Russia's Stance Research Articles

Austria's German Policy in Summer-Autumn 1850 and Russia's Stance

Austria's German Policy in Summer-Autumn 1850 and Russia's Stance

Russia in maritime areas off Spitsbergen (Svalbard): Is it worth opening the Pandora's Box?

This article studies Russia's stance on the legal status and regime of the Spitsbergen's waters and the logic behind it. Russia has traditionally disagreed with the Norwegian policies related to maritime areas beyond the Spitsbergen's territorial waters. In respect to both the Fisheries Protection Zone (FPZ) and the shelf around Spitsbergen, Russia has strongly opposed the unilateral nature of the Norwegian measures. In the case of the FPZ, Russia has asserted that the maritime areas beyond the territorial waters constitute high seas, at the same time cooperating with Norway on managing the living resources basing on bilateral and international arrangements. Whereas in the case of the seabed off Spitsbergen, Russia has recognized that the archipelago generates the shelf, which is subject to the Spitsbergen Treaty's regime, accepting the equal rights of access to the shelf of all the signatories to the Treaty. This article argues that in the long run, Russia is interested in maintaining the current status-quo in the issues related to the Spitsbergen's waters. The paper also discusses possible implications of the 2010 Russia-Norway delimitation Treaty on the Russian position towards the Spitsbergen waters.

The Elephant in a Dark Room? Russia and the ISDS Reform

The calls for reform of investment treaty regime are neither novel nor entirely unexpected. And the need for that reform has recently reached its pitiful nadir where the UNCITRAL Working Group III gathered for its first meeting in Vienna back in November-December 2017 to discuss states’ concerns about investor-state dispute settlement. States’ concerns about the reform have been repeatedly referred to in recent publications, but international scholars have not yet discussed Russia's stance in detail. In the following an attempt has been made to fill the gap in literature by introducing the Russian position which contrasts nicely with Canada or the EU. Why is this important? Russia is a significant state in the UNCITRAL Working Group III and any slight shifts in its approach in the UNCITRAL reforms are closely watched. It is the right time to provide an analytical framework for understanding the Russian position in these reform dynamics.

Russia Today's coverage of Euromaidan

As I was writing this response to the forum about Euromaidan, the clashes on 18 February 2014 erupted. As there should be a cut-off point for analysing this ‘winter of discontent’ in Ukraine, I will concentrate on the events as they unfolded until 21 February 2014. I approach the issue of Euromaidan from a Media and Cultural studies perspective. After a brief insight on how Euromaidan is seen in Russia, I will analyse how Russia's soft power tool – a multi-language Russian-based TV network called Russia Today (RT) – constructs a narrative of Euromaidan. I will do that by looking at RT's reports on Euromaidan available online. As M. Simonyan, an editor-in-chief, said, RT is set to combine a ‘professional format’ of the BBC, CNN and Euronews and to ‘reflect Russia's opinion of the world’ and present a ‘more balanced picture’ of Russia (RIA Novosti, 2007). It is hypothesised that there might be discrepancies in the coverage of Euromaidan, as RT needs to combine principles of an international broadcaster targeting a global audience with the need to reflect Russia's stance and improve Russia's image aboard.

Beijing and Moscow Balk at “Interference”

China and Russia's stance on Syria is a result of their convergent conceptions of sovereignty and humanitarian intervention, their compatible assessments of the nature of the conflict and of Western motives, and the lessons they learned from the Libyan uprising.

Serbia between East and West

AbstractThis article critically examines contemporary narratives which frame Serbian politics as a conflict between supporters of a pro-European Union (EU) policy and supporters of closer ties with Russia. Contrary to this narrative, contemporary Serbian political actors increasingly present policies and platforms oriented towards both the European Union and Russia. These developments reflect the contradictory legacies arising from the history of Serbian and Russian diplomatic relations along with the sometimes ambivalent implications of Russia's stance on the issue of Kosovo's independence, Serbian public attitudes towards Russia, and recent developments in Serbian-Russian economic relations. Given the long time frame for EU membership and the current impasse over issues like Kosovo and Serbia's potential NATO membership, Serbia's leaders currently enjoy the luxury of simultaneously deepening ties with both the EU and Russia. However, a future linkage between Kosovo's independence and EU membership and/or the possibility of Serbia's joining NATO will likely present Serbian political elites with mutually-exclusive choices bearing important implications for their relations with either Russia or the EU.

The Chechen Exception: Rethinking Russia's Human Rights Policy

Orthodox interpretations of human rights policies and practices in post-Soviet Russia are often construed by external critics through a historicist lens of tsarist and Soviet-era authoritarianism. Contemporary Russia's adherence to emerging international human rights norms is commonly judged in sole reference to its human rights disaster in Chechnya. In this article, we contest the notion that human rights abuses in Chechnya fully illustrate Russia's stance on international human rights. We suggest that Chechnya is the exception in the post-Soviet era, and that Russia has increasingly brought its human rights standards in line with the West. We use a historical comparative context as well as Russia's discursive response to NATO's intervention in Kosovo and its UN Security Council voting record as empirical evidence for our argument. 1

Russia's stance against secessions: From Chechnya to Kosovo

Russia's policy towards, and interventions in, secessionist conflicts inside the state, in the immediate neighbourhood, and in Europe generally, has changed profoundly from the early 1990s. It is the fear of disintegration that is now the major factor in Moscow's policy making. Russia is set on the path of strategic retreat, which still allows for some interference, but hardly for constructive engagement. In the near future, there are several specifically European factors that define the perspective of a new wave of secessionist conflicts in the region. Neither European political networks built around the OSCE, nor military ties, centred on NATO, are reliable enough to compensate for Russia's withdrawal. The alarming perspective of escalation of instabilities can only be addressed if Europe together with Russia will move forward in developing political and legal frameworks for dealing with secessionist situations.