Vladimir Putin has set a new course. Moscow on Friday adopted a new foreign policy doctrine designating the West as an “existential threat” and whose “domination” Moscow must fight.
The adoption of this new strategy confirms the deep rupture that has existed between Russia and Western countries since the start of the assault on Ukraine, which has led NATO to consolidate and Moscow to turn to China. In a document of more than 40 pages recalling by its content and language the era of confrontation between the Soviet Union and America in the last century, Russia poses as a bulwark of the Russian-speaking world against Westerners accused of wanting ‘ “weaken by all means”.
The United States as the main enemy
During a meeting of his National Security Council, President Vladimir Putin justified these changes by the “upheavals on the international scene” which oblige Russia to “adapt its strategic planning documents”. The new doctrine notes “the existential nature of the threats (…) created by the actions of unfriendly countries” and designates the United States as “the main instigator and conductor of the anti-Russian line”, summarized the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov.
“Generally, the West’s policy of weakening Russia by any means is characterized as a new kind of hybrid warfare,” he added. The foreign policy doctrine defines the priorities that countries give themselves in international affairs, and to see the way in which the States in question perceive their relations with the world. In this case, the new document, which replaces a version dating from 2016 and was published on the Kremlin website, gets straight to the point.
“Russia intends to give priority attention to the elimination of the remnants of the domination of the United States and other hostile states in world affairs”, it is written.