Putin endorsed Moscow’s new foreign policy doctrine based on the concept of a “Russian world.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday endorsed a new foreign policy doctrine built around the concept of a “Russian world,” which conservative ideologues have used to justify intervention abroad in favor of Russian-speakers, Reuters reported.

The “humanitarian policy”, contained in a 31-page document and released more than six months after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, says Russia must “protect, preserve and promote the traditions and ideals of the Russian world”.

Although presented as a kind of “soft power” strategy, it is in official foreign policy related to Russian politics and religion that some hardliners have used to justify Moscow’s occupation of parts of Ukraine and to support pro-Russian separatist organizations in the east. Country.

“The Russian Federation provides support to its compatriots living abroad in fulfilling their rights, protecting their interests, and preserving their Russian cultural identity,” Moscow’s new foreign policy doctrine states.

The theory also states that Russia’s relations with its compatriots abroad have allowed it to “strengthen its image on the international stage as a democratic country struggling to create a multipolar world.”

For years, Vladimir Putin has considered the tragic fate of some 25 million ethnic Russians who lived in newly independent countries outside Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, an event he called a “geopolitical catastrophe.” .

Russia continued to regard the former Soviet space from the Baltic states to Central Asia as its legitimate sphere of influence – a notion strongly rejected by many countries and the West.

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