest in ethnic Russians and other residents in Central Asian states like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, even though they suffer under political conditions that Freedom House ranks as among the least free in the world.6

The case of Estonia
Throughout its history, Estonia has been fought over by Russia and European powers to the west. During World War II, it was occupied by the Red Army and forcibly annexed to the Soviet Union. Its elites and intellectuals were murdered or deported to the Soviet gulag, and the Estonian people endured over four decades of Sovietization and Russification, including a policy of encouraging Russian speakers to relocate to Estonia.

The country regained its independence in 1991 with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. From early on, relations between the ethnic Estonian majority and the sizeable ethnic Russian minority have been difficult. Estonia has adopted citizenship laws that require many ethnic Russians to pass an Estonian language test, and they complain of being treated as second-class citizens. In opinion surveys, however, Russian speakers show little enthusiasm for becoming citizens of Russia, and have indicated an appreciation for the access to Europe that citizenship in an EU country confers.7

There are an estimated 300,000 ethnic Russians in Estonia. Approximately three-quarters get their news

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