Зовнішньополітична «самоізоляція» Російської Федерації як кремлівський наратив

Abstract

The article outlines the instrumental potential of the Kremlin’s narrative of the Russian Federation’s foreign policy “self-isolation”. The definition of Russia’s foreign policy course as “self-isolationist” is contradictory and misleading. In the context of relations between countries, the concepts of “self-isolation”, “isolationism” are characterized by connotations of non-interference in international affairs, restriction of international participation to avoid involvement in dangerous and undesirable conflicts. Instead, Russia’s foreign policy is aggressive, reflecting the Kremlin’s hegemonic ambitions. Putin seeks to urge the international community to secure Russia’s status as a global actor, to recognize so-called “Russian interests”, and to legitimize the de facto balance of power. The narrative in question is intended to use the media to reposition Russia as an aggressor country with undisguised expansionist aspirations, a “victim country” of the “collective West”. With this maneuver, the Kremlin hopes to justify the need to tolerate Russia’s malicious actions in the international arena, the expediency of restoring communications and establishing a dialogue with it. The factors that determine the use of new approaches in the foreign policy of the Russian Federation and its content are being analyzed. Thus, within Russia, the messages about Russia’s foreign policy “selfisolation” allow the general public of Russians, deeply affected by the complex of national inferiority, to play the card of “external enemy”, fantasize about “global confrontation with the West”, thus consolidating Russian society and maintaining internal stability. As a result, Russia has formed a political system with the features of a regime of negative consensus. In the international arena, Russia is economically, politically, and socio-culturally uncompetitive about Western countries. The Kremlin is trying to stifle this non-competitiveness by imitating isolationism, combining it with nuclear blackmail and military aggression. A perceptive possibility is being actualized aiming at studying the Kremlin’s geopolitical game, projected at transforming the Russian Federation into a global state, in the context of the communicative strategies of framing, priming, and agending.