With additional reporting from Joe Anuta

TROUBLEMAKER — For months now, military analysts have been zooming in on the front lines in Ukraine as the country’s defenders fight tooth and nail with Russia’s forces for every inch of their land. But as the West looks for signs of Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive, Moscow is expanding its gaze much further afield.

In recent weeks, a spate of global hotspots have been heating up from Eastern Europe to West Africa, and there are fears that the Kremlin — as part of its efforts to undermine Western interests and create new crises — has a hand in the chaos.

Just last month, the South Caucasus nation of Azerbaijan — a close ally of NATO member Turkey — launched a bloody offensive into the breakaway, Armenian-held region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Amid fears of ethnic cleansing, more than 100,000 people have now fled their homes, creating a humanitarian crisis in the sensitive region, sandwiched between Russia and Iran.

While Azerbaijan insists it has the right to take control of its internationally-recognized territory, the lightning war that left hundreds dead came amid weeks of diplomatic efforts by the U.S. and EU to prevent the bloodshed. Earlier this week, POLITICO revealed that Washington and Brussels had even sent envoys for secret talks with Russian officials in Istanbul in a bid to prevent the situation deteriorating.

“I think this could not have happened without the active complicity of Russia,” one senior EU official tells me, arguing the onslaught comes as Moscow wreaks havoc in areas the West is desperately trying to keep stable.

Meanwhile, across the continent, Washington has warned Serbia is building up tanks, troops and artillery on the border of Kosovo in what it warns could be a “destabilizing” move in the fractured Balkans….