Published: Less than 20 min ago
Vladimir Putin has signed a new version of his foreign policy doctrine.
The USA is singled out as the biggest threat.
Six other countries are listed as Russia’s most important friends, the Financial Times reports.
Putin held a video conference with his National Security Council on Friday. There he presented an updated version of Russia’s foreign policy doctrine.
Putin said, according to a transcript of the talks on the Kremlin’s English-language website, that he had signed it earlier in the day to face “modern geopolitical realities.”
He left the floor to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who said, among other things, that Russia is facing “an existential threat from unfriendly countries”, writes the Financial Times.
CNN has read the 42-page document and reports that the United States is singled out as the biggest threat, not only to Russia, but to the entire world.
“Moscow considers Washington’s choice of path as the greatest source of risk to its own and international security, to peace and to the just development of all humanity,” it says according to the translation.
“Unique historical mission”
The US is also described as “the originator and executor of anti-Russian policy in the collective Western world”, reports the Financial Times.
This is in sharp contrast to the wording in the previous doctrine from 2016. It stated that Russia wants to build “functioning relations with the United States”, writes the FT.
In documents, which according to Acting as a handbook for Russian diplomats, Reuters presents Russia as a “distinct state civilization” with a “unique historical mission” to create an international balance of power.
Russia also defines itself as “peaceful, open and predictable”, according to the Financial Times. The US is accused of using the “military special operation” in Ukraine as “an excuse for hybrid war with the goal of weakening and disintegrating Russia”.
Lists six friends
In the new doctrine, China and India are seen as Russia’s most important friends. They are presented, according to the FT’s translation, as “friendly independent global power centers” and are considered to share the Russian image of “a future world order”.
Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are also defined as important allies, the newspaper writes.
– Just like Stalin, Putin sees the world as divided into spheres of interest where big countries compete to get more allies. His idea of friendship is that the more allies you have, the more powerful you are, says Andrey Kolesnikov, an expert at the Washington-based think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to the Financial Times.
Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Moscow a few weeks ago, just days after China formulated a twelve-point plan for peace in Ukraine. It was sentenced directly by the United States.