Authors

Discussion

The new ‘Strategy of National Security of the Russian Federation”, signed by President Vladimir Putin on 2 July 2021, contains heavy ideological criticism of the West. It is the culmination of the ideological evolution of Russian strategic documents since 2000. This evolution led Russia from identifying with liberal values of the West and considering itself a part of Western civilisation to a radical break with the values inherent in Western democracies. The turning point can be considered Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007.

In this presentation, I will analyse the ideological evolution of Russian strategic documents (related to the strategy of national security, the strategy of information security and the concept of foreign policy). I aim to primarily extrapolate the image of Western liberal democracies contained in these documents and the related criticism of Western institutions, values, and norms. Moreover, I propose a possible interpretation of the causes and consequences of said ideological evolution.