President Vladimir Putin took over from Boris Yeltsin. With him at the helm, Russia gradually advanced towards her lost glory in a precarious and, sometimes, dangerous movements. He tried to infuse a new vigour in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). He consolidated the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) with the Central Asian Republics and Caucasian States following a carefully designed policy of carrot and stick. There were still large segments of Russians living in the former Soviet Republics. The protection of their political and economic rights was the downside of his overall strategy of stemming the growing ingress of the Western world in these regions. The Eurasian Economic Commission aiming at economic re-integration between Russia and the Central Asian and Caucasian states was a robust attempt. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization comprising China, Russia, four Central Asian Republics gave an impetus to the evolving regional strategic, political and economic convergence and scaling over the tide of extremism, secessionist movements and international crime. While President Putin was engaged in cementing his relations with the autocratic rulers in Central Asia and Caucasian region, the USA NATO got embroiled in the second Afghanistan war followed by the wanton USA attack on Iraq. This gave ample time to the Russian leader to strengthen his flanks crushing the rebellion in Chechnya and Dagestan. He also tried to browbeat defiant leaders in Caucasian and Central Asian states. When following the NATO attack on Kabul, the USA inked agreements with Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for military bases in the Uzbek small town of Farukhabad and the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, Russia publicly expressed her concern. Under pressure from President Putin, the Uzbek leader, Islam Karimov wriggled out of the agreement closingUS military base. The Kyrgyz leader, Askar Akaev found the middle path of maintaining the USA military base and allowing Russia to have her Air Force base in the outlying town of Kant, about 50 kilometers from the American base. Following the orange revolution, the political scene in Ukraine was characterized by an intense contest between the EU and the Kremlin to implant a leader of their choice in Kiev In his second term, Putin was confident enough to challenge the NATO expansion eastward in the erstwhile Soviet Republics and the Western world’s growing intrusion in the new economic great game envisioning new routes for oil and gas pipelines to Europe to the peril of the cold war era Russian oil and gas pipelines. The Western-engineered orange, rose and tulip revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan had caused tremors in the Kremlin. Russia applied all pressure on Azerbaijan and Georgia to scuttle the Western funded Baku-Tbilisi-Cehan (BTC) oil pipeline by fueling military conflicts between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Nagorno Karabagh and Georgia and the autonomous Abkhazia.Russia also caught the Western world off guard by rolling her tanks in Tbilisi in 2008. This was a coup de grace to the credibility of the Western world or NATO as protectors of the weak states of the region in the face of the determined Kremlin. Following the orange revolution, the political scene in Ukraine was characterized by an intense contest between the EU and the Kremlin to implant a leader of their choice in Kiev. The European Union, in a bid to free Ukraine from the political and economic pressure of Russia, offered to sign a wider association agreement with the Kremlin-supported President Victor Yanukovych of Ukraine pledging a substantial aid of $3 billion. This annoyed the Russian leadership. The Kremlin has a fascinating history of relationship with Kiev. Ukraine is dependent on the Russian gas and oil. The Kremlin leaders have shown no qualms in switching off the oil and gas pipelines from time to time to compound the hardships of the Ukrainian population if Kiev ever dared to display defiance to the Russian hegemony. President Yanukovych could not withstand the pressure of the Kremlin and declined to sign such agreement with the EU. Though President Putin was swift in pledging an equally matching financial assistance, the Ukrainian people, probably hopeful of gaining the EU membership at a later stage, rejected the decision of their President. Their anger burst into massive demonstrations forcing Yanukovych to flee the country in February 2014. The Kremlin showed a knee-jerk reaction to this political change. In March 2014, Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to enter into Crimea to protect the Russian speaking population there and the Eastern region of Donbas of Ukraine. As put it by Professor Daniel Treisman ‘this was the most consequential decision of President Putin overturning all the assumptions underlying the post-cold war international order’. The Kremlin was apprehensive that the new administration in Kiev, under the pressure of the EU would possibly evict the Russian Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol. On the suggestion of France, UK and Germany; the NATO in its summit of 2008 had decided not to include Ukraine and Georgia as members. They publicly stated that these two countries were too unstable to be taken as members of the NATO. And that their inclusion in the NATO would unnecessarily antagonize the Kremlin. The German leader, Angela Merkel had even opposed any eventual inclusion of Ukraine in the EU and NATO. Nevertheless, President Putin was not ready to believe that all this talk reflected a well-considered Western policy on the EU or NATO membership of Ukraine and Georgia. The NATO extended its membership to a number of East European states in the 1990s ignoring the protestations of the Kremlin. Putin was not ready to take the bait of this sweet talk, this time round. Some analysts question the strategic wisdom of the Kremlin to militarily occupy Crimea. It is admitted that Russia has strategic interests to preserve and has to maintain her Black Sea Fleet for power projection. In view of these strategic interests, the EU has been reluctant to cause any consternation to the Kremlin by admitting Ukraine as a member. Obviously, the occupation of Crimea has not been cost effective for the Kremlin. The move has cost Russia international isolation, economic sanctions and the alienation of the Ukraine population. To be concluded The writer was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books