That makes no sense. As long as the Soviet Union existed, the "ex-soviet states" you're talking about existed as republics of the Soviet Union (which is just a

That makes no sense. As long as the Soviet Union existed, the "ex-soviet states" you're talking about existed as republics of the Soviet Union (which is just a colloquial abbreviation for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). They weren't states at that point. They became ("ex-Soviet") states when the Soviet Union broke up, and that coincided with the end of the Cold War. Since their existence as states and the Cold War don't overlap in time, those states couldn't have been subject to "Cold War meddling".