Attachments
A policy called “isolation” by residents of post-Soviet conflict regions – Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which have sought to secede from Georgia, and the Nagorno-Karabakh region at the heart of the dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia – severely restricts their links with the world and contributes to a sense of living under siege, sometimes for over two decades. A tendency toward isolating populations is in place also in eastern Ukraine for separatist Donetsk and Lugansk. Transnistria, the breakaway region of Moldova, has more trade and travel ties but development has not followed. In all these regions, different though they are, isolation harms the people, creates resentment and causes positions to harden.