Is war in Ukraine costing Russia control of its own backyard?

For three decades, Russia has been struggling to manage the ongoing collapse of the USSR. Its primary goals have been to bind former Soviet republics to Moscow-led international organizations, to keep outside powers away from its backyard, and to use its considerable clout to at least freeze the many territorial and political disputes that still bedevil the region.

Now, thanks to the war in Ukraine, all of those objectives look compromised.

Tensions are spiking around the former USSR, where a massively distracted Russia seems increasingly unable to perform its usual role of regional stabilizer due to growing commitments to the war and the negative example it has set by using force to settle its own post-Soviet disputes.