The war in Ukraine has shifted the global hierarchy of priorities: the taboo on changing borders by force has effectively been lifted, while sanctions and control over logistics have become permanent tools of statecraft. The role of “hard” and “soft” maritime blockades is growing, alongside cyber pressure on infrastructure and competition for ports, straits, and river outlets to the oceans. Front and center now are the security of communications and the resilience of critical infrastructure – parameters that matter no less today than troop numbers or fleet tonnage.
On the Eurasian map, this hits the Black Sea and the Caucasus most directly – regions long treated as peripheral but now emerging as a key node of the new architecture. The Montreux Convention makes Turkey the unavoidable arbiter of access to the Black Sea; the Danube takes Central Europe to the oceans via the Ukraine-Romania corridor; grain and energy logistics raise the strategic value of coastal waters. At the same time, the Middle (Trans-Caspian) Corridor – linking the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian, and Central Asia – is strengthening, giving the EU an alternative to Russian routes.
Against this backdrop, on Sept. 30, 2025, S. Frederick Starr delivered a programmatic assessment at a US Senate subcommittee hearing on Europe and regional security. Starr – an American expert on Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus; founding chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute; and distinguished fellow for Eurasia at the American Foreign Policy Council – argued that the Black Sea crisis is systematically underestimated compared to the Baltic, even though three NATO members (Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey) are in the region and Russia uses the Black Sea to project power into the Middle East. Starr’s central point: free access to the Black Sea is a precondition for sovereign maneuvering by the Caucasus – and even Central Asian – states; losing that access pushes them under Moscow’s or Beijing’s control.
The stakes for Russia are maximal. Maintaining influence in the Black Sea-Caucasus junction is a test of its global-power pretensions: losing control narrows access to maritime corridors, resource bases, and channels for expeditionary projection; it weakens positions and reduces leverage over Europe in energy and transit. Conversely, the ability to disrupt competing routes and keep the region in “managed uncertainty” prolongs the usable life of Russia’s foreign-policy toolkit.
The South Caucasus’ westward reorientation intensified after an August meeting in Washington, where – facilitated by the US administration – a peace framework between Armenia and Azerbaijan was announced. Some observers called it “historic”; others soberly note that a White House declaration and initialing a text are not the same as a ratified peace treaty and will require long-term implementation. Even so, locking in intentions and launching an infrastructure track already shifts the balance of power – something Moscow feels acutely.
It is improbable that the Kremlin will quietly accept a sustained westward pivot of the South Caucasus.
How will Russia respond? A direct military reply is constrained by the war against Ukraine and resource costs; in the near term, asymmetry is likelier: economic pressure (energy, transit, selective customs and regulatory barriers), information-psychological operations, and legal sparring over maritime law and water-area regimes. Likely “targets” include the Middle (Trans-Caspian) Corridor’s weak nodes and its Black Sea interfaces: any disruption there raises costs for Baku, Kyiv, Bucharest, and Brussels, restoring Moscow’s indirect leverage without overt escalation.
It is improbable that the Kremlin will quietly accept a sustained westward pivot of the South Caucasus. Against this backdrop, Vladimir Putin’s conciliatory gestures toward Ilham Aliyev can be read as an effort to buy time for a response. The ensuing logic is a toolkit of “needles” of varying depth: from economic constraints and transit disputes to the cultivation of managed turbulence along interethnic fault lines around Azerbaijan.
In this sense, the longstanding “Lezgin card” is telling – the exploitation of sensitive identities at the junction of Dagestan and northeastern Azerbaijan. In the 1990s, talk of “redrawing borders” and “historical justice” routinely surfaced; the rhetoric of “protecting minorities” was regularly used for external legitimation. A historical precedent for internationalizing a local conflict – the mobilization of North Caucasus volunteers through the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus during the Abkhaz war, which assembled about 1,500 fighters in a month – showed how a “point” flare-up can become an interstate crisis.
The highest-risk scenario would be a provocation on the Dagestan-Azerbaijan border, portraying an incident as an “ethnic massacre,” thereby opening the door to claims of a “humanitarian mission” and calls to mobilize “to defend a brotherly people.” Demographics heighten fragility: Dagestan alone is home to an Azerbaijani community of roughly 120,000, while Azerbaijan hosts approximately 250,000 Lezgins and Avars. Any clash would almost inevitably spill across the frontier, creating room for Kremlin political-information maneuvering. Reports are already emerging of “local activists” in Dagestan stoking anti-Azerbaijani sentiment. This logic fits the Kremlin’s repertoire: low cost, high multiplier, and difficult attribution.
Evidence that Moscow has long kept the “Lezgin card” in reserve is suggested by the following: after the first Chechen War, Russian authorities systematically restricted international platforms for national entities within the Russian Federation, leading to the withdrawal of several regions and republics from the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO). Among those that “voluntarily” left were: Bashkortostan (1998), Yakutia (Sakha) (1998), Mari El (2009), Chuvashia (2008), Tatarstan (2008), Kumykistan (2008), Ingushetia (2008), the Komi Republic (2009), Buryatia (2010), Tuva (2010), and Udmurtia (2013).
By contrast, it is telling that the Lezgins – a people without their own federal subject in Russia, residing in southern Dagestan and northeastern Azerbaijan – joined UNPO in July 2012 and today remain the only “Russian” people represented there. Inside Russia, the institutional infrastructure of Lezgin identity is embodied by the Federal Lezgin National-Cultural Autonomy headquartered in Moscow; its president is Arif Pashayevich Kerimov, a member of the Presidential Council for Interethnic Relations, and the presidium includes Tagir Khiyirovich Eminov, a major general and former head of the Armored Directorate of the Internal Troops of the Russian Interior Ministry. In analytical perspective, this is viewed as a potential channel of leverage over Baku.
As we can see, in the current configuration the North Caucasus becomes a critical puzzle piece for the entire system. So long as it remains under Russian control, the region retains the potential of a “powder keg” capable of transmitting shocks across the belt from the Caspian to the Black Sea. Any local escalation there instantly reverberates in the South Caucasus and the Black Sea.
In sum, the Black Sea and the entire Caucasus have moved from “borderland” to the structural spine of a new Eurasian order. What institutions, routes, and rules take root here over the next few years will determine not only Ukraine’s resilience, Europe’s security, and the autonomy of the Caucasus and Central Asia, but also whether Russia remains a global contender or de facto narrows to a regional power.
All of these questions will be discussed at the international conference “The North Caucasus as Europe’s Security Frontier,” to be held on Nov. 1, 2025, in Kyiv.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.