Foreign Policy Of Vladimir Putin

The foreign policy of Vladimir Putin concerns the policies of the Russian Federation’s president Vladimir Putin with respect to other nations. He has held the office of the President previously from 2000 to 2008, and reassumed power again in 2012 and has been President since.

As of late 2013, Russia–United States relations were at a low point. The United States canceled a summit for the first time since 1960, after Putin gave asylum to Edward Snowden. Washington regarded Russia as obstructionist regarding Syria, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. In turn, those nations look to Russia for support against the United States. Some nations of Western Europe purchase Russian gas, but are concerned about interference in the affairs of Eastern Europe. Expansion of NATO and the EU into Eastern Europe much conflicts with Russian interests, Which has pushed them to become more aggressive to attempt to Influence and "Russianise" Eastern Europe, the Caucuses, and Central Asia.

Beyond Russia’s neighbours in foreign relations is India, who at one point, was a close ally of Russia and the Soviet Union, is now drifting towards the United States with stronger nuclear and commercial ties. Japan and Russia remain at odds over the ownership of the Kuril Islands; this dispute has hindered much cooperation for numerous decades, originating back from the Soviet Union’s annexation of them at the end of World War Two. China has recently moved to become a close ally of Russia despite its falling out with the former Soviet Union.Shuster, Simon.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220227153907/http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,2151148,00.html The World According to Putin]",'' Time (magazine), Time'' 2013-09-16, pp. 30–35. Archived from the original.

In 2014, with NATO's decision to suspend practical co-operation with Russia and all major Western countries' decision to impose a host of sanctions against Russia, in response to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, Russia's relationship with the West came to be characterized as assuming an adversarial nature, or the advent of Cold War II.

Relations with NATO and its member nations

After the 11 September attacks, Putin supported the U.S. in the War on Terror, thus creating an opportunity for deepening the relationship with the leading Western and NATO power.America's Failed (Bi-Partisan) Russia Policy
by Stephen F. Cohen, ''Huffington Post'' On 13 December 2001, Bush gave Russia notice of the United States' unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. From Russia's point of view, the US withdrawal from the agreement, which ensured strategic parity between the parties, destroyed hopes for a new partnership. Russia opposed the expansion of NATO which happened at the 2002 Prague summit.

Since 2003, when Russia did not support the Iraq War and when Putin became ever more distant from the West in his internal and external policies, the relations remained strained. In an interview with Michael Stürmer, Putin was quoted saying that there were three questions which most concerned Russia and Eastern Europe; namely the status of Kosovo, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, and American plans to build missile defence sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, and suggested that all three were some way linked. In Putin's view, concessions on one of these questions on the Western side might be met with concessions from Russia on another.

In February 2007, at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, Putin openly criticized what he called the United States' monopolistic dominance in global relations, and "almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations".43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy
Putin's speech in English
, 10 February 2007. In this speech, which became known as Munich Speech, Putin called for a "fair and democratic world order that would ensure security and prosperity not only for a select few, but for all". His remarks however were met with criticism by some delegates such as former NATO secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer who called his speech, "disappointing and not helpful."

The months following Putin's Munich speech were marked by tension and a surge in rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic. Both Russian and American officials, however, denied the idea of a new Cold War. Then US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said on the Munich Conference: "We all face many common problems and challenges that must be addressed in partnership with other countries, including Russia. ... One Cold War was quite enough." Vladimir Putin said prior to 33rd G8 Summit, on 4 June 2007: "we do not want confrontation; we want to engage in dialogue. However, we want a dialogue that acknowledges the equality of both parties' interests."

In June 2007, when answering a question about whether Russian nuclear forces might be focused on European targets in case "the United States continued building a strategic shield in Poland and the Czech Republic", Putin admitted: "if part of the United States' nuclear capability is situated in Europe and that our military experts consider that they represent a potential threat, then we will have to take appropriate retaliatory steps. What steps? Of course we must have new targets in Europe."

Putin continued his public opposition of a U.S. missile shield in Europe, and presented President George W. Bush with a counterproposal on 7 June 2007 of sharing the use of the Soviet-era radar system in Azerbaijan rather than building a new system in the Czech Republic. Putin expressed readiness to modernize the Gabala Radar Station, which has been in operation since 1986. Putin proposed it would not be necessary to place interceptor missiles in Poland then, but interceptors could be placed in Iraq or NATO member Turkey. Putin suggested also equal involvement of interested European countries in the project.

In his annual address to the Federal Assembly on 26 April 2007, Putin announced plans to declare a moratorium on the observance of the CFE Treaty by Russia until all NATO members ratified it and started observing its provisions, as Russia had been doing on a unilateral basis. Putin argues that as new NATO members have not even signed the treaty so far, an imbalance in the presence of NATO and Russian armed forces in Europe creates a real threat and an unpredictable situation for Russia.Annual Address to the Federal Assembly
, 26 April 2007, Kremlin, Moscow NATO members said they would refuse to ratify the treaty until Russia complied with its 1999 commitments made in Istanbul whereby Russia should remove troops and military equipment from Moldova and Georgia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted as saying in response that "Russia has long since fulfilled all its Istanbul obligations relevant to CFE".

Russia suspended its participation in the CFE as of midnight Moscow time on 11 December 2007. On 12 December 2007, the United States officially said it "deeply regretted the Russian Federation's decision to 'suspend' implementation of its obligations under the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE)." State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, in a written statement, added that "Russia's conventional forces are the largest on the European continent, and its unilateral action damages this successful arms control regime." NATO's primary concern arising from Russia's suspension is that Moscow could now accelerate its military presence in the Northern Caucasus.

Putin strongly opposed the secession of Kosovo from Serbia. He called any support for this act "immoral" and "illegal". He described the 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence a "terrible precedent" that will come back to hit the West "in the face". He stated that the Kosovo precedent will ''de facto'' destroy the whole system of international relations, developed over centuries.

Putin's relations with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, former French Presidents Jacques Chirac, and Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi were reported to be personally friendly. Putin's "cooler" and "more business-like" relationship with Germany's subsequent Chancellor, Angela Merkel is often attributed to Merkel's upbringing in the former DDR, where Putin was stationed when he was a KGB agent.

By mid-2000s (decade), the relations between Russia and the United Kingdom deteriorated when the United Kingdom granted political asylum to, oligarch Boris Berezovsky, in 2003. Berezovsky, located in London, often criticized Putin. The United Kingdom also granted asylum to the Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev and other notable persons who had fled Russia.

In 2006, President Putin introduced a law which restricted non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from getting funding from foreign governments. This resulted in many NGOs closing.

The end of 2006 brought strained relations between Russia and Britain in the wake of the death of Alexander Litvinenko in London by poisoning with polonium-210. On 20 July 2007, the Gordon Brown government expelled "four Russian envoys over Putin's refusal to extradite ex-KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi, wanted in the UK for the murder of fellow former spy Alexander Litvinenko in London." The Russian government, among other things, said it would suspend issuing visas to UK officials and froze cooperation on counterterrorism in response to Britain suspending contacts with their Federal Security Service.

Alexander Shokhin, president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs warned that British investors in Russia will "face greater scrutiny from tax and regulatory authorities. ndThey could also lose out in government tenders". On 11 December 2007, Russia ordered the British Council to halt work at its regional offices in what was seen as the latest round of a dispute over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko; Britain said Russia's move was illegal.

On 1 April 2014, NATO decided to suspend practical co-operation with Russia, in response to the Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation.

Putin has denounced the idea of "American exceptionalism". Putin has brought up police behavior in Ferguson in response to criticisms of democracy in Russia.

A report released in November 2014 highlighted the fact that close military encounters between Russia and the West (mainly NATO countries) had jumped to Cold War levels, with 40 dangerous or sensitive incidents recorded in the eight months alone, including a near-collision between a Russian reconnaissance plane and a Scandinavian Airlines passenger plane taking off from Denmark in March 2014 with 132 passengers on board. The 2014 unprecedented increase in Russian air force and naval activity in the Baltic region prompted NATO to step up its longstanding rotation of military jets in Lithuania.

Similar Russian Air Force activity in the Asia-Pacific region, relying on the resumed use of the previously abandoned Soviet military base at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, in 2014, was officially acknowledged by Russia in January 2015. In March 2015, Russia's defense minister Sergey Shoygu said that Russia's strategic bombers would continue patrolling various parts of the world and expand into other regions.

In July 2014, the U.S. formally accused Russia of having violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by testing a prohibited medium-range ground-launched cruise missile (presumably R-500, a modification of Iskander) and threatened to retaliate accordingly. In early June 2015, the U.S. State Department reported that Russia had failed to correct the violation of the I.N.F. Treaty; the U.S. government was said to have made no discernible headway in making Russia so much as acknowledge the compliance problem.

The US government's October 2014 report claimed that Russia had 1,643 nuclear warheads ready to launch (an increase from 1,537 in 2011) – one more than the US, thus overtaking the US for the first time since 2000; both countries' deployed capacity being in violation of the 2010 New START treaty that sets a cap of 1,550 nuclear warheads. Likewise, even before 2014, the US had set about implementing a large-scale program, worth up to a trillion dollars, aimed at overall revitalization of its atomic energy industry, which includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers and construction of such sites as the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico and the National Security Campus in south Kansas City.

At the end of 2014, Putin approved a revised national military doctrine, which listed NATO's military buildup near the Russian borders as the top military threat.

In late June 2015, while on a trip to Estonia, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said the U.S. would deploy heavy weapons, including tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery, in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. The move was interpreted by Western commentators as marking the beginning of a reorientation of NATO's strategy. It was called by a senior Russian Defence Ministry official ″the most aggressive act by Washington since the Cold War″ and criticised by the Russian Foreign Ministry as "inadequate in military terms" and "an obvious return by the United States and its allies to the schemes of 'the Cold War'".

On its part, the U.S. expressed concern over Putin's announcement of plans to add over 40 new ballistic missiles to Russia's nuclear weapons arsenal in 2015. American observers and analysts, such as Steven Pifer, noting that the U.S. had no reason for alarm about the new missiles, provided that Russia remained within the limits of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty ( New START), viewed the ratcheting-up of nuclear saber-rattling by Russia's leadership as mainly bluff and bluster designed to conceal Russia's weaknesses; Steven Pifer, Fiona Hill
"Putin's Risky Game of Chicken"
''The New York Times'', 15 June 2015. Retrieved 2015-06-18. however, Pifer suggested that the most alarming motivation behind this rhetoric could be Putin seeing nuclear weapons not merely as tools of deterrence, but as tools of coercion.

Meanwhile, at the end of June 2015, it was reported that the production schedule for a new Russian MIRV-equipped, super-heavy thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missile '' Sarmat'', intended to replace the obsolete Soviet-era SS-18 ''Satan'' missiles, was slipping. Also noted by commentators were the inevitable financial and technological constraints that would hamper any real arms race with the West, if such course were to be embarked on by Russia. MacFarquhar, Neil
"As Vladimir Putin Talks More Missiles and Might, Cost Tells Another Story"
''The New York Times'', 16 June 2015. Retrieved 2015-06-17.

On December 25, 2022, in an interview for the national television he accused the West of trying to tear Russia apart and openly declared, that his goal—"to unite the Russian people."

Tensions in other European countries and relations with the former Soviet bloc

The Russian leadership under Putin sees the fracturing of the political unity within the EU and especially the political unity between the EU and the US as among its main strategic goals. Russia seeks to gain dominant influence in former Eastern Bloc states that are culturally and historically close to it, corrode and undermine Western institutions and values, manipulate public opinion and policy-making throughout Europe.

As the West supported Kosovo's independence, Russia later used the "Kosovo precedent" as justification for its annexation of Crimea and its support of breakaway states in Georgia and Moldova.

In November 2014, the German government publicly voiced its concern about what it saw as efforts by Putin to spread Russia's 'sphere of influence' beyond former Soviet states in the Balkans in countries such as Serbia, Macedonia, Albania and Bosnia, which could impede those countries' progress towards membership in the European Union.

A series of Europe's far-right and hard Eurosceptic political parties such as Bulgaria's Ataka, the Alternative for Germany, France's National Front, the Freedom Party of Austria, Italy's Northern League, the Independent Greeks and Hungary's Jobbik, have been reported to be courted or even funded by Russia. Russia's ideological approach to this type of activity is opportunistic: it supports both far-left and far-right groups, the aim being to exacerbate divides in Western states and destabilise the EU through fringe political parties gaining more clout. The success of these parties in the May 2014 European elections caused concern that a coherent pro-Russian block was forming in the European Parliament.

In early January 2015, public protests in Hungary broke out against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's perceived move towards Russia. Previously, his government had negotiated secret loans from the Russians, awarded a major nuclear power contract to Rosatom, and made the National Assembly give a green light to Russia's gas pipeline project in contravention to blocking orders from Brussels.

In early April 2015, the Polish border guard sources were cited as saying that Poland was preparing to build observation towers along its border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad; the move was linked by the mass media to prior official vaguely-worded confirmation, in December 2013, of Russia's putative deployment of its advanced modification of nuclear-capable Iskander theatre ballistic missiles in the exclave's territory, as well as more recent, March 2015, unofficial reports of the same nature.

The prime minister of Montenegro Milo Đukanović went on record in October 2015 to claim that Russia was sponsoring the anti-government and anti-NATO protests in Podgorica.

Relations with South and East Asia

During his first and second term in office, bilateral trade turnover between India and Russia was modest and stood at US$3 billion, of which Indian exports to Russia were valued at US$908 million. The major Indian exports to Russia are pharmaceuticals; tea, coffee and spices; apparel and clothing; edible preparations; and engineering goods. Main Indian imports from Russia are iron and steel; fertilisers; non-ferrous metals; paper products; coal, coke & briquettes; cereals; and rubber. Indo-Russian trade is expected to reach US$10 billion by 2010. Putin wrote in an article in ''The Hindu'', "The Declaration on Strategic Partnership between India and Russia signed in October 2000 became a truly historic step".

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also agreed with his counterpart by stating in a speech given during President Putin's 2012 visit to India, "President Putin is a valued friend of India and the original architect of the India-Russia strategic partnership". Both countries closely collaborate on matters of shared national interest these include at the UN, BRICS, G20 and where India has observer status and has been asked by Russia to become a full member. Russia also strongly supports India receiving a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. In addition, Russia has vocally backed India joining the NSG and APEC. Moreover, it has also expressed interest in joining SAARC with observer status in which India is a founding member.

Russia currently is one of only two countries in the world (the other being Japan) that has a mechanism for annual ministerial-level defence reviews with India. The Indo-Russian Inter-Governmental Commission (IRIGC), which is one of the largest and comprehensive governmental mechanisms that India has had with any country internationally. Almost every department from the Government of India attends it.

Putin's Russia maintains strong and positive relations with other BRIC countries. The country has sought to strengthen ties especially with the People's Republic of China by signing the Treaty of Friendship as well as building the Trans-Siberian oil pipeline geared toward growing Chinese energy needs. The mutual-security cooperation of the two countries and their central Asian neighbours is facilitated by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Following the Peace Mission 2007 military exercises jointly conducted by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) member states, Putin announced on 17 August 2007 the resumption on a permanent basis of long-distance patrol flights of Russian Air Force Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers that had been suspended since 1992.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was quoted as saying in response that "if Russia feels as though they want to take some of these old aircraft out of mothballs and get them flying again, that's their decision." The announcement made during the SCO summit in the light of joint Russian-Chinese military exercises, first-ever in history to be held on Russian territory,SCO Scares NATO
, 8 August 2007, KM.ru made some believe that Putin is inclined to set up an anti-NATO bloc or the Asian version of OPEC.

When presented with the suggestion that "Western observers are already likening the SCO to a military organisation that would stand in opposition to NATO", Putin answered that "this kind of comparison is inappropriate in both form and substance". Russian Chief of the General Staff Yury Baluyevsky was quoted as saying that "there should be no talk of creating a military or political alliance or union of any kind, because this would contradict the founding principles of SCO".

The resumption of long-distance flights of Russia's strategic bombers was followed by the announcement by Russian Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov during his meeting with Putin on 5 December 2007, that 11 ships, including the aircraft carrier ''Kuznetsov'', would take part in the first major Russian Navy sortie into the Mediterranean since Soviet times. The sortie was to be backed up by 47 aircraft, including strategic bombers. According to Serdyukov, this was an effort to resume regular Russian naval patrols on the world's oceans, the view that was also supported by Russian media. The military analyst from ''Novaya Gazeta'' Pavel Felgenhauer said that the accident-prone ''Kuznetsov'' was scarcely seaworthy and was more of a menace to her crew than any putative enemy.

According to the '' Japan Times'', Russia increased its economic support for North Korea in an attempt to balance against a potential US-led push to topple the Kim Jong-un regime. In the event of regime collapse, Russia is worried about losing regional influence as well as the possibility of American troops being deployed to Russia's Eastern border. TransTeleCom (TTK), one of Russia's largest telecommunications companies, is also thought to provide a new internet connection to the country at a time when the US has engaged in denial of service attacks against North Korean hackers thought to be affiliated with the Reconnaissance General Bureau.

Relations with Middle Eastern and North African countries

On 16 October 2007 Putin visited Iran to participate in the Second Caspian Summit in Tehran,Putin: Iran Has Right to Develop Peaceful Nuclear Programme
16 October 2007, Rbc.ru where he met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Other participants were leaders of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. This was the first visit of a Soviet or Russian leader to Iran since Joseph Stalin's participation in the Tehran Conference in 1943, and thus marked a significant event in Iran–Russia relations. At a press conference after the summit Putin said that "all our ( Caspian) states have the right to develop their peaceful nuclear programmes without any restrictions". During the summit it was also agreed that its participants, under no circumstances, would let any third-party state use their territory as a base for aggression or military action against any other participant.

Subsequently, under Medvedev's presidency, Iran–Russia relations were uneven: Russia did not fulfill the contract of selling to Iran the S-300, one of the most potent anti-aircraft missile systems currently existing. However, Russian specialists completed the construction of Iran and the Middle East's first civilian nuclear power facility, the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, and Russia has continuously opposed the imposition of economic sanctions on Iran by the U.S. and the EU, as well as warning against a military attack on Iran. Putin was quoted as describing Iran as a "partner", though he expressed concerns over the Iranian nuclear programme.

In April 2008, Putin visited Libya where he met the leader Muammar Gaddafi, the country welcomed the idea of creating an OPEC-like group of gas-exporting countries, Putin became first Russian President who visited Libya, he remarked the visit as "We are satisfied about the way in which we resolved this problem. I am absolutely convinced that the solution we have found will help the Russian and Libyan economies."

Putin condemned the foreign military intervention in Libya, he called UNSC Resolution 1973 as "defective and flawed," and added "It allows everything. It resembles medieval calls for crusades.", During the whole event, Putin condemned other steps taken by NATO. Upon the death of Muammar Gaddafi, Putin called it as "planned murder" by US, he asked "They showed to the whole world how he (Gaddafi) was killed," and "There was blood all over. Is that what they call a democracy?"

Dmitri Trenin reports in ''The New York Times'' that from 2000 to 2010 Russia sold around $1.5 billion worth of arms to Syria, making Damascus Moscow's seventh-largest client.
During the Syrian civil war, Russia threatened to veto any sanctions against the Syrian government, and continued to supply arms to the regime.

Putin opposed any foreign intervention. On 1 June 2012, in Paris, he rejected the statement of French President Francois Hollande who called on Bashar Al-Assad to step down. Putin echoed the argument of the Assad regime that anti-regime ''militants'' were responsible for much of the bloodshed, rather than the shelling by the Syrian Armed Forces and the civilian killings attributed by survivors and Western governments to regime supporters. He asked "But how many of peaceful people (sic) were killed by so-called militants? Did you count? There are also hundreds of victims." He also talked about previous NATO interventions and their results, and asked "What is happening in Libya, in Iraq? Did they become safer? Where are they heading? Nobody has an answer."

On 11 September 2013, an opinion, written by Putin, was published in ''The New York Times'' regarding international events related to the United States, Russia and Syria.

Relations with post-Soviet states

A series of so-called color revolutions in the post-Soviet states, namely the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in 2005, led to frictions in the relations of those countries with Russia. In December 2004, Putin criticised the Rose and Orange Revolution, according to him: "If you have permanent revolutions you risk plunging the post-Soviet space into endless conflict". During the protests following the 2011 Russian elections (in December 2011) Putin named the Orange Revolution as a potential precedent of what was going to happen in Russia.Putin calls 'color revolutions' an instrument of destabilization
Kyiv Post (15 December 2011)

Apart from a clash of nationalist rhetorics with the common historical legacies of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, a number of economic disputes erupted between Russia and some neighbours, such as the 2006 Russian ban of Moldovan and Georgian wines. Moscow's policies under Putin towards these states were described as "efforts to bully democratic neighbors" by John McCain in 2007.

In some cases, such as the Russia–Ukraine gas disputes, the economic conflicts affected other European countries, for example when a January 2009 gas dispute with Ukraine led state-controlled Russian company Gazprom to halt its deliveries of natural gas to Ukraine,Q&A: Russia-Ukraine gas row
BBC News (20 January 2009). which left a number of European states, to which Ukraine transits Russian gas, to have serious shortages of natural gas in January 2009.

In an interview with the German historian Michael Stürmer about the Russian shut-down of gas to Ukraine in early 2005, Putin linked the shut-down to the Orange revolution, saying: "This has a price he Orange revolution In spite of so much frustration we have stabilized the situation. In old days we concluded agreements with Ukraine year after year, and then included transit fees. The West Europeans had no idea that their energy security was a cliffhanger. By now we have a five-year agreement for transit to the E.U. This is an important step in the direction of European energy security".

In 2009, the Russia–Ukraine dispute was resolved by a long-term agreement on price formula, agreed by Prime Ministers Vladimir Putin of Russia and Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko