Russia

Key Issues

To understand Russian foreign policy, one must first understand the mindset and perspective of its leader, Vladimir Putin. To Putin, the end of the Cold War was not the triumphant harbinger of democracy and freedom to Russia, but the utter collapse of the Soviet Union, which in his words was “the worst geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.” In the 1990s, glastnost and perestroika did not usher in promised political and economic success but economic collapse and political chaos. As parts of the Soviet Union fell away and attained independence and NATO expanded to include what were once Soviet allies, it was to Putin a severe blow to Russia. In the 2000s as former Soviet territories such as Ukraine and Georgia attempted to achieve closer political and economic integration with the European Union, Putin was all but compelled to act. While he does not have ambitions to recreate what was once the Soviet Union, he has been determined to maintain its sphere of influence over its former territory. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, with little intervention or reaction from the West, in which Russia continues to maintain a military presence in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions. In 2014, when Putin’s ally and Ukrainian President Yanukovych was run out of Ukraine, Putin took steps to reclaim and annex Crimea, a former site of Soviet nuclear weaponry, which were destroyed by Ukraine in accordance with the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Kiev also holds historic significance as the original birthplace of the Russian empire. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/robert-gates-putins-challenge-to-the-west-1395780813?tesla=y)

Relevant History

Related Blog Entries

References

Gates, Robert M. “Putin’s Challenge to the West,” Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2014. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/robert-gates-putins-challenge-to-the-west-1395780813?tesla=y)