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, according to Reuters.
The 31-page “humanitarian policy,” published more than six months after the war in Ukraine began, says Russia must “protect, preserve and promote the traditions and ideals of the Russian world.”
Although presented as a kind of “soft power” strategy, official foreign policy ideas related to Russian politics and religion have been used by some hardliners to justify Moscow’s annexation of parts of Ukraine and support for 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,” the new foreign policy states.
The document emphasizes 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 multilateral world.”
Putin has also been pressing for years the sad fate of the roughly 25 million ethnic Russians who lived in newly independent countries outside of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Catastrophe”.
Russia continued to consider the former Soviet space from the Baltic states to Central Asia – a concept strongly rejected by many countries and the West.
The new policy calls for Russia, China and India to intensify cooperation with Slavic countries and further strengthen its ties with the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.
The document also says Moscow should deepen its ties with Abkhazia and Ossetia, two Georgian regions recognized by Moscow as independent after the 2008 war against Georgia, and with the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk, two separatist entities in eastern Ukraine. and Luhansk.
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