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Lore
The Russo-Tajik War
Following the terrorist attack during the Scarlet Sails celebration on the night of June 28–29, 2023, Russian President Igor Sablin sharply criticized the security systems both within Russia and across the entire ITO — after all, acts of sabotage and terrorism had never before reached major Russian cities. He also spoke of the need for preemptive action: terrorist cells had to be identified before they could do harm. This referred both to domestic operations and to joint missions in a number of neighboring countries.
Russia’s southern partners — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan — each for their own reasons, but generally quite willingly, supported the initiative and began establishing mechanisms for intelligence coordination. In Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, however, the authorities rejected any form of foreign involvement in their internal affairs. Dushanbe accused the Kremlin of attempting to expand its influence: the new Russian laws were already damaging the country’s economy, and now Moscow wanted to introduce security forces as well. The Kremlin, in turn, accused Dushanbe and Tashkent of negligence toward security matters and of harboring terrorists. It was an extremely serious accusation.
Immediately, by secret decree from Igor Sablin, an autonomous special operations group was formed from the elite KZR unit known as Brodeks Forces. Its mission was to identify and eliminate terrorist cells operating within Uzbekistan and Tajikistan without the knowledge of the local authorities.
Soon afterward, however, the presence of Russian operatives in Tajikistan was uncovered by British intelligence, MI6, which passed the information to its agents inside the country. Coordinated by MI6, the Tajiks prepared an ambush for the Russians. The hunter was meant to become the prey; Russia’s covert operation was supposed to surface, after which Moscow would be accused of espionage and of conducting illegal military operations on the territory of a sovereign state.
That is exactly what happened. During the firefight, Tajik forces managed to capture several troopers from Brodeks Forces alive. The rest were killed. In Dushanbe, officials declared that they had the lawful right to execute foreign spies unless Russia withdrew all its agents from the country, issued a formal apology, and abandoned its discriminatory policies toward Tajik citizens.
Sablin refused the path of de-escalation. He directly accused Dushanbe of supporting terrorism, declaring the inevitability of a counterterrorist operation as his personal duty in defending Russia and its allies. Uzbekistan was formally asked to provide military transit access — a request that was predictably denied. Russia immediately began massing troops along Uzbekistan’s borders, assembling strike groups in Kazakhstan’s Turkestan Region and Turkmenistan’s Lebap Province.
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On October 16, 2023, Russian Armed Forces entered Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The two largest Uzbek cities — Tashkent and Samarkand — were swiftly encircled, while only hours remained before the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, would suffer the same fate. Sablin called upon both governments to capitulate — “so that neither Russian blood nor the blood of innocent civilians would be spilled”.
The Uzbek authorities immediately sought compromise and entered negotiations. Their army, though relatively capable and fully able to turn urban combat into hell for the Russians, could only do so at the cost of tens of thousands of civilian lives. Nobody wanted that. Tashkent capitulated.
The Tajik authorities, however, had no intention of making concessions. The captured Russians were executed, while the government fled the country, leaving behind a small army and partisan forces to resist the Russian advance. Sablin understood that Russia could not afford to become bogged down in Dushanbe. At any cost, they needed to break through to the city’s central symbols of power, seize them, and establish a loyal puppet government in their place. In the morning of October 18, Russian forces captured the Kohi Millat palace, the parliament and city administration buildings, and the headquarters of local state television. Dushanbe was now officially under Russian control. The process of forming a transitional government began immediately; Moscow promptly recognized it as the legitimate authority, and the new administration formally requested the continuation of the counterterrorist operation.
The operation would continue for nearly another six months — until March 5, 2024 — when the resistance forces were finally crushed and the new government firmly consolidated its power within the country.
Over four and a half months of war, fifteen hundred Russian servicemen would be killed and roughly two thousand wounded. On the Tajik side, around two thousand soldiers and more than five thousand partisans would die, along with up to five hundred civilians. Uzbekistan lost seven hundred soldiers during the very first day of the war.
Through this war, Russia secured its interests and established a security buffer along its southern borders. Yet in the eyes of its ITO allies, the Russian operation was nothing less than unjustified aggression — a military invasion preceded by insufficient diplomatic effort. Russia, meanwhile, regarded the unwillingness of its allies to participate as betrayal, believing that terrorists understand only the language of force. Russia became a diplomatic outcast among its Western ITO allies. At the same time, Russia increasingly viewed their methods as destructive — both to Russian interests and ultimately to the allies themselves, or perhaps by that point merely “partners”.
The idea of a unified North continued to fracture, remaining little more than a formality on paper. In reality, the world was once again dividing into West and East.
