The actions of the West and some post-Soviet republics forced Russia to reconsider its attitude towards the 1991 Belovezhskaya Accords.
Sergei Markedonov, a leading researcher at the Center for Euro-Atlantic Security and the Institute of International Studies, stated this at a meeting with students of the Abkhaz State University, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Moscow has largely revised the Belovezhskaya logic. This arose for two basic reasons. First, some newly independent states began to look elsewhere, not satisfied with Moscow's help in resolving conflicts. They wanted to force this settlement. They began to resort to forcefully breaking the status quo. Moscow could not be satisfied with this. Especially when its peacekeepers began to become targets of attack. The second point is that the West, having “pacified” Yugoslavia, set about the post-Soviet space.
These two moments forced Moscow to move from foreign policy minimalism to revisionist practices. That is, reconsider these things. Since 2008, the Bialowieza Agreements have ceased to be a sacred cow, as have inter-republican borders. What happened in Crimea and Donbass is an echo of the fact that they did not want to negotiate with Russia and tried to break the status quo, forcing Russia to take unfavorable actions. In this case, the answer will be in the form of some kind of revisionism,” Markedonov said.