A not-so-funny thing happened on President Putin’s way to rebuilding the Soviet Union. Nobody wanted to join. In Old Church Slavonic, Vladimir Putin’s first name means “ruler of the world.” However, he is having trouble controlling the fringes of Russia’s historic empire.

Last week, Moldova and Ukraine started formal talks with the European Union. The goal is to join the 27-nation political and economic union by the end of this decade. Also looking westward, Armenia’s parliament last week started its own debate about joining the EU.

At the same time, Armenia said it is quitting the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, a Moscow-centered version of NATO. With Armenia’s departure, the CSTO’s membership would dwindle to but five of the 15 former republics of the Soviet Union.

Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has “destroyed what was left of Russian influence in the near abroad,” complains SytoSokrat, a Russian Telegram channel aimed at Russia’s security forces. “In several places, the Russian positions have gone to hell.”

For Moscow, the one bright spot might be Georgia. There, the government pushed through parliament a “foreign agents” law modeled on Russia’s 10-year-old statute against Western-oriented non-governmental groups.

However, this “Russian law” sparked Georgia’s largest street protests since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In response to the new law, the EU announced last week that it is halting Georgia’s EU accession process. The split is galvanizing the pro-Western opposition ahead of parliamentary elections this October.

“The Russian special services at the direction of Patrushev are pushing through a foreign agents law, ” SytoSokrat complains, referring to Nikolai Patrushev, a key national security advisor to Mr.  Putin. This heavy handed move is backfiring, generating “a powerful anti-Moscow popular movement.”

To the east, Georgia borders on Dagestan, the Russian republic shaken one week ago by Muslim extremist violence. Six gunmen killed 22 people, including 17 policemen, and wounded 46 people. Russian nationalists blame the violence — and the westward migration of former Soviet republics — on the Kremlin’s distraction due to Russia’s stalled war against Ukraine.

Russia’s economy is on a war footing. American and British intelligence agencies say that Russia’s military casualties — dead and severely wounded — totaled half a million by the end May.

Of the defecting nations, the most striking is Armenia. Surrounded on three sides by Muslim nations — Turkey, Iran and Azerbaijan — Armenia for two centuries relied on protection from Russia, a fellow majority orthodox Christian nation. During the Soviet era, Armenians were among the most successful national minorities. 

Today, the population of Armenia – 2.8 million – is matched by a diaspora of equal size in Russia. However, Russian peacekeepers failed in the fall to protect the 100,000 ethnic Armenians living in an enclave claimed by Azerbaijan.

Once it was clear that the nearly 2,000 Russian troops would not lift a finger, Azerbaijan took over the area, Nagorno-Karabakh, in a one day offensive. All Armenians immediately fled to Armenia proper. 

The Russian troops completed their withdrawal two weeks ago. Next month, Russian troops are to stop providing security at the international airport of Yerevan, the nation’s capital. Now  questions swirl around the future of Russia’s last military base in Armenia, the 102nd Military Base, at Gyumri. Moscow still holds some trump cards, supplying Armenia with 85 percent of its gas and all of its nuclear fuel.

Feeling betrayed by Moscow, Armenia’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, stopped paying dues to the CSTO, the Moscow-based military alliance. He stopped sending envoys to meetings. In January, Armenia joined the International Criminal Court, becoming one of 124 countries obliged to arrest Russia’s president if he steps foot in national territory.

Mr. Pashinyan, a 49-year-old former journalist, is not a native Russian speaker and the first leader of his country of the post-Soviet generation. “We will leave. We will decide when to exit,” he told Armenia’s parliament of Moscow’s military pact. “Don’t worry. We won’t return.”

In a sign of the times, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Ukraine met Saturday in Croatia and discussed aid to Ukraine and the EU accession process. Armenians say Mr. Putin is sacrificing their historic alliance for an alliance with Iran.

During World War II, half of American and British Lend-Lease military aid came north, up “the Persian Corridor.” Updating this route to the needs of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the Kremlin wants a rail link between Russia and Iran. 

One year ago, Russia and Iran signed an agreement to complete construction of a 115-mile, Russia-financed railroad section from the Iran-Azerbaijan border to Rasht, in northern Iran. This will fill in a final link in a 2,500-mile route connecting St. Petersburg to the Persian Gulf. In April, Russia’s transport minister, Vitaly Savelyev, told reporters at Moscow that Azerbaijan is upgrading its north-south railway line to more than double the cargo carrying capacity.

“Russia badly needs business partners and sanctions-busting trade routes in the south,” a Carnegie Europe expert on the Caucasus, Thomas de Waal, wrote last month in Foreign Affairs. “At a time when it is increasingly squeezed by the West, it also sees the region as offering a coveted new land axis to Iran.”

In face of this imperative, Russian geostrategists recall that Tsarist Russia fought six wars against Persia and 12 against Turkey. Since Turkey joined NATO in 1952, Armenia has played a key role for Moscow in blocking Turkey from moving east.

In today’s great power game, Russia seeks to prevent Turkey from building alliances with the Turkic peoples of the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tuva and Yakutia.

“For the sake of implementing an ephemeral geopolitical project of a southern corridor to Iran, Moscow has treacherously abandoned Armenia,” fumes SytoSokrat, the Telegram channel aimed at Russian security services.

“The Azerbaijanis,” it adds, “did not become allies for the Russians. They see their future in the Turkic world and welcome with stormy applause the withdrawal of the Russian contingent from Karabakh.”  Turkey’s vision of a Turkish world represents “a colossal threat to the territorial integrity of Russia.” 

Last March, as the Russian peacekeepers prepared to leave  Azerbaijan and Armenia, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg of NATO made his first visit to Armenia during his 10 years in office. NATO membership is seen as far off for Armenia and three other former members of the Soviet Union — Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

All four have unresolved military conflicts with neighbors, a factor that rules out joining the alliance. Ukraine increasingly uses NATO standard equipment, supplied by individual NATO nations. For a decade, Ukraine has asked for a clear path to full membership.

Next week, at the 75th NATO anniversary summit in Washington, NATO is expected to duck the membership question by offering Ukraine a new headquarters in Germany to coordinate NATO military materiel and training.

With NATO designed around the “one for all, all for one” principle, many of NATO’s 32 member nations are wary about getting pulled into a direct confrontation with Russia. If President Trump is re-elected this fall, he is expected to oppose further NATO expansion.

In an effort to “Trump-proof” future aid flows to Ukraine, the aid headquarters is to be in Wiesbaden, Germany, and commanded by a general reporting directly to the top NATO general in Europe.