Book excerpt: Despite the disintegration of the Soviet Union during the 1990s, Russia has continued to maintain its longstanding obligations and strategic interests in former Soviet territories. This publication examines Russia's military interventions in regional conflicts to determine whether its role has been genuinely peacekeeping or more a post-imperial presence that seeks to maintain former strategic interests. It includes first hand accounts of the CIS peacekeeping efforts in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Moldova, and Tajikistan, as well as contemporary assessments of Russian peacekeeping efforts alongside NATO forces, as well as in Chechnya.