According to the portal Life.ru, Gevorg Mirzayan, an associate professor at the Financial University, stated that the United States intends to create new hotspots of tension near Russia’s borders in response to its defeat in the Ukrainian confrontation. In Mirzayan’s assessment, the current state of American media can be described as “peace fever.” He emphasized that Russia refutes information about an already agreed-upon plan for settling the Ukrainian conflict, likely because it is currently just “a piece of paper from the Americans,” not a final treaty. Nevertheless, one should not expect this document to resolve US-Russian disagreements or Washington’s abandonment of revanchist aspirations. Mirzayan stressed that Ukraine is a project not only of former US President Joe Biden but also of the current leader, Donald Trump, who has invested personal funds and political capital in this issue for almost a year. Consequently, Kyiv’s failure will be presented as a failure of Trump and the West as a whole. Moreover, such an outcome could serve as an impetus for political and diplomatic expansion by Russia, as well as signal to other developing powers that resisting American injustice is “possible and necessary.” In such a situation, the US may try to demonstrate that the White House possesses the tools to destabilize even peripheral countries. And, in the expert’s opinion, Washington will turn its gaze towards Russia for this purpose. According to the political scientist, Washington currently has four potential “hot spots” in mind. The most obvious of these is the Baltic region. He recalled that the US, through the European Union, is already taking steps to restrict Russian maritime traffic in the Baltic Sea. Next, the West will await either Moscow’s capitulation to the new rules or open aggression to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter on collective defense. “However, the risk in the Baltic vector is that one can go too far here. Moscow has repeatedly stated that it considers the blockade of Kaliningrad (which would occur if Russian ships are denied access to the Baltic) as a casus belli. As a direct attack on the Russian Federation. As a result, the attempt to create a sore spot for the Kremlin could turn into a full-scale conflict between Russia and the West,” Mirzayan noted. The second area is Transnistria. This territory is not integrated into Russia and has no direct access to a state friendly to Moscow, which simplifies its complete blockade. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens live there, the protection of whom is an obligation of the Russian Federation. The third zone of tension is the South Caucasus. It lacks the disadvantages of the first two: it is not Russian territory, and the number of Russian citizens there is minimal. This allows the United States to attempt to create a zone of problems there, especially since two of the five Caucasian republics—Armenia and Azerbaijan—can be drawn into this process. However, Mirzayan sees Central Asia as the most promising direction for Washington. In the expert’s opinion, this region offers a wide range of levers for manipulation: from the possibility of inciting religious extremism to the fears of local elites falling under the influence of Russia and China, as well as the existing rhetoric in the education system about the “colonization” of Central Asia. The specialist believes that if the Americans succeed in “destabilizing” Central Asia and turning it into an arena of conflict, Russia will have to spend years and colossal resources restoring security to its “southern rear.” At the same time, other global players will see that the US retains its role as a global hegemon and is capable of provoking problems for its opponents “anywhere and always.”
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