The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin

An excellent opinion piece in the Moscow Times today by Boris Kagarlitsky (whose column is called "Always a Dissident") addresses the Russian ban of Georgian and Moldovan wine and food imports:

We are no longer going to drink Borjomi mineral water. And Georgian and Moldovan wines are out too. We're going to drink vodka with patriotically named beer chasers. To hell with our livers!
...
The obvious reason for the crises in Russian-Moldovan and Russian-Georgian relations is the "separatism" issue. By supporting the breakaway powers in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transdnestr, Moscow naturally sets itself in opposition to Tbilisi and Chisinau. It's easy to understand the emotions here: The separatism of the autonomous territories was an answer to discrimination against them from the republican centers -- in exactly the same way that the separatism of the republics themselves was prompted by the policies of the Soviet central government.
...
The Kremlin is consciously and systematically carrying out a policy of isolating itself across the former Soviet Union. The more pressure it puts on former Soviet republics, the more it hurries them into the arms of the West... And the cruder the Kremlin's measures and methods, the easier it is for the governments in Chisinau and Tbilisi to justify their own mistakes and failures: All economic problems become the fault of the evil Russians.

It's like Princess Leia tells Governor Tarkin in Star Wars: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."