Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s international military operations have focused almost exclusively on its neighbors, former Soviet republics. One pattern is clear: interventions that inflame conflict and create permanently tense and unstable “frozen zones,” allowing Russia to exert influence and confound its opponents and, often, its rivals in the West. The Kremlin has said that it is protecting its own interests and those of ethnic Russians in those areas.

During the Cold War, Moscow frequently intervened in countries both near and far from its borders, including Afghanistan, Angola, Cuba and Vietnam.

The Russian operation currently underway in Syria is in some respects a return to the ambitious military moves of the Soviet past. In reality, though, Moscow never quite lost its appetite for exerting influence after the Iron Curtain fell. Here are notable examples of Russian intervention in the post-Soviet period.