Russia has been diplomatically wounded of late. As punishment for taking over Crimea, it was isolated in the United Nations Security Council, condemned in the General Assembly by 100 votes to 11, excluded from the G8, and some of President Vladimir Putin's best friends were sanctioned by the United States. Few of these recent snubs, however, have been quite as embarrassing as that from Pacific microstate Tuvalu, which, on March 31, scrapped its recognition of the Russian protectorates of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and established diplomatic relations with Georgia. The island nation may only have a population of 10,782, but its decision could spell the end of a years-long diplomatic strategy that has cost Russia millions.

Back in 2011, in the heady years after the Russo-Georgian War in 2008, Tuvalu was one of five countries that sided with Moscow in recognizing at least one of the two small, South Caucasus republics as independent, rather than as part of Georgia. Now, that number is down to three: Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Nauru, a Pacific island whose population of 9,488 makes it the second-smallest independent nation in the world, after Vatican City.

It might be unfair to call Nauru and Tuvalu diplomatic prostitutes, but they have tended to hook up with anyone who’ll pay them. In Nauru’s case, that is hardly surprising. It has strip-mined its phosphate reserves and now resembles the surface of the moon. Unemployment is at 90 percent, the second-highest in the world after Zimbabwe. A key source of its foreign earnings was “checkbook diplomacy,” in which wealthy countries essentially pay impoverished ones for diplomatic recognition. In 2002, Nauru backed China, then switched to Taiwan three years later, making money each time. The last switch earned its ministers stipends of $5,000 a month, according to WikiLeaks. But in 2008, Taipei and Beijing agreed to give up on the diplomatic dance, leaving Nauru short of cash.

So, in December 2009, Nauru saw an opportunity to expand its client base, and asked for $50 million in aid (as the Kommersant newspaper reported) from Russia to diplomatically recognize the two South Caucasus Republics. Russia officially denies having bribed Nauru and instead credited Abkhazian and South Ossetian diplomats who, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted, “regularly visit this region.”

Among those diplomats is Juris Gulbis, a globetrotting Latvian who wrote his doctoral thesis on Abkhazia, lived in Fiji, and became the Abkhazian ambassador in the Pacific region. He spoke to the parliaments of both Vanuatu and Tuvalu in 2011, arguing for recognition of Abkhazia's independence from Georgia, and won out. “Both Tuvalu and Vanuatu recognized Abkhazia based on the merits and willingness to support small countries and peoples in their right to self determination,” he insisted.