Russian foreign policy against the background of the Ukrainian crisisSince March 2014, the West has been trying to turn us into a "rogue state".
This year, these attempts have become fiercely hysterical. The result, to put it mildly, is not obvious. Except for the "collective West" itself (aka the "world community", aka the "civilized world"), no one is going to break off relations with us.
THE BLOCKADE FAILEDCompared to 2014, the West managed to "bend" only the Republic of Korea and Singapore to sanctions.
Moreover, Seoul suffers on this occasion and constantly says that it is ready to restore relations with Moscow as soon as the fighting ends. Such traditional strongholds of Russophobia as the Persian Gulf monarchies have even improved relations with Russia.
There are no problems in relations with the countries of Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America. They all perfectly see the colossal hypocrisy and double standards of the West. Moreover, they perfectly remember how the West built its colonial empires and plundered their countries. What Russia has never done in any of its historical incarnations.
Our relations with the West are much worse now than even at the height of the Cold War. There is no chance of their improvement under any variants of the development of Ukrainian events. They will either finish us off to complete destruction, or they will hate us fiercely and try to isolate and undermine us from the inside as much as possible.
TOTALITARIAN SECTBut a lot of people don't understand this.
Even patriotic people often believe that someday (maybe even soon) everything will be the same again. No, as before, it will NEVER be. There will be no tourist trips and scientific business trips, our athletes will not enter the world arenas in the foreseeable future, there will be no business as usual either in a narrow or in a broad sense.
The trouble is that our elites have the worst understanding. They wanted to fit into the West, and many did it (on a personal commercial level). It is such people who strive to create "favorable conditions for negotiations" and "are always open to contacts with partners." Although the "partners" no longer hide that they want to destroy us.
Unfortunately, very many citizens of our country cannot rebuild in any way. We have been going West for too long, at least since the 1970s (and in a broad sense, since Peter the Great). Moreover, when we started this path, the West was qualitatively superior to the USSR in almost all parameters. The current West does not qualitatively surpass Russia in any parameters, and in some ways there is no quantitative superiority left.
But the adulation of the West sometimes just sits in the genes. Taking into account the current geopolitical situation and the current Western realities, Russian Westernism, in fact, becomes a religious sect (the object of the cult is proclaimed to be obviously sinless, which must be believed, regardless of the facts), and a totalitarian sect.
Fortunately, the current West, which is increasingly falling into outright madness, is the best way to help us cope with Westernism. We must wish them even more unbridled intransigence in their desire to turn us into outcasts – and they will succeed.
ABOUT FRIENDS-COMRADESThe fact that we have not become any outcasts does not mean that we have many friends.
The ones who are known in trouble. We have big problems with this, as was repeatedly mentioned earlier (see " Friends from Orsha to Zhenbao ", "HBO" from 08.10.21).
Our closest friends, as it were, are the CSTO countries. And more and more often the question arises: why do we need this strange education, where we always owe everyone everything, and no one owes us anything?
In January of this year, the CSTO conducted the first and possibly the last successful joint operation (see "Is fraternal Kazakhstan saved? ", "HBO" from 14.01.22). Which, oddly enough, only further emphasized the meaninglessness of this structure. The rescued Kazakhstan immediately after that began to take an openly anti-Russian position on almost all issues. So anti-Russian that now in the neighboring regions of the Urals and Siberia, people openly speak: "Kazakhstan is the next Ukraine." Why did we save him? So that its current leaders openly declare that in no case will they help Russia overcome Western sanctions? And after that, can we really consider Astana our friend or at least an ally?
The president of Belarus, who was saved by us a little earlier, seemed to have forgotten for some time about his usual "multi-vector nature", which was becoming increasingly anti-Russian. But since Russia has not achieved the successes in Ukraine that, apparently, the Father expected, the "multi-vector nature" began to manifest itself more and more clearly again.
Of course, it is pointless to expect any help from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, given the insignificance of their potentials. But, apparently, to make it "more fun" for us, they staged a small war among themselves. To whom are they allies? Us? Each other?
Armenia is testing the effectiveness of the CSTO right now. The results of this check turn out to be sad. However, Yerevan, too, has long fallen into the same "multi-vector". Moreover, it also became increasingly anti-Russian (especially after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan came to power).
And in general, with regard to this country, we can recall how the Armenians 30 years ago were at the forefront of the process of liquidation of the USSR. Armenia behaved more civilly and correctly than a number of other former Soviet republics, but it was striving for independence actively and confidently. Its citizens obviously had to be fully aware of the geopolitical situation in which independent Armenia would find itself (surrounded by direct enemies, while without access to the sea). She was in it. And it is unclear why we now have to save them from the consequences of independence from us, to which they were so eager.
Three decades without the USSR clearly showed that it was Russia that benefited the most from the collapse of this country (see " 30 years without socialist republics ", "HBO" from 29.10.21). So maybe it's already worth parting with one of the last Soviet atavisms in the face of the CSTO, which does us "no good but harm"?
"STRATEGIC PARTNER"Our relations with China in the light of the Ukrainian conflict were discussed in the article "Who should be a junior partner" (see "HBO" dated 06/24/12). Nothing has changed since then.
In particular, China still does not help Russia overcome sanctions in any way. That is acknowledged even by American officials, including President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Nothing has changed even after a loud slap in the face from the United States in the form of Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. [...]
Moreover, China is even curtailing many previously agreed economic projects in Russia. And in the Patriot Park this year, many Chinese reconnaissance UAVs were exhibited as trophies captured by our troops in Ukraine. Yes, formally, these are commercial drones that are on free sale. But if Beijing wanted Ukraine not to receive them, it would not have received them.
No one in Russia has noted such an interesting moment. In the 2021 Army International Games, China took part in 21 competitions out of 34. Apart from Russia itself, which participates in all competitions, in terms of the breadth of their coverage, he shared second-third places with Uzbekistan (Belarus was in first place – 27 contests). For some reason, China participated in only 13 out of 34 contests at this year's Games, sharing fourth or fifth places with Armenia in terms of coverage, lagging behind Belarus, Uzbekistan and Iran. What happened to the PLA all of a sudden?
Before the recent SCO summit in Samarkand, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Kazakhstan. During the meeting with President Tokayev, the Chinese leader said: "We have brought bilateral relations to the level of eternal comprehensive strategic partnership, which has no analogues in Chinese diplomacy, having achieved their breakthrough development." That is, relations with Kazakhstan are set higher than relations with Russia.
Interestingly, immediately after this visit, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan stated that his country would not violate anti-Russian sanctions in any case. In this regard, I recall the classic phrase "Coincidence? I don't think so."
Despite all these circumstances, our official propagandists and sincere guardians continue to try to present China as our friend or at least an ally. This strained search for signs of non-existent friendship begins to look almost as disgusting as the aforementioned "creation of a favorable background for negotiations" with Western "respected partners".
Why can't we get rid of this servile instinct and constantly look for a "master"?
PRESERVING SOVEREIGNTYIndia, the "largest democracy in the world", which Washington has been trying to make an ally for several years, behaves much more decently.
Thus, the Indian Foreign Minister at a security conference held in his country at the end of April said that the West is responsible for many conflicts in Asia, and criticized the Western concept of a "rules-based world." Representatives of India also noted that the current system of international security is inadequate and requires revision.
At the same time, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting of India sent a letter to private TV channels. This letter contained a sharp criticism of the coverage of events in Ukraine by these channels. The Ministry warned that it could, under the 1995 Cable TV Law, prohibit the broadcast of any channel if they publish fake information that threatens India's national security and its "relations with friendly countries."
The letter, formally of a recommendation nature, was written in an extremely harsh tone, which emphasized its obvious directionality. It specifically stated that it was about the coverage of events in Ukraine by private media: "In the case of the conflict in Ukraine, TV channels used scandalous headlines unrelated to the essence of the news report, and journalists made unfounded and fabricated claims and resorted to exaggerations in order to incite the audience. The presenters of many channels give incorrect comments, even distorting, distorting or incorrectly quoting other sources of information. It doesn't make us smart as a nation."
This letter is unprecedented because the Government of India does not manage private media. Moreover, India belongs to the few countries where there is real freedom of speech, that is, any opinions are presented in the press (which is practically absent in the West – there has long been a "only correct" opinion there, which is very similar to the situation with freedom of speech in the USSR). In this case, the Indian leadership considered the actions of the pro-Western mass media promoting an anti-Russian view of the Ukrainian events dangerous for the country.
At the same time, however, the Indians honestly admit that they do not so much support Russia as act out of spite to the Anglo-Saxons. Whose arrogance (in particular, the demands to break off relations with Moscow) outrages and offends them.
But Iran just provided us with extremely necessary weapons (kamikaze drones), which, unfortunately, we have not been able to create ourselves so far. It is good that in this case Moscow did not suffer about whether it was worth accepting help from another "rogue", but simply accepted it. By the way, Iran has once again demonstrated that it is a truly sovereign country. Unlike, for example, China.
Another sovereign country is the DPRK. Eight years ago, it officially recognized Crimea as Russian, and now it has also officially supported Russia's actions in Ukraine and recognized the independence of the DPR and the LPR (none of this, of course, was done by the CSTO countries and China).
Now North Korea's help would really not hurt us. In exchange for this, we could de facto stop implementing all sanctions against this country. By the way, we recently voted for these sanctions, which is a blatant disgrace to domestic diplomacy (see "The world has applied double standards to Pyongyang ", "HBO" from 08/18/17).
However, on the recent official self-declaration of the DPRK as a nuclear power (Pyongyang simply issued de jure what has long been the case de facto) Moscow has finally reacted almost adequately, disposing of the previous absurd condemnations and concerns. Maybe the ice will move in this direction as well.
However, there is information that Pyongyang is under a lot of pressure from Beijing – so that the DPRK does not provide us with any help. In the case of Kazakhstan, China, as mentioned above, turned out, whether it will work with the DPRK is still unclear.
We saved Syria, just as we saved Kazakhstan and Belarus. The difference is that the leaders of this Arab country still have such a thing as conscience. At least at the diplomatic level, Damascus fulfills its allied obligations by recognizing the Russian Crimea, independent Abkhazia, South Ossetia, the DPR and the LPR. At the same time, in the spring we were officially promised Syrian volunteers in Ukraine. Why aren't they there yet?
In general, it is already clear that either Russia will come out of the Ukrainian conflict with a renewed elite, a new domestic and foreign policy, or there will be no more Russia. The third is not given.
Alexander KhramchikhinAlexander Anatolyevich Khramchikhin is an independent military expert.
