Russia, officially the Russian Federation (RF), is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world by area, covering over 17,098,246 square kilometres (6,601,670 sq mi), and encompassing one-eighth of Earth's inhabitable landmass. Russia extends across eleven time zones and borders fourteen countries by land. Russia also shares narrow maritime boundaries with two countries. It is the ninth-most populous country in the world and the most populous country in Europe, with a population of 146 million. The country's capital and largest city is Moscow, the largest city entirely within Europe. Saint Petersburg is Russia's cultural centre and second-largest city. Other major urban areas include Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan.
The foreign relations of the Russian Federation is the policy of the government of Russia which guides its interactions with other nations, their citizens, and foreign organizations. This article covers the foreign policy of the Russian Federation since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has been serving as the president of Russia since 2012, having previously served between 2000 and 2008. He was the prime minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012.
The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a modern unofficial geopolitical term, typically used to group three countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, and the OECD. The three sovereign states on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea are sometimes referred to as the "Baltic nations", less often and in historical circumstances also as the "Baltic republics", the "Baltic lands", or simply the Baltics.
LDPR — Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is a right-wing populist and ultranationalist political party in Russia. It succeeded the Liberal Democratic Party of the Soviet Union (LDPSU) in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The party was led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky since its inception until his death in April 2022. Opposing both communism and neoliberal capitalism of the 1990s, and advocating for monarchism albeit in a constitutional form, the party scored a major success in the 1993 Duma elections with almost 23% of the vote, giving it 64 seats of the 450 seats in the State Duma. In the 2021 elections, the party received 7.55% of the vote, giving it 21 seats.
Anne Elizabeth Applebaum is an American journalist and historian. She has written extensively about the history of Communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe.
Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov is a Russian diplomat and politician who has served as the Foreign Minister of Russia since 2004.
Anti-Russian sentiment, commonly referred to as Russophobia, is dislike or fear of Russia, the Russians, and Russian culture. It also refers to hatred towards Russian policy, and intense and often irrational hatred of Russia.
Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev is a Russian politician, security officer and intelligence officer who has served as the secretary of the Security Council of Russia since 2008. He previously served as the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) from 1999 to 2008. Belonging to the siloviki faction of president Vladimir Putin's inner circle, Patrushev is believed to be one of the closest advisors to Putin and a leading figure behind Russia's national security affairs.
Russophilia is admiration and fondness of Russia, Russian history and Russian culture. The antonym is Russophobia. In the 19th Century, Russophilia was often linked to variants of Pan-Slavism, since the Russian Empire and the autonomous Serbia were the only two slav-associated sovereign states during and after Spring of Nations.
Russian–European Union relations are the international relations between the European Union (EU) and Russia. The relations of individual member states of the European Union and Russia vary, though a 1990s common foreign policy outline towards Russia was the first such EU foreign policy agreed. Furthermore, four European Union-Russia Common Spaces are agreed as a framework for establishing better relations. The latest EU-Russia strategic partnership was signed in 2011, but it was later challenged by the European Parliament in 2015 following the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas. Russia borders five EU member states: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Relations between the EU and the Russian Federation have grown increasingly negative due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Germany–Russia relations display cyclical patterns, moving back and forth from cooperation and alliance to strain and to total warfare. Historian John Wheeler-Bennett says that since the 1740s:
Richard Sakwa is a British political scientist and a former Professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent, a Senior Research Fellow at the National Research University-Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and an Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Political Science at Moscow State University. He has written books about Russian, Central and Eastern European communist and post-communist politics.
Sergey Alexandrovich Karaganov is a Russian political scientist who heads the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a security analytical institution founded by Vitaly Shlykov. He is also the dean of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at Moscow's Higher School of Economics. Karaganov was a close associate of Yevgeny Primakov, and has been Presidential Advisor to both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. He is still considered close to Putin and Sergey Lavrov.
Estonia–Russia relations refers to bilateral foreign relations between Estonia and Russia. Diplomatic relations between the Republic of Estonia and the Russian SFSR were established on 2 February 1920, when Soviet Russia recognized de jure the independence of the Republic of Estonia, and renounced in perpetuity all rights to the territory of Estonia, via the Treaty of Tartu (Russian–Estonian). At the time, the Bolsheviks had just gained control of the majority of Russian territory, and their government's legitimacy was being hotly contested by Western powers and the Russian White movement.
Netherlands–Russia relations is the relationships between the two countries, the Kingdom of the Netherlands and The Russian Federation. Russia has an embassy in The Hague, and the Netherlands has an embassy in Moscow, a consulate in Saint Petersburg, and an honorary consulate in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
Relations between the NATO military alliance and the Russian Federation were established in 1991 within the framework of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. In 1994, Russia joined the Partnership for Peace program, and through the early-2010s, NATO and Russia signed several additional agreements on cooperation.
Angela E. Stent is a foreign policy expert specializing in US and European relations with Russia and Russian foreign policy. She is Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University and director of its Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies. She is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. She has served in the Office of Policy Planning in the US State Department and as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia.
Baltic News Network (BNN) is a Baltic news website. It was founded on September 1, 2010, providing online news portals, mainly reporting for and about the Baltic region, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia. It is published by Latvia Baltic News Network.
Catherine Belton is a journalist and writer. From 2007 to 2013, she was the Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times. In Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West, published in 2020, Belton explored the rise of Russian president Vladimir Putin. It was named book of the year by The Economist, the Financial Times, the New Statesman and The Telegraph. It is also the subject of five separate lawsuits brought by Russian billionaires and Rosneft.
