Russian Relations with the “Near Abroad”

This chapter outlines the major problems in Russian relations with the countries of the near abroad. It examines how domestic political battles, and differing conceptions of Russia's position in the territory of the former Union, have complicated the Russian government's attempts to formulate a coordinated policy toward the near abroad. In the midst of the bureaucratic and ideological battles, Boris Yeltsin was for the most part the final arbiter of Russian foreign policy. The implicit expectation of many Russian policy-makers appeared to be that a forthcoming Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) superstructure would suffice to govern Russia's relations with other CIS members by placing bilateral disputes in a multilateral context. The majority of the new governments entered 1992 with the intention of participating in a joint CIS military that would make the issue of military property ownership substantially less urgent.