The stand-off between Russia and Ukraine feels eerily familiar to me. Posted to Moscow after years covering the collapse of East Germany and the carnage of Yugoslavia’s collapse, I was relieved to settle into Moscow — imagining a life charting the vast and fascinating territory.
Hubris, of course. Diplomatic high politics turned out to be a fraction of the job. My colleagues and I ended up covering the many conflicts that flared up as Soviet power shrivelled — in Tajikistan, Ossetia, Georgia and luckless civilians caught between ruthless local mafia and merciless Russian bombardments in the horrors of the Chechnya conflict. It revived the idea in Moscow that Russia, weakened by the collapse of the USSR, could salvage some of its Soviet glory if it exported force and established rights to set terms for its neighbours.
