“Probably shots are not heard as loudly in Central Park or Madison Square Garden as in Avdiivka industrial zone or Svitlodarsk Arc”; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s words echoed through the United Nations (UN) General Assembly Hall on September 22. He accused the international community of hiding away in the organisation’s New York headquarters, instead of meeting “where (the UN) can really hear and see global problems.” Zelensky called the organisation out for failing to address the Kremlin’s overt violations of international law, pointing out that the UN was like a “retired superhero”.

In his address, Zelensky painted a grim picture of what might happen if the international community continues to turn a blind eye to Russian aggression. Zelensky’s cautionary reminder is timely, given that the United States and NATO are shifting their strategic considerations towards China, and the European Union’s heavy reliance on Russian gas is making them hesitant to voice condemnation.

In his speech, Zelensky drew attention to Moscow offering passports to citizens in Russian-occupied territories in eastern Ukraine. Since 2019, Moscow has issued more than 650,000 Russian citizenship’s to residents in these regions. This move has a strategic end – if Kyiv attempts to retake the occupied territories, the Kremlin would be able to legally justify military intervention, on the premise that many people living there are Russian citizens.

The “Russian World” narrative is a key tool in the Kremlin’s foreign policy toolbox. It denotes an imagined community, defined by a subjective sense of “Russianness”, which breaches the actual legal borders of the Russian state. The narrative informs key aspects of Moscow’s post-Soviet identity construction and has been used to justify its attempts to influence the “near abroad” – the independent republics that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Passporting” – the offering, under the Russian Compatriot Policy, of Russian passports to people living outside the country – is a result of the “Russian World” narrative. Offering passports to individuals outside of Russia, who identify as Russian, is a way of reinforcing the mental maps of “Russianness” as being greater than the country’s de jure borders. 

The Crimean case study indicates the effectiveness of such soft power. Passportisation of Crimea’s Russian minority dates back to the 1990s. Many ethnic Russians in Crimea have historically acquired a Russian passport as it allows for visa-free travel to the country, and gives access to the Russian military pension for those who had served in the Soviet, and later Russian, armed forces. However, it does not offer full citizenship, nor does it offer full protection, and thus it is considered to be a form of quasi-citizenship.

Although the actions under the Compatriot Policy were known to Kyiv, there was no consistent policy response until February 2015, nearly a year after the annexation of Crimea, when the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it would start introducing “sanctions” against holders of dual citizenship. The Baltic states, to date, do not permit dual citizenship due to the fears arising from aggressive Russian pursuit of diaspora in post-Soviet regions. 

In the case of Georgia’s breakaway territories of South-Ossetia and Abkhazia, citizens were offered Russian passports in exchange for their Soviet ones. The rhetoric used by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during the 2008 Russo-Georgian war was similar to that of Putin in light of the current Ukrainian crisis. In 2008, Medvedev said, “our unquestionable priority is to protect the life and dignity of our citizens wherever they are.” In 2014, Putin echoed that Russia “shall always protect the ethnic Russians in Ukraine, as well as that part of Ukraine’s population that feels inseparably linked with Russia ethnically, culturally, and linguistically, that feels to be a part of the broader Russkiy Mir (Russian World).”

What is most worrying about this is that the international community seems virtually indifferent to growing Russian aggression. In a single week in 2019, Putin signed two decrees for accelerated naturalisation for Ukrainian citizens. The first was aimed at Ukrainians living in the partly Russian-occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. Emboldened by the lack of international uproar, Putin signed a second decree that sped up the procedure for obtaining Russian citizenship in the annexed Crimea. In 2020, the Kremlin passed new amendments to the Law of Citizenship making it easier for citizens of Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to get Russian passports. Given the lack of international condemnation of Russia’s actions, Volodymyr Zelensky’s comments came off as a not-so-subtle jab at the US and European superpowers, accusing them of geopolitical myopia and failing to live up to commitments to multilateralism. 

Another worrying predicament between Moscow and the EU is the use of energy politics that has sent oil and gas prices soaring in some of the poorest countries in Europe. The latest to suffer from the rivalry is Moldova. Russia’s energy giant Gazprom has historically been a sole-supplier of gas to Moldova. In a recent move, the Kremlin-controlled firm leveraged lower energy prices in exchange for the pro-EU Moldova government adjusting its free trade deal with the EU and delaying energy market reforms agreed with Brussels, under the Moldova-EU Association Agreement signed in 2014. 

Although the EU offered immediate aid of €60 million to Moldova, the country’s Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita told the Financial Times that it would need to spend about €800 million over the next five months on alternative imports to meet its winter demand. Last week, Moldova and Gazprom ended up signing a new five-year deal on the vaguely-defined “mutually beneficial terms”, as mentioned in a statement released by Gazprom.

It has been suggested that the Kremlin is using Gazprom’s role as the sole provider of gas to Moldova to exert pressure on the government in Chisinau, headed by President Maia Sandu who took office last year after a landslide victory, running on a strong pro-EU platform. Following a meeting between the EU and Moldova, the EU high representative Josep Borrell said, “gas is a commodity, it’s being bought and sold, sold and bought, but it cannot be used as a geopolitical weapon.” 

It is evident that the Kremlin is flexing its geopolitical arsenal. The General Assembly speeches and recent events regarding energy politics are a reminder to the international community that Russia remains a credible threat in the post-Soviet region. Unless clear actions are taken to support the countries that are economically tied to Russia, the Kremlin is likely to win the regional tug-of-war for influence. Zelensky’s speech is also a reminder that it is time for the UN to reinvent its standing in a geopolitical context that is becoming increasingly fragmented and is drifting away from commitments to multilateralism. The “retired superhero” must once again put on its cape and superpowers must avoid geopolitical myopia by recognising the value of multilateralism and their role in calling out overt aggression.