Here's a paradox: Russia could serve its own interests by encouraging some of the territories that it has helped break away from neighboring countries to reintegrate with them.
This has become increasingly clear to me after visiting Moldova, which will hold parliamentary elections on Sunday. The question of Transnistria — the pro-Soviet territory that split away in 1992, and which you would expect to be a nationalist obsession — hardly gets a mention on the campaign trail.
One reason (beyond the passage of more than 20 years) is that the country's pro-European politicians have little interest in seeing Transnistria return to Moldova, because it would kill their chances of returning to power. The territory of about half a million people would add a solidly pro-Russia 15 percent to the electorate. (The region even runs its clocks on Moscow time.) Communists and Socialists would rule.