Maggie's Farm

As with all of Putin's Russian borderline's 'frozen conflicts' the strategic maps tell the story. If Chechnya wiggles free, Dagestan region shares language stock with Chechnya, and the same-alphabet language front would take Dagestan in behind Chechnya --and cut the Russian 'Muscovy' culture off from the Caspian Sea from about the 41st to abnout the 50th parallel. Russia would then open to the Caspian (and the oil & gas basin) only along the Volga River delta. The port of Astrakhan at the top of the delta is 50 miles from the sea and is not a deep-water port. Plus, the narrow Russian corridor would be flat lowland have the ancient enemy the Golden Horde to the northeast (Kazakhstan) and to the southwest the traditional enemy the Nagahk peoples of the south side of the Caucasian mountain range (which forms the isthmus between the Black sea and the Caspian sea). This mountain range, all but impassable through the winter half of the year, runs east/west across the isthmus --an entirely opposite geopolitical topograph than the central american long-axis mountain-formed isthmus.

The 2008 Russo-Georgia war was all about Russia gaining military jumping-off lodgements of the south or all-weather side of the mountains. One by sea (Abkhazia) and one by land (South Ossetia and both ends of the all-weather Roki Tunnel). Puts Moscow in easy reach of the BTC pipeline taking Caspian petro to Europe, not to mention a tank-run to the Persian Gulf.

Holding South Ossetia, Abkhasia, and Chechnya/Dagestan, Russia has only the Pankisi Gorge as a strategic border problem in the isthmus --and would probably nuke the gorge to a moonscape except that would ally the west, and Islam, with each other, at least in the fortification of the caucasus.