The foreign relations of the Russian Federation is the policy arm 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.

Kremlin's foreign policy debates show a conflict among three rival schools: Atlanticists, seeking a closer relationship with the United States and the Western World in general; Imperialists, seeking a recovery of the semi-hegemonic status lost during the previous decade; and Neo-Slavophiles, promoting the isolation of Russia within its own cultural sphere. While Atlanticism was the dominant ideology during the first years of the new Russian Federation, under Andrei Kozyrev, it came under attack for its failure to defend Russian pre-eminence in the former USSR. The promotion of Yevgeny Primakov to Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1996 marked the beginning of a more nationalistic approach to foreign policy.

Another major trend has been Eurasianism, a school of thought that emerged during the early 20th century. Eurasianists assert that Russia is composed of Slavic, Turkic and Asiatic cultures and equates Liberalism with Eurocentric imperialism. One of the earliest ideologues of Eurasianism was the Russian historian Nikolai Trubetzkoy, who denounced the Europhilic Czar Peter I and advocated Russian embrace of the Asiatic "legacy of Chinggis Khan" to establish a trans-continental Eurasian state. Following the collapse of Soviet Union, Eurasianism gained public ascendency through the writings of philosopher Aleksandr Dugin and has become the official ideological policy under the government of Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin held the presidency from January 2000 to May 2008, and again from May 2012 to the present. Under Putin, Russia has engaged in several notable conflicts, including against the neighboring country of Ukraine. He recognized the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk within that country. Relations with the United States in particular have sharply deteriorated between 2001 and 2022, with the Kremlin blaming US involvement in the Middle East and countries bordering Russia. Relations with the European Union became hostile after Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, prompting the imposition of substantial economic and political sanctions by the western bloc, led by the EU, UK & USA. The Russian government now has a specified "Unfriendly Countries List" which indicates countries with which relations are now strained (or non-existent). At present, Russia has no diplomatic relations with Ukraine (since 2022) due to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. Russia also has no diplomatic relations with Georgia (since 2008), Bhutan, the Federated States of Micronesia (since 2022) and the Solomon Islands.

Since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war, Russian relations with the western camp (the United States & its allies) have significantly deteriorated. Russia's relations with the European Union, Japan, USA, Canada, UK & Australia have been the most impacted since 2014. In recent years, formerly strong relations with Armenia, Montenegro, Azerbaijan, South Korea, Israel, Bulgaria & Moldova have worsened. On the other hand, Russia still maintains strong friendly relations with nations from the Global South, especially those from Asia & Africa. Russia tends to have strong ties with countries that stand against US-led positions, although India, Kazakhstan, Brazil & Vietnam are major exceptions.

Key Russian allies/partners include Belarus, China, India, Mongolia, DPRK, Kazakhstan, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, Vietnam, Burkina Faso, Tajikistan, Brazil, Myanmar, Cuba, Mali & Nicaragua. The Houthis in Yemen also have strong ties with the Russian Federation. Other nations such as Egypt, Syria, Serbia, Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait, Honduras, Turkmenistan, Laos & Algeria also hold friendly relations with Russia.

History Foreign policy of the Russian Empire

Foreign relations of the Soviet Union

Foreign policy of the Russian Federation

In international affairs, Putin had made increasingly critical public statements regarding the foreign policy of the United States and other Western countries. In February 2007, at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, he criticized what he called the US monopolistic dominance in global relations and claimed that the US displayed an "almost unconstrained hyper use of force in international relations." He said the result of it is that "no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race."43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy. Putin's speech in English , 10 February 2007.Liquid Courage, The American. By Charlie Szrom and Thomas Brugato. , 22 February 2008. See also Brugato, Thomas. (2008). Drunk On Oil: Russian Foreign Policy 2000–2007. Berkeley Undergraduate Journal, 21(2). Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/26d7t54f

Putin proposed initiatives such as establishing international centers for the enrichment of uranium and prevention of deploying weapons in outer space. In a January 2007 interview, Putin stated that Russia is in favor of a democratic multipolar world and of strengthening the system of international law.Interview for Indian Television Channel Doordarshan and Press Trust of India News Agency, 18 January 2007.

2000–2006 Putin is often characterized as an autocrat by the Western media and politicians.Stand Up to Putin. by Robert Kagan The Washington Post 15 September 2004 His relationship with former US President George W. Bush, former and current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, former French President Jacques Chirac, and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are reported to be personally friendly. Putin's relationship with Germany's former Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is reported to be "cooler" and "more business-like" than his partnership with Gerhard Schröder, who accepted a job with a Russian-led consortium after leaving office.Merkel cools Berlin Moscow ties BBC News 16 January 2006

During the Iraq disarmament crisis in 2002–2003, Putin opposed Washington's move to invade Iraq, without the benefit of a United Nations Security Council resolution explicitly authorizing the use of military force. After the official end of the war was announced, US President George W. Bush asked the United Nations to lift sanctions on Iraq. Putin supported lifting of the sanctions in due course, arguing that the UN commission first be given a chance to complete its work on the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

During the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, Putin twice visited Ukraine before the election to show his support for Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who was widely seen as a pro-Kremlin candidate, and he congratulated him on his anticipated victory before official election results had even been released. Putin's personal support for Yanukovych was criticized as unwarranted interference in the affairs of a sovereign state (See also The Orange revolution). Crises also developed in Russia's relations with Georgia and Moldova, both former Soviet republics accusing Moscow of supporting separatist entities in their territories (i.e., Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria.)

In 2005, Putin and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder negotiated the construction of a major gas pipeline over the Baltic exclusively between Russia and Germany. Schröder also attended Putin's 53rd birthday celebration in Saint Petersburg the same year.

The end of 2006 brought strained relations between Russia and Britain, in the wake of the death of a former FSB officer in London by poisoning. On 20 July 2007, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown expelled "four Russian envoys over Putin's refusal to extradite ex-KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi, wanted in the UK for the murder of fellow former spy Alexander Litvinenko in London." The Russian constitution prohibits the extradition of Russian nationals to third countries. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that "this situation is not unique, and other countries have amended their constitutions, for example, to give effect to the European Arrest Warrant."David Miliband's oral statement to the Commons on the Litvinenko case, 16 July 2007

When Litvinenko was dying from radiation poisoning, he accused Putin of directing the assassination, in a statement which was released shortly after his death by his friend Alex Goldfarb. Critics have doubted that Litvinenko is the true author of the released statement. When asked about the Litvinenko accusations, Putin said that a statement released posthumously of its author "naturally deserves no comment."Joint Press Conference after Russia-EU Summit , Helsinki, Finland, 24 November 2006

The expulsions were seen as "the biggest rift since the countries expelled each other's diplomats in 1996 after a spying dispute." In response to the situation, Putin stated, "I think we will overcome this mini-crisis. Russian-British relations will develop normally. On both the Russian side and the British side, we are interested in the development of those relations." Despite this, British Ambassador Tony Brenton was told by the Russian Foreign Ministry that UK diplomats would be given 10 days before they were expelled in response. The Russian government also announced that it would suspend issuing visas to UK officials, and froze cooperation on counterterrorism, in response to Britain suspending contacts with their Federal Security Service.

Alexander Shokhin, president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, warned that British investors in Russia will "face greater scrutiny from tax and regulatory authorities. They could also lose out in government tenders." Some see the crisis as originating with Britain's decision to grant Putin's former patron, Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky, political asylum in 2003. Earlier in 2007, Berezovsky had called for the overthrow of Putin.

2007–2009

Putin took an active personal part in promoting the Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate signed in May 2007, which restored relations between the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church and Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) after the 80-year schism.

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), seen in Moscow as its traditional sphere of influence, became one of Putin's foreign policy priorities, as the EU and NATO have grown to encompass much of Central Europe and, more recently, the Baltic states.

On 26 April 2007, in his annual address to the Federal Assembly, Putin announced plans to declare a moratorium on the observance of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe by Russia until all NATO members ratified it and started observing its provisions, as Russia had been doing on a unilateral basis. Putin argues that as new NATO members have not even signed the treaty so far, an imbalance in the presence of NATO and Russian armed forces in Europe creates a real threat and an unpredictable situation for Russia.Annual Address to the Federal Assembly , 26 April 2007, Kremlin, Moscow NATO members said they would refuse to ratify the treaty until Russia complied with its 1999 commitments made in Istanbul, whereby Russia should remove troops and military equipment from Moldova and Georgia. Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, was quoted as saying in response that "Russia has long since fulfilled all its Istanbul obligations relevant to CFE."Lavrov Announced Conditions of Resuming CFE Observance , 3 December 2007, Izvestia.ru