DERGACHEV Vladimir - Doctor of Geographical Sciences, Professor, expert in geopolitics, editor-in-chief, author and owner of the Internet portal "Institute of Geopolitics". (Odessa, Ukraine).

Email: admin@dergachev.org

Keywords: geopolitics, geopolitical transformation, post-Soviet space, newly independent states, multi-vectorism, transit of power, global periphery.

The collapse of the USSR was marked by social catastrophe for peoples who had lost their sense of being a great country. Democratic Russia is showing signs of a fading economic superpower and has failed to attract the newly independent states created in the Soviet geopolitical space. It would be naive to expect that the "enlightened" West, nurtured by the profiteering and high profit margins of imperial colonialism, will preserve Soviet borders. In geopolitics, if states fail to experience sustained positive development over a quarter of a century, they transform from subjects into objects of global politics, lose territory, or disintegrate. In fact, a new global periphery is emerging in the post-Soviet space, and under these conditions, preserving national identity is paramount.