ABSTRACT
The drastic downgrading by Moscow of the American and NATO threat to the Union put the problem of protecting Russia’s security onto a quite different plane, and turned it from the most vital issue into something that could be dealt with like any other matter of state, not as a permanent emergency issue. Russian national security, according to the definitions, is inseparable from the security of near abroad states, that is the republics of the former Soviet Union, and the Russian military actually consider that they ought to have a free hand in actions within those perimeters. The new approach to the use of nuclear weapons was also influenced by the pitiful state of the Russian conventional forces. Russian officers also command and train local units, as is the case in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, though Turkmenistan refused to sign the Tashkent treaty on collective security to which all other Central Asian Commonwealth of Independent States states adhere.
