The Ukraine crisis brings the threat of democracy to Russia's doorstep

Abstract

Russia has five fears about the events in Ukraine: foreign policy choice, security and sovereignty, the challenge to the entire post-Soviet order or the sistema (the corrupt and authoritarian economic and political system established in Ukraine and Russia since 1991), the growth of Ukrainian nationalism and the need to consolidate Putin's domestic rule. Of these, the fourth, which is Putin's stated reason for intervention in Crimea, is least important. The survival of his sistema is what is really at stake.