The turning point: new foreign policy concept of Russia

Abstract

The avalanche processes in the world have clearly confirmed the need for a holistic inventory, significant correction and, in many cases, a radical reassessment of the previous version of the 2016 Foreign Policy Concept of Russia. The dynamics of world politics is so rapid that many of them, no longer fit into the previous schemes. A fundamentally significant matrix in understanding and rethinking the doctrinal and practical-political experience of Russian diplomacy has become the approval by President V.V. Putin on March 31, 2023 of the new Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation (hereinafter: FPC-2023). FPC-2023 marks an unprecedented turning point in the conceptualization of attitudes of Russian diplomacy. A clearly defined continuity has been preserved with respect to the fundamental principles of Russia's foreign policy. FPC-2023 is a new geopolitical premises for the positioning of Russia in the global space and in its relations with the world. The basic system components of Russia's national-state interests have been elaborated in a comprehensive integrity and linkage. FPC-2023 is a convincing answer to those Western politicians who stubbornly consider Russia a semi-peripheral zone in the global space. From FPC-2023 it clearly follows that the strategically “unprofitable” search for a balance between the possible and the impossible has ended. It fully takes into account the negativism of the predominant part of the Western political establishment towards Russia, which has sharply increased in connection with the special military operation in Ukraine. The new Concept takes into account the destructive features of today's crisis geopolitics, but does not block constructive paths to a more optimistic future of international relations.