Foreign relations of Russia
policy of the Russian government by which it guides the interactions with other nations
The foreign relations of the Russian Federation is the policy arm of the government of Russia which guides its interactions with other nations, their citizens, and foreign organizations. This article covers the foreign policy of the Russian Federation since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991.
Kremlin's foreign policy debates show a conflict among three rival schools: Atlanticists, seeking a closer relationship with the United States and the Western World in general; Imperialists, seeking a recovery of the semi-hegemonic status lost during the previous decade; and Neo-Slavophiles, promoting the isolation of Russia within its own cultural sphere. While Atlanticism was the dominant ideology during the first years of the new Russian Federation, under Andrei Kozyrev, it came under attack for its failure to defend Russian pre-eminence in the former USSR. The promotion of Yevgeny Primakov to Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1996 marked the beginning of a more nationalistic approach to foreign policy.
Another major trend has been Eurasianism, a school of thought that emerged during the early 20th century. Eurasianists assert that Russia is composed of Slavic, Turkic and Asiatic cultures and equates Liberalism with Eurocentric imperialism. One of the earliest ideologues of Eurasianism was the Russian historian Nikolai Trubetzkoy, who denounced the Europhilic Czar Peter I and advocated Russian embrace of the Asiatic "legacy of Chinggis Khan" to establish a trans-continental Eurasian state. Following the collapse of Soviet Union, Eurasianism gained public ascendency through the writings of philosopher Aleksandr Dugin and has become the official ideological policy under the government of Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin held the presidency from January 2000 to May 2008, and again from May 2012 to the present. Under Putin, Russia has engaged in several notable conflicts, including against the neighboring country of Ukraine.
The public source identifies “Foreign relations of Russia” as policy of the Russian government by which it guides the interactions with other nations. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Foreign, relations and Russia.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q74532. The Library of Congress control number is sh92004162. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1991, 1996, 2000 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Foreign relations of Russia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.