Twelve years after the end of the USSR, Russia still perceived its former subjects as parts of itself. Unlike clearly distinct foreign countries, former Soviet republics were referred to as the “near abroad” (Helsinki and Vienna are closer to Moscow than Kiev and Tbilisi, but the designation referred to psychic and political rather than physical distance). Relations with the “near abroad” were not even part of the foreign ministry’s purview: they were handled by the presidential administration itself. This was perhaps the most striking example of a Soviet institution that had been claimed by
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