Russian Foreign Policy

“Great work has been done in cooperation with our partners from Turkey. We know that only recently there was a trilateral meeting in Moscow of the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey, and Iran, where all of the nations made obligations not only to control, but also to act as guarantors of the peace process in Syria.”

Modern Turkey is a strange amalgam of Western structures underpinned by Ottoman habits. Their various governments, whether military or not, are still heavily influenced by its huge military, and the contradiction between religion and secularism stills bedevils its development. Russia knows this, and knows that the bazaar mentality prevails in Turkish foreign policy. Rather than provoke a collapse of the shaky Turkish state, Russia prefers to weaken a neurotic NATO, and eventually bring Turkey into its sphere of influence, in the interests of Middle Eastern stability.

By Tayyab Baloch Moscow has formulated trilateral mechanisms aimed at seeking regional stability through solving the Afghanistan crisis with the help of regional neighboring countries....

The push to delegitimize the election results continued after a trio of top Senate Democrats called for a nonpartisan commission to investigate allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Sens. Ben Cardin (Md.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.), the top Democrats on the Foreign Relations, Intelligence and Judiciary committees, back the creation an independent commission with 18 months to report its findings The Hill reports.

The Russian Foreign Ministry Lavrov speaks of “radical changes” in relations with the United States. Russia is upgrading its military presence in the Middle East. Moscow is also considering the reopening of its military bases in Cuba and Vietnam

The following article was published in the Russian website Katehon. It is interesting in two aspects. First, it is expressing the viewpoint of a section of Russian elite. Second, as the writer makes a polemic against other currents inside Russian elite, he is helping us to understand better various schools of thought which compete for influence in both the Kremlin and Russian public at large.