Putin approves a new doctrine to justify the invasion of territories where Russian is spoken

This very Monday, the Russian president approved a new foreign policy doctrine which seeks to justify the armed invasion in those territories where ethnically Russian or Russian-speaking people live. That is, countries like Ukraine, but also Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan or Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia.

To do this, he speaks of the need to protect the “russian world” or “Russkiy Mir,” a spiritual and political concept that, for some, encompasses all of Russian culture as a whole and includes those outside of Russia. While, for others, this term has a geographic component and refers to everything that was once the old tsarist empire.

“Russia has an obligation to protect, safeguard and promote the traditions and ideals of the Russian world,” the text states. And although it could be interpreted as an attempt to promote national values ​​and traditions, the truth is that some of the ideologues of the conceptamong which is the ultranationalist Alexander Duginhave used this expression to defend the occupation of any ex-Soviet state.

Throughout 31 pages, the Russian president points out the will of the Russian Federation to “provide support to its compatriots who live abroad in compliance with their rights, to guarantee the protection of their interests and the preservation of cultural identity”.

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A priorithis doctrine does not have a military character. In fact, just read the title –Concept of the Humanitarian Policy of the Russian Federation Abroad– to realize that it presents itself as a soft power strategy. Despite this, this policy enshrines the ideas that the Kremlin has been repeating since the end of February to justify its “special operation” in Ukraine.

And not only that. The document emphasizes one of the great concerns of Putin on foreign policy: the 25 million ethnic Russians who, in his opinion, were trapped outside the borders after the collapse of the Soviet Union, an event that he considers a geopolitical catastrophe.

That concern for ethnic Russians is precisely what has served as a pretext to carry out its expansionist ideology and attack other states that it considers part of its sphere of influence.

From Crimea to Luhansk

Without going any further, in 2014, after the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, the president gave a speech in which he explained the reasons that had led him to invade the territory and evoked the concept of “Russian World”.

In it he stated that “millions of people went to sleep in one country and woke up in many other states, becoming the ethnic minorities of the former Soviet republics; thus, the Russians became one of the largest nationsif not the largest in the world, separated by borders”.

Russia has an obligation to protect, safeguard and promote the traditions and ideals of the Russian world.”

Likewise, last spring, the Russian leader used the same strategy to explain why he formally recognized the independence of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. On that occasion, during his address to the nation, he used the term “new russia” either “Novorossiya” to refer to those two territories in southeastern Ukraine that the Russian Empire conquered from the Ottoman between the 17th and 19th centuries.

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