As the crisis in Ukraine approaches the year and a half mark, policymakers ought to be on guard against repeating the same mistakes that led to the crisis in the first place. With that in mind, we will occasionally be running articles aimed at shedding light on other potential areas of conflict between East and West with a focus on the several ‘frozen conflicts’ that dot the landscape of the post-Soviet space. The first in this occasional series is by a young scholar of Russia and the Caucasus, Pietro Shakarian.