Putin’s Frozen Empire: Can Ukraine Melt the Russian Grip on the Post-Soviet Space?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has always been about more than territory. It is the culmination of a long imperial project: to preserve Moscow’s dominance over the lands and peoples once bound into the Soviet Union. In Vladimir Putin’s mind, the fall of the USSR was not the end of empire but a temporary fracture—a moment to be reversed. Through a combination of military coercion, energy dependence, covert operations and economic intimidation, Putin has sought to construct a frozen empire: not a formal restoration of the USSR, but a neo-imperial sphere of control wrapped in the language of tradition, memory and destiny.

But empires do not collapse all at once. They disintegrate slowly, unevenly, and sometimes bloodily. Ukraine’s resistance, sustained now for more than a decade, and intensified since 2022, has emerged as the most serious challenge to this Russian project. By refusing to be absorbed—militarily, linguistically, economically, or psychologically—Ukraine is not merely defending her sovereignty. She is thawing the very foundation of Russia’s imperial architecture.

Here we examine whether Ukraine’s defiance can melt Putin’s grip on the post-Soviet space, and what a truly post-imperial Eurasia might look like in the aftermath.

The Architecture of a Frozen Empire

Putin’s empire is not built with flags and colonial governors. It is a looser, more plausible edifice—held together by fear, dependency, historical manipulation, and the implicit threat of intervention. It has five core pillars:

1. Military Interventions: Russia has used force or the threat of it in nearly every former Soviet republic that has sought to assert independence from Moscow’s influence—Georgia (2008), Ukraine (2014 and 2022), Moldova (Transnistria), and even Armenia (through withholding aid in Nagorno-Karabakh).

   
   

2. Frozen Conflicts: Moscow has preserved unresolved territorial disputes as leverage—South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, and until recently, Nagorno-Karabakh. These “frozen” wars are not accidents, but instruments of Russian policy: they paralyse reformist governments and invite Russian arbitration.

   
   

3. Energy Blackmail: From gas pipelines through Ukraine and Belarus to nuclear fuel exports to Kazakhstan and Armenia, Moscow has embedded itself in the region’s infrastructure. Energy dependence became a tool of submission.

   
   

4. Russkiy Mir (“Russian World”) Ideology: A civilisational claim that ethnic Russians and Russian speakers form a transnational community, which Moscow has both the right and obligation to protect—often without their consent.

   
   

5. Economic Capture and Corruption: Russia has exported its oligarchic model of governance, ensuring pliant elites in countries such as Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have remained dependent upon Kremlin patronage and are wary of Western transparency.

These levers, reinforced by soft power—Orthodox Church diplomacy, propaganda, education ties—sustain Russia’s regional primacy without formal empire. But they rely upon one central assumption: that no nation in the former USSR will successfully break free and thrive outside Moscow’s orbit.

Ukraine as the Empire Breaker

Ukraine is proving that assumption false. Her defiance is multidimensional—military, linguistic, cultural, diplomatic, and institutional. Since 2014, and with increasing speed after 2022, Ukraine has pursued a complete de-Russification of her identity. Her army no longer trains in Soviet doctrine. Her children no longer study Moscow’s version of history. Her foreign policy no longer calibrates its ambitions to Russian sensitivities.

This resistance is not only an act of national assertion. It is a beacon. Across the former Soviet republics, Ukraine’s war is being watched with intensity, if not yet with open admiration.

If Ukraine survives—and especially if she prevails—then the empire collapses not in theory, but in practice. She becomes proof that Moscow’s model can be escaped, that NATO and EU alignment is possible, and that Russian influence is not immutable.

The effect of such a demonstration would be political dynamite.

Cracks in the Periphery: Reactions Across the Region

Already, the war has begun to unsettle Russia’s sphere.

• Armenia has turned sharply westward after Moscow’s passive stance in the 2023 Azerbaijani assault on Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan has criticised the CSTO (Russia’s answer to NATO) and sought European security ties.

  
  

• Kazakhstan, historically loyal to Moscow, has signalled growing unease. President Tokayev has refused to recognise the annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk, while deepening ties with China and the EU. Kazakhstan’s neutrality is eroding Russia’s vision of a compliant Eurasian Economic Union.

  
  

• Moldova, led by the pro-European President Maia Sandu, has doubled down on EU accession efforts and begun to assert herself more boldly in relation to the pro-Russian enclave of Transnistria that is surrounded by pro-EU territories and liable to gradual collapse.

  
  

• Georgia, despite domestic political backsliding, remains home to a powerful civil society that regards Ukraine’s cause as its own. The memory of 2008 has not faded.

  
  

• Belarus, Putin’s last true vassal, has become increasingly unstable. Lukashenko’s dependence on Kremlin support has turned Minsk into a military annex of Russia—but also a potential liability.

Even Central Asian republics, long held in Moscow’s economic and security embrace, have quietly diversified their partnerships—to Beijing, Ankara, Brussels and the Gulf.

None of these states have openly broken with Russia. But all are hedging. And that in itself marks a profound shift.

Why the Empire Endures—And Why It Might Not

Ukraine’s example is not enough. The frozen empire persists because:

• Russia retains the largest and most brutal military in the region;

  
  

• Elites in post-Soviet capitals often benefit personally from Russian alignment;

  
  

• Many societies are vulnerable to disinformation and economic coercion;

  
  

• The West remains cautious in embracing these states for fear of provoking further instability.

But all empires persist until they no longer can. If Russia is defeated—militarily, economically, or morally—in Ukraine, then her aura of inevitability collapses.

In truth, Russia’s empire is already hollow. What sustains it is not faith but fear.

The West’s Role in the Thaw

The West must decide: will it support Ukraine’s victory as a strategic instrument of decolonisation, or merely as a containment operation? If Ukraine is armed only enough to endure, not to win, then the message to the post-Soviet world is clear: defiance brings suffering, not freedom.

But if Ukraine wins—if she restores her 1991 borders, thrives as a democracy, and enters the European Union—then she becomes a geopolitical precedent. That success will radiate across Eurasia.

To do this, the West must:

• Ensure Ukraine’s long-term military dominance;

  
  

• Accelerate integration into Western political and economic institutions;

  
  

• Invest in anti-corruption, civil society, and media freedom across the region;

  
  

• Treat decolonisation as a strategic objective, not merely an academic footnote.

Melting the Empire

Empires freeze the future. They calcify borders, identities and destinies. Putin’s frozen empire seeks to deny Ukraine and her neighbours the right to choose a different course. But frozen things are brittle. When the thaw comes, they crack.

Ukraine is the heat. Her resistance burns through the façade of invincibility. Every liberated village, every drone strike, every EU directive transposed into Ukrainian law chips away at the illusion of imperial permanence.

Whether the empire melts or shatters, its time is ending. Ukraine, with the help of her allies, has set history in motion. And history, once warmed by courage, does not freeze again.