I came across this translation from the Latvian press on TOL about whether or not the global financial crisis is changing Russia’s foreign policy ambitions in its near abroad.  The short answer: no.

You would think that given this increasingly complex domestic
situation, Russia’s rulers would not have the time or money to continue
the aggressive foreign policies which they have pursued in recent years
- those which culminated in August 2008 with the war against Georgia.

But let us not fool ourselves. There are two reasons why the crisis is
strengthening, not weakening Russia’s desire to continue on its way
with its decided foreign policy course.

First there was something that was stressed at the Tallinn conference
by many long-term observers of Russian politics, including a respected
researcher from the Carnegie Centre in Moscow, Lilia Shevtsova, as well
as Janusz Bugajski from the Centre for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington. They argued that Russia’s foreign policy serves
its domestic policy, and the goal is to ensure that the Kremlin can
maintain control over the country’s people, constantly threatening them
with foreign dangers and mobilizing them against enemies. Internal
dissatisfaction with those who run the country will not force them to
get rid of this mechanism of power. On the contrary – it is a powerful
driving force to put it to even greater use, because what would be more
advantageous right now than to tell people that all of their problems
can be blamed on evil imperialists and their running dogs in Georgia,
Ukraine, Estonia, and Latvia?

MOSCOW’S FINANCIAL RESOURCES

Secondly, as the Kremlin knows very well, power is never absolute, it
is always relative. In a kingdom of the blind, someone with one eye
becomes king. Russia has lost a great deal of money from the world’s
financial crisis, but the blow for neighbouring countries has been even
greater. Russia’s currency reserves have declined by 200 billion
dollars, but they still are at the level of 400 billion dollars. It is
not particularly difficult to find 10 billion dollars to use for
strategic intervention. The noisiest example of this was the loan of 2
billion dollars from Russia to Kyrgyzstan after that country decided to
shut down a military airfield at Manas. The United States used it as an
important base to support its military force in Afghanistan. As a
former U.S. State Department employee, David Kramer, said at the
conference in Tallinn, “The Russians really screwed us.” The Manas base
was not irreplaceable, but it was very important for the Americans, and
Russia took it away, knowing full well how important the war in
Afghanistan is in President Obama’s foreign policy.

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