Russia's growing clout in the ex-Soviet region is keenly felt in Latvia.
And Ukraine, with 45 million people and the biggest economy in the ex-Soviet region aside from Russia's, is a crucial component of the eastern area over which the Kremlin leader intends to spread his influence.
You're no stranger to the post-Soviet region, having photographed in Abkhazia in 2008.
AT SOME point in the past few years, 70 portable surface-to-air Igla missiles disappeared from an ex-Soviet military stockpile in Transdniestria, a breakaway region of Moldova.
But the most obvious and simplistic similarity is that both Ukraine and Moldova are ex-Soviet countries, and both Crimea and Transnistria are regions in those countries that would mostly rather be aligned with Russia than the EU.
The protesters streamed into the capital of Chisinau from all regions of the small, largely rural, ex-Soviet state to demonstrate in a central square outside the main government building.
And one side-effect of America's attack on the Taliban in 2001 was the nearly complete destruction of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a small but tough group of militants whose members included citizens of several ex-Soviet republics as well as Uighurs from the restive western Muslim region of Xinjiang in China.
The mother-tongue of all participants was Russian (they were born in the Soviet Union and lived there or in an ex-Soviet Union country at least till the age of 14).
Rulers in these ex-Soviet states seem to be inspired by Russia's growing anti-Westernism.Kyrgyzstan is considered the region's most open and democratic country, despite grinding poverty and recent experience of revolutions and pogroms.
Turned behind wall out of view pic.twitter.com/doDhn6yLnZ March 18 , 20143.15pm GMT The president of ex-Soviet Moldova has warned Russia against any attempt to annex his country's separatist Transdniestria region in the same way that it has taken control of Crimea in Ukraine.
Georgia, an ex-Soviet republic with close links to America, says that Russia is illegally putting more troops in the region.
