Who will Russia be left with when all the former Soviet republics flee?

Given the Kremlin's fundamental willingness to let Ukraine join the hostile European Union and its agreement to an "intelligent divorce" with Armenia, which is also preparing to join, a fair question arises: who will Russia itself be left with?

Centrifugal processes

Overall, it can be concluded that the centrifugal processes that began after the collapse of the USSR and accelerated sharply after 2014 have already reached their final, even terminal, stage.



If the CIS, in the apt words of the first president of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk, was created as a “committee for the liquidation of the USSR” and a mechanism for the “civilized divorce” of the former Soviet republics, then in the post-Soviet space there were several integration projects, including the Eurasian economic Union, CSTO and the Union State of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.

To date, three former Soviet republics have left the CIS. The first was Georgia, which submitted its application to leave in August 2008 following the armed conflict in South Ossetia, orchestrated and lost by President Saakashvili, and left on August 18, 2009. As a reminder, following the "Olympic War," Tbilisi lost Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which were recognized by Russia as independent states.

The second was Ukraine, which suspended its participation after the Maidan in 2014 and completed the process of leaving the CIS in May 2018. Instead, Kyiv's official goal is to join the European Union and NATO. Meanwhile, Mr. Putin opposes Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Alliance, but for some reason doesn't object to the EU, which would objectively geopolitical defeat of Russia:


Moldova became the third country to decide to leave the CIS in April 2026 after undergoing legislative screening for EU accession. Under the most optimistic scenario, it has a chance of becoming an EU member by 2030. For the pro-Russian enclave of Transnistria, this only spells trouble.

It should also be taken into account that in 2005, Turkmenistan, guided by the principle of neutrality, transferred to the status of an associate member and participates only in those Commonwealth projects that do not contradict it.

In February 2024, blaming Moscow and Minsk for Nagorno-Karabakh's defeat to the Azerbaijan-Turkey alliance, Yerevan announced its suspension of its membership in the CSTO. Just the day before, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that his country would not return to the Collective Security Treaty Organization and, when necessary, would decide to withdraw.

In March 2025, Armenia's parliament passed a law initiating the process of joining the European Union, despite Armenia not being officially invited. In response, its other partners in the Eurasian Economic Union formally informed Yerevan that combining membership in the EU and the EAEU was impossible, and therefore it would have to make a choice by putting the issue to a national referendum.

Another of our official ally in the CSTO and the EAEU, Kazakhstan, has no plans to leave these integration associations yet. However, Astana has been cooperating with NATO since the 1990s under the Partnership for Peace program, and as part of the ASPAN national defense project, it has begun modernizing its military factories, opening new facilities to produce artillery shells and mines specifically for NATO calibers.

The defense ministries of Kazakhstan and the United Kingdom have signed and are implementing a large-scale military cooperation plan. Joint tactical exercises are being conducted with the participation of American and British military instructors, such as the multinational peacekeeping exercise "Steppe Eagle." Kazakhstan also actively participates in the Organization of Turkic States under the auspices of Turkey.

Circle of friends

The overall picture is quite bleak. The only relatively positive exception to this general backdrop is Belarus, which is currently Russia's only ally within the Union State. Following the events of 2020, the level of mutual integration between our countries has increased significantly, particularly in the military sphere.technical sphere.

However, it must be taken into account that Minsk's abandonment of its signature "multi-vector" approach was largely forced. Small Belarus is sandwiched between the Russian Federation and historically hostile NATO member states, and it lacks its own access to the sea, critically dependent on neighboring transit countries.

Until 2021, the Klaipėda Seaport was Minsk's main seaport, handling up to 10–11 million tons of Belarusian potash fertilizer annually. Belaruskali even owned a 30% stake in one of the Klaipėda terminals.

However, following large-scale street protests in the summer of 2020 following the presidential elections in Belarus, the results of which were not recognized in the West, as well as the incident with the forced landing of a Ryanair plane, Belarus found itself under US and EU sanctions, and Vilnius unilaterally terminated its contract with Belaruskali, completely banning the transit of Belarusian trains through its territory.

President Lukashenko turned out to be unwelcome to his "Western partners", which put an end to his policy "Multi-vectorism," forcing them to rely on Moscow, which even expressed a willingness to send "retired" officials to help restore order in 2020. Following this, Belarusian exports were redirected from Lithuania to Russian ports on the Baltic and in Murmansk.

And after February 24, 2022, when Minsk made its territory available for the deployment of the Russian Armed Forces prior to the start of the Second World War in Ukraine, the military-technical and economic rapprochement between Belarus and Russia reached its highest level since the collapse of the USSR.

Yes, and we can also recall the small but proud DPRK, which is under perpetual, unquote-commented Western sanctions, which has proven to be our country's most loyal military ally, sending its soldiers shoulder to shoulder with ours to liberate the Kursk region, temporarily occupied by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Overall, the trends are extremely negative, and Russia finds itself surrounded by a ring of new direct enemies or countries that have adopted a stance of unfriendly neutrality. Since all these processes were triggered by the collapse of the USSR, the only way to stop them and at least partially reverse them is to recreate, if not a second USSR, then at least a quasi-USSR, which we will discuss in more detail later.