МОСКВА, 08 января 2022, Институт РУССТРАТ. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an interview with the “Mir" TV and radio company in 2017, said that Russia is vitally interested in stability in the post-Soviet space. Among the threats to this that he named were technologies that lead to the destabilisation of the state. What exactly these technologies are was explained by Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu. These are "colour revolutions" that allow “with minimal expenditure of resources and limited use of their own weapons and armed forces to crush regional powers, accomplishing political and economic goals”. “Colour revolutions” are the collective name of the processes of power change at the beginning of the 21st century in six states of Eastern Europe, Central Asia and North Africa: in Yugoslavia ("bulldozer revolution" in 2000), Georgia ("rose revolution" in 2003), Ukraine (twice - "orange revolution" in 2004 and "Euromaidan" in 2014), Kyrgyzstan ("tulip revolution" in 2005), Tunisia ("jasmine revolution" in 2011) and Egypt ("date revolution" in 2011). The protest processes in December 2011 in the city of Zhanaozen of the Republic of Kazakhstan and August 2020 in Belarus can be added to the same series (unlike those listed above, they did not lead to a change of power). Most of these states belong to countries that were part of the Soviet Union, the socialist camp (like Yugoslavia) or were in close contact with it (Egypt, Tunisia). Unlike military coups, they are carried out by citizens of the country, begin with peaceful rallies, and end with an active standoff with the authorities, including with the use of weapons, which lead to the fall of established regimes. The similarity of the processes, as well as the specifics of the countries in which they were carried out, allows us to combine the regime changes in different states into one category with a general term. On the given map, all the recorded "orange revolutions" are located around the territory of the Russian Federation. The beginning of active actions falls at the end of the calendar year. The question "who benefits" remains open.
