Nowadays, alongside such major international organizations as the UN and the OSCE, one could easily create another one — an informal club of countries that for centuries have been trying to answer one of the most pressing questions of modern times: what does Russia want?
Attempts to find any rational explanation for Russian foreign policy have not ceased since imperial times and continue to this day — attempts that have been largely unsuccessful. Politicians, philosophers, and experts, both from the world’s leading countries and from small states, have so far failed to give a clear answer to the question: why does Russia do what it does? What is its interest, what benefit does Moscow seek to gain? What are all these sacrifices, expenses, and wasted years for? What is the ultimate goal?
The futility of trying to find a rational core in Russia’s actions was also noted by the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, who suggested simply believing in Russia instead. Later, a Jewish émigré from the USSR, poet and translator Igor Guberman, proposed finally revising Tyutchev’s immortal phrase — “it’s time already, for f***’s sake, to understand Russia with the mind.” But alas, this did not produce any greater understanding.
During the age of great empires, the British, French, Germans, Spaniards, and other major conquerors could not understand the logic of the Russian Empire, which spent enormous human and material resources on conquering lands that offered no practical benefit whatsoever.
The motives of European empires were quite clear and understandable — gold, diamonds, rubber, all of it plentiful and free of charge. But how can one explain why Russia pushed into empty and seemingly useless Siberia, whose value only emerged many centuries later, in the era of oil and gas? What was it looking for in the Caucasus, which throughout its time within the empire lay, and continues to lie, as a heavy burden on its budget? The Caucasus has brought Russia no tangible dividends and continues to drain its resources to this day.
Things have become particularly dire in recent decades, especially under Putin. Europeans and Americans puzzle over why Moscow needs Syria. If one were to draw up a balance sheet, it is a pure loss. Who can even calculate the cost of maintaining armed forces there and subsidizing the Assad regime? And the benefit — zero.
Why are the Russians in Syria? Do they need a base in Tartus? Why? To control the Mediterranean Sea? Why? Is anyone preventing Russia from moving around the Mediterranean? Why does Russia need Venezuela, which it also supports financially? What did the USSR gain by handing out billions of petrodollars to various dubious regimes in Africa, Asia, and Latin America? What were all these expenses for?
European powers needed resources from their colonies — a lot of them and for free. As soon as maintaining captured territories began to cost more than it brought in, they simply shrugged and left, without regret, returning home. Elementary accounting — profitable or unprofitable.
Russia — including the Soviet Union and the current Russian Federation — is the only empire in the world that has spent many times more on maintaining its empire than it has ever extracted from it. And in this situation, instead of abandoning everything and finally focusing on developing its own country, Moscow continues to cling to the remnants of imperial grandeur. And to spend, spend, spend money, resources, natural wealth, and most importantly — people.
And no one can explain — why all this?
Why the war in Ukraine? Are there any rational considerations? Territory? Is 17 million square kilometers really so little that there is a vital need to expand? Natural resources? Come on. The natural resources of ten Ukraines are a small fraction of what lies in Russian soil. And Russia’s oil production alone would more than cover any profit from Ukrainian resources.
Will Ukraine join NATO? And what will happen then? Missile flight times will decrease? Is that really an issue now, when the Baltic states, Poland, Turkey, Norway, and now Finland and Sweden — direct neighbors of the Russian Federation — are already in the alliance?
Ultimately, all explanations as to why Russia needs Ukraine boil down to one thing: “Russia cannot exist without Ukraine.” How so? In what way is Ukraine indispensable to Russia? For 30 years Russia has existed without Ukraine — and nothing terrible has happened, it seems. In the end, what remains is a set of mystical nonsense about Orthodoxy, a sacred mission, the Russian world, and so on.
This is, of course, uplifting and lofty — but at such a price? Before the war, Russia was a successful country, with enormous natural wealth, attractive to investors, open to the world, dynamic. And all of that has been lost — if not forever, then for a long time. For what? For a lofty spiritual mission and Orthodoxy? And what exactly does this mission consist of? Be specific, please! So we all — 145 million people — get up one morning and from that day onward carry out a great mission for the world. And what exactly do we do? On our fingers — first, second, third…
But let’s leave the 18th century, Syria, and Ukraine aside. We have closer precedents. For example, Georgians have been puzzling for about 30 years now — why does Russia even need these suitcases without handles — Abkhazia and South Ossetia? They bring no benefit, have zero natural resources, zero independent economy. Absolutely useless black holes, swallowing resources without a trace.
Maybe we could buy the Russians off? Offer them something better, and they’ll return the lost territories to us? Surely Moscow must derive at least some benefit from them… Naive. Buying off, offering something more interesting — that works for those who seize чужие territories for rubber and gold. But with someone who thinks in terms of a great spiritual mission, you cannot negotiate. And even though these lovers of Orthodoxy are first-rate thieves and corrupt officials, they never forget about their messianism either.
It appears that our informal “Understanding Russia” club has gained new members. This time — Abkhazians. They rack their brains, trying to grasp the ungraspable and explain the unexplainable. Why does a state with 17 million square kilometers need a miserable Pitsunda dacha? Or worse, some obscure Aibga? Why does it need apartments, why does it need a coastline that cannot even be used properly, say, as ports? All this for beaches? A 17-million-square-kilometer power with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal is raging over a strip of beach a few dozen kilometers long?
Why can’t Russia allow Abkhazia to have a normal, modern, democratic society, where Abkhazians manage their small territory themselves? After all, all Abkhazians are pro-Russian, and there is not even a remote prospect of a change in orientation.
Why do they need all this? Abkhazians wonder. Economist Akhra Aristava asks: what have we done wrong before Russia?
Welcome to our club. Now you are looking for an answer to the same question that we have all been unsuccessfully trying to answer for the past 30 years — along with the entire civilized world for the last 200 years.
The truth is that answers to these questions give rise to new ones. Why does Russia need Abkhazia? To control Georgia. And why control Georgia? To control the South Caucasus. And why control the South Caucasus? To control strategic communications. And why control communications? To prevent Caspian energy resources from passing through the Caucasus. And what is the problem with Caspian energy resources? Russian gas exports to the EU in good times amounted to 400 billion cubic meters; Azerbaijan, in the best-case scenario, might reach 10 — and that would already be excellent.
And so, like a nesting doll, you will receive one absurd answer after another, and in the end you will arrive in darkness, in the depths of the Russian imperial consciousness, where mysticism and megalomania matter more than practical interests.
Russians need Abkhazia. Russians need the completely useless South Ossetia. Russians need Pitsunda, they need Aibga. They need them without any practical or rational reasons.
They simply need them. Out of a sense of the need to expand — because once expansion stops, an empire ceases to be an empire.
Do not look for rational explanations such as beaches and a 100-kilometer sea strip, or mountain air, or love for Stalinist architecture.
Russia needs Abkhazia. For no reason at all. It is needed in and of itself.
Because — just because.
Tengiz Ablotia
