North Korea at al

China is unhappy. So is Belarus. Both countries are worried about North Korea sending troops to Russia in the middle of the Ukraine war.

President Xi Jinping is worried that the move will de-stabilise the Korean Peninsula, escalate and complicate the Ukraine War, increase Russian influence in the Far East and potentially drag China into a head-on conflict with NATO.

Alexander Lukashenko is concerned that the appearance of non-Russian troops in Ukraine will increase pressure on him to send Belarussian soldiers in support of the Kremlin.

Xi hates uncertainty. He likes his foreign policy to run along diplomatic railway lines painted bright red so that others know not to cross them. If there are going to be any spanners to be thrown, he wants to toss them and control their flight and consequences.

He does not like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. He is uneasy about the hereditary communist dictator’s nuclear arsenal. He supplies the regime with just enough aid and trade to keep them going, but not enough to threaten the status quo. This is because for the past 74 years one of the chief aims of China is to keep Korea divided and to maintain North Korea as a buffer state between the Chinese border and 25,000 American soldiers in South Korea. Anything which threatens to disrupt that policy is bad news in Beijing.

The bromance between Vladimir Putin and Kim threatens to upset this delicately balanced apple cart. Kim will want something in return for his troops. It will almost certainly include Russian military help which will embolden the mercurial North Korean leader and increase the threat to South Korea and Japan.

Belarus is on the frontline in the Ukraine War. The initial attack in 2022 was launched from its territory. Lukashenko is closely allied with Russia and continues to provide bases and logistical support. But Lukashenko knows he is unpopular. He clings to power with the help of the Belarussian KGB (yes, they retained the name of the old Soviet organisation). Committing his small military force of 50,000 to the Ukraine War would be unpopular and threaten his rule.

By the way, just everyone else is also unhappy about North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine.  It adds a new and dangerous dimension by internationalising the conflict.

Russia

Russia is unhappy too. The recent referendum in Moldova on closer ties with the European Union did not go the way the Kremlin wanted. It was extremely close: 50.46 percent in favour of closer ties and 49.54 percent against.

The Russians did everything they could to push the vote the other way. They played fast and loose with bribery, intimidation and misinformation. A BBC reporter was filmed being approached by a voter asking for the payment she had been promised.

The misinformation focused on an expensive advertising campaign which claimed the EU planned to brainwash Moldovan children to turn gay or transgender. The gay community is generally unpopular throughout Eastern Europe.

The referendum was held at the same time as the first round of a presidential election. The pro-EU incumbent Maia Sandu finished 12 points ahead of her 10 rivals. But with 42 percent of the vote, she failed to secure the necessary simple majority needed to avoid a second round.

So, on November 3rd, Moldovans troop to the polls again to decide whether their president will be Ms Sandu or the pro-Russian candidate Alexandr Stoianoglo who won 26 percent of the vote in the first round.

With a 12-point lead you would think that Ms Sandu was a certainty to be returned to office. But a number of the losing candidates have urged their supporters to vote for Stoianoglo. It is likely to be a close result, and if the pro-Russian candidate wins expect him to demand a recount of the EU referendum.

Georgia

The Russians are also closely watching parliamentary elections in Georgia. Again the issue is whether a former Soviet satellite leans towards Moscow or Brussels.

Opinion polls show that around 80 percent of Georgians want closer ties with the EU, and for a while talks between Brussels and Tbilisi were progressing nicely. Then they stalled when the ruling Georgia Dream Party started passing laws which breached the EU’s human rights provisions.

The EU negotiators were particularly concerned about the “Anti-LGBT Propaganda Law” which banned support for the LGBT community and the “Foreign Agents Law” which required journalists, NGOs and others to register as foreign agents if they received any money from outside Georgia.

As a result of these laws the EU has threatened to cut off financial assistance as well as pulling out of talks on an association agreement. The US has imposed financial restrictions and travel bans on senior Georgia Dream officials whom they say are undermining democracy in Georgia. Meanwhile, Georgia Dream has forged new links with China and Iran, although they are careful to keep their distance from Moscow.

Georgia Dream has been ruling the country since 2012 with Bidzina Ivanishvili as its leader. Up until the start of the Ukraine War, the party was decidedly pro-western. But since 2022 it has become worried that a pro-Western stance risked dragging the country into war with Russia. Their current election campaign is framed as war v. peace. The opposition frames it as Europe v. Russia.

There are several small opposition parties who at the moment  are united in their hostility to Georgia Dream and Russia. Opinion polls say that Georgia Dream is poised to secure 34 percent of the vote. But this is the first election in which Georgia will employ a proportional representation system.  That means it is likely to win 51 of the 150 parliamentary seats. If the opposition parties remain united Georgia Dream will be ousted from power.

Russia is displeased by the prospect of another of its neighbours veering to the EU and has been financing a bitter campaign of misinformation, bribery and intimidation of political activists, journalists and election officials.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”