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President Vladimir Putin signed a new foreign policy doctrine on Monday based on the concept of a “Russian World,” which conservative ideologues have used to justify intervention abroad in support of Russian-speakers.
Russia should “protect, safeguard, and advance the traditions and ideals of the Russian World,” according to the 31-page “humanitarian policy” published more than six months into the Ukrainian war.
Despite being marketed as a soft power approach, it enshrines in official policy concepts about Russian politics and religion that some hardliners have used to defend Moscow’s occupation of some of Ukraine and support for pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east.
According to the policy, “The Russian Federation supports its citizens residing abroad in exercising their rights, ensuring the protection of their interests, and maintaining their Russian cultural identity.”
It stated that Russia’s ties with its compatriots around the world have allowed it to “strengthen on the international stage its image as a democratic country striving to create a multi-polar world.”
Since the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991—an event he has characterised as a geopolitical catastrophe—Putin has emphasised the tragic plight of around 25 million ethnic Russians who were forced to emigrate from Russia and live in newly independent republics.
Russia has continued to regard the former Soviet space, from the Baltics to Central Asia, as its legitimate sphere of influence, a notion fiercely opposed by many of those countries as well as the West.
According to the new policy, Russia should strengthen ties with Slavic countries, China, and India, as well as with the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.
In addition to the two breakaway entities in eastern Ukraine—the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic—it recommended that Moscow strengthen its ties with Abkhazia and Ossetia, two Georgian regions that Moscow recognised as independent following its 2008 war with Georgia.
