Russia in Global Affairs

It would be wrong to confine oneself to asserting international law where it is far from the ethnic and human realities.

The growing bitterness of Western countries towards Russia is consistent with the logic of ‘preventive war’ in the initiation of armed conflicts. Rather than linking interstate confrontations with aggressive opportunism, this model views escalation as a product of fears about the future. Throughout history, major wars, as a rule, became the product of precisely this preventive logic – the desire to strike in advance of an expected weakening.

Leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) gathered in Washington, DC, on July 9–11 to mark the alliance’s seventy-fifth anniversary and discuss security assistance for Ukraine, taking a more strategic approach to Russia. Council of Councils experts react to the NATO commitments made at the summit. Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief of Russia in Global Affairs, Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (SVOP), is among them.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is a minor part of the overall situation. The main part is what was the casus belli from the perspective of the Russian leadership: it wasn't Ukraine, it was European and American perceptions of how European security should look. And this view emerged immediately after the end of the Cold War. Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief of Russia in Global Affairs magazine, gave an interview to the Die Weltwoche weekly (Switzerland).

The African effort at negotiating for peace between the parties is not only a laudable one but one that holds significant merit not only for Africa but for the Global South and the globe generally.

Attempts to encourage changes in the positions of African states by carrot and stick have limits. The distancing of African countries from both Russia and the United States was not the result of policy reformulation by African countries, but primarily because Russia and the United States themselves had changed and radicalized their approaches.

In 2022, Russia turned out to be the biggest-ever target of economic restrictions, both quantitatively and qualitatively. The World Majority  abstained from them. However, calling them “black knights” is still premature.

Turkey is a unique example of a country that successfully combines strategic hedging, various forms of balancing, and a proactive foreign policy aimed at increasing its strategic autonomy on all possible tracks. Turkey’s assertive regional and macro-regional policies combined with reactivated beneficial foreign policy projects have yielded a strong synergistic effect owing to skillful foreign policy maneuvering and favorable circumstances.

The “nuclear bullet” must necessarily and demonstratively be put into the “revolver drum” the U.S. leadership is recklessly playing with. To paraphrase a now-deceased American statesman, we can say: Why do we need nuclear weapons if we refuse to use them in the face of an existential threat? There is no need to scare anyone verbally. It is necessary to prepare for a possible use practically.