EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: A Distracted Russia Is Losing Its Grip on Its Old Soviet Sphere.

Before President Vladimir V. Putin invaded Ukraine in February, Russia played an outsize role in the affairs of Central Asia and also the volatile Caucasus region, in what had passed for a far-flung Pax Russica. In January, it rushed troops to Kazakhstan to help the government there calm a wave of violent domestic unrest. In 2020, it sent around 2,000 armed “peacekeepers” to the Caucasus to enforce a Moscow-mediated truce between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Today, Armenia is fuming. Its prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, who has been a close ally, appealed to Moscow in vain last month for help to halt renewed attacks by Azerbaijan. Furious at Russia’s inaction, Armenia is now threatening to leave Moscow’s military alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

The Kazakh government that Mr. Putin helped prop up in January is veering far from the Kremlin’s script over Ukraine, and is looking to China for help in securing its own territory, parts of which are inhabited largely by ethnic Russians, and which Russian nationalists view as belonging to Russia.

As somebody joked on Twitter over the weekend, the only people who fear the Russian army now are its draftees.