Russia pays an increasingly higher price to support and maintain its "colonies" of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, the self-proclaimed Transdnestr republic and now Crimea, along with its "dominions" of Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Armenia. Information from a variety of sources makes it possible to estimate the scale of that support. Russia spent more than $1 billion in budgetary funds on South Ossetia since 2008, and spends the same amount annually for assistance to Transdnestr. At the same time, the self-proclaimed republic owes Russia about $4 billion for unpaid gas bills alone. Moscow also subsidizes about 70 percent of Abkhazia's budget at a cost of $350 million per year.
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