Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has been directly or indirectly involved in every major conflict across the wider Black Sea region, using these crises as instruments of power projection. Russian policies have had a counterproductive impact, intensifying geopolitical competition and contributing to regional fragmentation.
As Maximilian Hess has observed, ‘an astonishing ten wars have taken place on or near the Black Sea littoral since the end of the Cold War, more than in any other maritime space in the world.’ This includes the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine. Directly or indirectly, Russia has been involved in all of these conflicts. Since the early 1990s, Moscow has systematically exploited fragile relations between states and minority groups in the newly independent states of its so-called ‘near abroad’ to reassert leverage over their political trajectories. Beyond supporting separatist movements among Russian minorities in the Baltic states, Russia has actively encouraged similar movements in Georgia’s autonomous regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as well as in Moldova’s Transnistria and Gagauzia. In the case of Nagorny Karabakh, Russia was until recently a key actor in maintaining the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan – selling arms to both sides and preserving the status quo to sustain Russian influence. In each of these cases, Russia backed minority claims against central authorities, facilitating the creation of de facto statelets and sustaining their pro-Russian regimes.
Russia’s participation in the conflicts around the Black Sea has been both overt and covert, amounting to a policy of ‘managed instability’ to advance Russia’s interests and to position itself as the main arbiter of conflict resolution. Notable examples of covert operations with Russia maintaining ‘plausible deniability’ include the deployment of North Caucasian, particularly Chechen, irregular fighters in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the 1990s; the covert involvement of Russia’s 14th Army in Moldova, supporting Transnistrian rebels; the use of ‘little green men’ in Crimea in 2014; and support for separatist insurgents in Donetsk and Luhansk. Part of the strategy of ‘managed instability’ has been Russia’s repositioning of itself as a peacekeeping force, often under the formal mandate of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which was established shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, in order to secure its continued military presence on the ground.
Russia’s participation in the conflicts around the Black Sea has been both overt and covert, amounting to a policy of ‘managed instability’ to advance Russia’s interests and to position itself as the main arbiter of conflict resolution.
Beginning in 2008, Russia added overt, conventional military action to its arsenal of instruments, escalating the conflict with Georgia to a state-on-state war. Russia later applied the same strategic playbook to Ukraine, escalating from the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine to a full-scale invasion in 2022. In both cases, Russia engaged extensively in non-conventional ‘grey-zone’ operations – such as cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns – laying the groundwork for conventional military action while simultaneously deterring a strong Western response. Russia’s escalation dominance was premised on the belief that the country could move faster than any international reaction and that the West would not respond proportionally because Moscow was defending what it saw as its fundamental interests, which were of secondary importance to the West. Moscow believed that because Georgia and especially Ukraine would never matter to the West in the same way as they matter to Russia, it could escalate its actions without risking proportional retaliation. Relatively muted international reaction to Russian aggression against Georgia in 2008 arguably affected Moscow’s calculations, emboldening it to move against Ukraine.
To legitimize its actions, Moscow consistently refers to international norms, particularly people’s right to self-determination and international (read Russian) responsibility to protect the rights of minorities, Russian citizens and Russian speakers abroad. On the one hand, Russia opposes the Western concept of human security as having primacy over national security and, on the other, it invokes international responsibility to protect human rights, including minority rights, when it suits Moscow. In the case of Georgia, Lavrov claimed that the Georgian leadership under former president Mikheil Saakashvili violated the rights of minorities, giving Russia legitimate grounds for intervention. Connecting Georgia with Russia’s interests in the North Caucasus, he claimed:
In Georgia, Russia invoked the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, an international principle that recognizes the responsibility of the international community to protect populations from crimes against humanity, despite being a consistent opponent of its formalization and application within the UN. To highlight what it sees as Western hypocrisy and double standards in the application of international norms, Moscow also frequently cites the Kosovo precedent. It did so when recognizing the independence of Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions following the 2008 war, and again in justifying Crimea’s 2014 referendum on joining Russia. As Putin put it: ‘Our Western colleagues created this precedent with their own hands in a very similar situation, when they agreed that the unilateral separation of Kosovo from Serbia – exactly what Crimea is doing now – was legitimate and did not require permission from the country’s central authorities.’ He further questioned: ‘How come Russians in Crimea are not allowed to exercise the same rights as Albanians in Kosovo?’
International law is clear that remedial secession is permissible only in cases where there is compelling evidence of gross and systematic oppression. The absence of such evidence is the crucial distinction between the cases of both Abkhazia and Crimea and internationally recognized instances of secession, such as Kosovo. Moreover, none of the recognized cases of secession have resulted in annexation by another state. To bolster its justification, Russia further framed its actions in terms of ‘historical justice’, making the case of Crimea the most clear-cut example of post-Soviet normative and geopolitical revisionism, marked by profound contradictions. According to Putin, Crimea has ‘always been Russian’, along with the entire southeastern region of Ukraine. He has framed Crimea as the historical and spiritual core of Russia’s civilization state. In his 2014 address to Russia’s State Duma justifying Crimea’s annexation, he stated:
While veiled in historical and normative language, Crimea’s primary significance for Russia is strategic and military. As the base of the Black Sea Fleet, it has been central to Russia’s development as a maritime power and its self-perception as a great power. Russia’s initial recognition of Crimea as Ukrainian territory in 1954 was based on the assumption that Ukraine and Russia would remain inseparable though as separate states. It was thought that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, their ties would remain so deeply interwoven that Crimea’s formal status within Ukraine would be largely symbolic. This perception was reinforced by the presence of a predominantly Russian-speaking population in Crimea, which did not necessarily identify with the Russian state but equally had little attachment or sense of loyalty to the Ukrainian state. With the fall of a pro-Russian government in Kyiv following the Euromaidan protests in 2014, Moscow’s first move was to annex Crimea, staging a referendum to formalize its act of aggression. By 2021, Russia increasingly feared that Ukraine, with NATO’s support, might attempt to reclaim Crimea and Donetsk. The official narrative surrounding the so-called special military operation – as it is taught in Russian schools – frames the invasion as a pre-emptive action. In other words, Russia had no choice but to intervene to prevent such a scenario and secure Crimea.
Despite Crimea’s unique significance for Russia, Moscow’s approach to the peninsula – and to Ukraine more broadly – follows a well-established pattern. This strategy consists of several key elements: using national minorities or Russian-speaking populations as a justification for military action, undermining the territorial integrity of what Russia sees as ‘rogue’ states to create leverage, maintaining escalation dominance while adapting to evolving circumstances, and invoking international law or precedents to justify its actions – thereby constructing a normative narrative for both domestic and international audiences. In this sense, the annexation of Crimea serves as a typical example of how Russia responds to perceived challenges from its former imperial subjects.
The persistent sense of threat has fostered a broad societal consensus in favour of NATO and EU membership.
Russia’s strategy has had an unintended effect: expanding NATO and EU engagement with the Black Sea rather than curbing it. Since the collapse of the USSR, a growing consensus has emerged among Black Sea littoral states that the most effective way to ensure both national and regional security is through NATO membership and the development of a collective security umbrella – seen as the strongest deterrent against Russian revisionism. Our counterfactual analysis suggests that had Russia not threatened Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, Tbilisi might have less urgently sought NATO protection and could have adopted a more accommodating stance towards Russian interests. Instead, the persistent sense of threat has fostered a broad societal consensus in favour of NATO and EU membership. In Ukraine, however, public opinion on NATO was divided before 2014. One of the unintended consequences of Russia’s policies has been a significant shift in Ukrainian sentiment – marked by growing support for NATO membership, the consolidation of a strong Ukrainian national identity and the emergence of a more assertive national Ukrainian state.
While Russia downplays the independent agency of smaller states, particularly those that were once part of the Soviet Union, the reality is that these smaller states’ perceptions of the Russian threat have driven them to seek external protection, thereby inviting greater Western military and political engagement in the region. Following the annexation of Crimea, Romania and to a lesser extent Bulgaria advocated for a stronger NATO presence on their territories. All three Black Sea NATO littoral allies, including Turkey, subsequently intensified trilateral cooperation. Thus, Russia’s aggressive policies inadvertently facilitated a greater Euro-Atlantic presence in the Black Sea – the very outcome Moscow had sought to prevent. This, in turn, has resulted in a highly fragmented regional order marked by sustained geopolitical contestation.
