Russia’s contemporary policy in the Caucasus is often described through the language of security, peacekeeping and regional stability. Yet its deeper roots lie in an older imperial habit: treating the region as a strategic frontier to be managed, reorganized and kept within Moscow’s sphere of influence, writes Gary Cartwright.
Russia’s policy in the Caucasus has never been only about borders. From the imperial period through the Soviet era and into the post-Soviet order, Moscow has viewed the region as a strategic space where military access, population management, religious identity, trade routes and political loyalty intersect.
That history remains relevant today. Russia’s influence in the South Caucasus is weaker than it was before the invasion of Ukraine, but the logic behind its policy has not disappeared. Moscow still seeks to preserve a privileged role in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, even as regional states pursue more diversified foreign policies and external actors, including Turkey, the United States and the European Union, become more active.
One useful historical source for understanding this continuity is A Vanished Civilisation: An Unnoticed Catastrophe by the Ukrainian historian Kuzari. The book examines the disappearance of Turkic communities from parts of the South Caucasus and places that history within a wider account of Russian expansion into Turkic and Muslim regions. Its summary presents the work as a study of Erivan and Zangezur between 1827 and 1988, drawing, according to the author, primarily on Armenian, Russian and French sources rather than Azerbaijani or Turkish ones.
The book’s importance for contemporary analysis lies not in treating it as a guide to current policy, but in its broader historical argument. Kuzari describes Muscovy’s early state ideology as having developed partly in opposition to the Turkic-Muslim world that emerged from the post-Golden Horde space. In that interpretation, Moscow’s expansion towards the Volga region, Siberia, Central Asia and the Caucasus was not only territorial, but ideological: a process framed through claims of religious mission, imperial inheritance and civilisational hierarchy.
Modern Russia does not use the same vocabulary. It speaks instead of security guarantees, peacekeeping, anti-terrorism, transport routes, border stability and protection of compatriots. Yet the older habit remains visible: the Caucasus is still treated not simply as a neighbouring region, but as a zone where Moscow expects a special right of intervention, mediation and influence.
In the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire’s advance into the Caucasus involved military conquest, administrative reorganisation and demographic change. The region was not absorbed as a neutral geographical space. It was reordered to serve imperial security and communications. Control of the Caucasus gave Russia access towards the Black Sea, the Caspian, Anatolia, Persia and Central Asia. It also allowed Moscow and St Petersburg to manage the frontier between Christian, Muslim, Turkic, Persian and Ottoman spheres.
This frontier mentality survived the empire. Under Soviet rule, the Caucasus was incorporated into a centralised system that formally recognised national republics while keeping decisive power in Moscow. Borders were drawn and redrawn. Autonomous entities were created. Ethnic grievances were suppressed rather than resolved. The Soviet system froze many conflicts without removing their causes.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, those unresolved questions became instruments of post-Soviet influence. In Georgia, Russia’s support for Abkhazia and South Ossetia gave Moscow permanent leverage over Tbilisi. After the 2008 war, Russia recognised both territories as independent, ensuring that Georgia’s sovereignty and Western integration would remain constrained by unresolved occupation and territorial fragmentation.
In Armenia and Azerbaijan, Moscow long positioned itself as the indispensable mediator over Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia sold arms, maintained security ties, and presented itself as the one actor capable of managing escalation. The 2020 ceasefire that ended the Second Karabakh War appeared at first to reinforce that role, since it brought Russian peacekeepers into the conflict zone. But the events that followed exposed the limits of Moscow’s authority.
Azerbaijan’s restoration of full control over Karabakh in 2023 sharply reduced Russia’s practical role as regional arbiter. The Russian peacekeeping mission did not prevent the outcome, and Armenia’s trust in Moscow’s security guarantees was badly damaged. Since then, Yerevan has sought a more diversified foreign policy, including closer engagement with the European Union and the United States.
That shift remains incomplete and contested. Armenia is still economically tied to Russia and remains linked to Russian-led structures, but the political direction has changed. In March 2026, Vladimir Putin warned Armenia that it could not belong simultaneously to the European Union and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, underlining Moscow’s concern over Yerevan’s attempt to broaden its options.
The warning was consistent with Russia’s wider approach. Moscow does not object merely to hostile policy from its neighbours. It often objects to their ability to choose independently. In the Caucasus, as in Ukraine and Moldova, Russia has tended to treat foreign policy diversification by neighbouring states as a threat to its own status.
Transport routes are central to this contest. The South Caucasus sits between the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, Turkey, Iran, Russia and Central Asia. Whoever shapes its corridors influences trade between Europe and Asia. This is why proposed routes linking Azerbaijan, Armenia, Nakhchivan, Turkey and Central Asia carry significance beyond commerce.
The planned Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP, has become part of this wider competition over connectivity. Recent Carnegie analysis described the route as part of a broader effort to rewire the South Caucasus through connectivity and interdependence, while also noting the political and practical obstacles that remain.
For Moscow, such projects are sensitive because they may reduce reliance on Russian territory and infrastructure. Carnegie has also noted that the Middle Corridor is being discussed increasingly as an alternative to transit through Russia, although it faces serious logistical, governance and geopolitical constraints.
This is where the historical continuity becomes clearer. Russian imperial policy in the Caucasus was concerned with routes, passes, ports, military roads and the political loyalty of local elites. Contemporary Russian policy is similarly concerned with who controls roads, railways, borders, customs arrangements and security guarantees. The instruments have changed, but the strategic concern remains the same: preventing the region from being organised without Russia.
Azerbaijan’s position illustrates the changing balance. Baku maintains a working relationship with Moscow, but it is no longer a subordinate actor in a Russian-managed order. It has deepened its alliance with Turkey, expanded energy links with Europe, maintained security relations with Israel, and pursued its own regional agenda. It does not need to frame this as anti-Russian policy. Its significance lies in the fact that it is autonomous.
Armenia represents the opposite side of the same shift. Having depended heavily on Russia for security, it is now testing whether other partnerships can reduce that dependence. This does not mean Armenia can easily detach itself from Moscow. Russian economic influence, migration links, energy ties and political networks remain substantial. But the old assumption that Russia is Armenia’s only serious security partner has been weakened.
Georgia remains constrained by the most direct form of Russian leverage: occupation and territorial division. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are not only unresolved conflicts; they are mechanisms that limit Georgia’s strategic choices. Moscow’s policy there demonstrates a long-standing method: when full control is not possible, managed instability can serve as a substitute.
The result is a region in transition. Russia remains present, but its authority is no longer automatic. Turkey has become more influential through its partnership with Azerbaijan. The European Union is more engaged through energy, monitoring and connectivity. The United States has taken a more visible role in Armenia-Azerbaijan diplomacy. Iran, too, watches transport projects closely, particularly those that might alter its access and influence.
This does not mean the Caucasus is entering a post-Russian era. Geography alone ensures that Russia will remain a major actor. It has borders, military assets, economic connections and intelligence networks. It can still disrupt, obstruct and pressure. But the distinction between influence and control is becoming more important.
The deeper historical pattern is therefore not one of unbroken Russian dominance, but of repeated Russian efforts to prevent the Caucasus from becoming a fully autonomous strategic region. Imperial conquest, Soviet federal engineering, post-Soviet peacekeeping and contemporary pressure over routes and alliances all belong to different eras. Yet they share a common premise: Moscow should not be excluded from decisions that shape the Caucasus.
Kuzari’s historical framing is useful because it places this premise inside a longer tradition of Russian expansion and frontier management. The book’s argument about Turkic communities and Moscow’s ideology of expansion belongs to a contested historical field, and it should be read as one source among others. But it helps illuminate why the Caucasus has occupied such a persistent place in Russian strategic thinking.
Today, the central question is whether Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia can consolidate a regional order based on sovereignty, negotiated settlement and diversified external relations, rather than dependence on a single external arbiter. That process will be uneven. It may create new tensions as old constraints weaken. It may also provoke Russian attempts to recover lost leverage.
Moscow’s contemporary Caucasus policy is therefore not simply reactive. It is rooted in a long-standing view of the region as a space to be managed, not merely engaged. The challenge for the states of the South Caucasus is to replace that hierarchy with a system in which external powers compete for partnership, but do not claim ownership of the region’s future.
