BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians 7. Military invasions: Russian forces poured into peal to them through culture, history, and the media. His Georgia through its two breakaway territories, press spokesman, Dmitriy Peskov, has said that “Russia Abkhazia and South Ossetia, during a brief con- is the country that underlies the Russian world, and the flict in 2008. In 2014, Russian troops occupied president of that country is Putin; Putin precisely is the Crimea, oversaw a stage-managed referendum main guarantor of the security of the Russian world.” on annexation there, and unofficially entered eastern Ukraine en masse to support a sup- In 2014, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Putin posedly indigenous rebellion by ethnic Russian dredged up the tsarist-era term Novorossiya to de- separatists. scribe a large swath of southeastern Ukraine that he hinted might be annexed. Suddenly, the Novorossiya 8. Frozen conflicts: The term “frozen conflict” in- idea began appearing in Russian media, complete dicates a condition in which active fighting has with maps, while Russian-backed separatists moved ended or subsided but there is no peace agree- to write the “history” of the region into textbooks.° ment beyond a tenuous cease-fire. Under Putin, Eventually Putin dropped Novorossiya from his Russia has perpetuated or created frozen con- speeches, having successfully stoked fears that the flicts that affect Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Ukraine conflict could widen beyond Crimea and Georgia, and Ukraine. In each case, the Kremlin the Donbas. The international community was then retains for itself the capacity to subdue or esca- apparently meant to feel grateful that Russian forces late tensions as needed to maximize its political did not press their attack any further. influence over the relevant country. In practice, Putin has invoked the idea of a greater Moscow applies these tactics according to its objec- Russian world to intimid