Putin has come a long way in 23 years, from the first cautious but resolute attempts to restore Russia's sovereignty as a state, almost completely lost in the 1990s, recognising that Russia (although sovereign) is part of the Western world, part of Europe (from Lisbon to Vladivostok) and generally shares Western values, rules and attitudes, to the head-on clash with the collective West, openly rejecting its hegemony, refusing to recognise its values, principles and rules as universal and strictly accepted by Russia.
Putin's signature on 31 March 2023 with the new foreign policy concept means that the road from a sovereign state in the context of a common Western globalist liberal civilisation to a sovereign civilisation, the Russian world and an independent pole has been definitively passed. Russia is no longer the West. The West was the first to proclaim this, launching a war of annihilation against us. After a year of SMO we also affirm it. Not with regret, but with pride.
In the above definition of Russia there are four levels, each representing the most important concept in foreign policy.
The statement that Russia is a civilisation-state means that we are not dealing with a simple nation-state according to the logic of the Westphalian system, but with something much bigger. If Russia is a civilisation-state, then it should not be compared with a particular Western or non-Western country, but with the West as a whole, for example. Or with another civilisation-state, such as China or India. Or simply with a civilisation represented by many states (such as the Islamic world, Latin America or Africa). A civilisation-state is not just a very large state, it is like the ancient empires, the kingdoms of kingdoms, a state of states. Within the civilisation-state there can be several political entities, even quite autonomous ones. According to K. Leontiev, this is a complexity in the making, not a linear unification, as in the common nation-states of the New Era.
At the same time, however, Russia is described as a 'vast Eurasian and Euro-Pacific power', i.e. as a strong sovereign state of continental dimensions. Eurasians refer to it as a 'continental state'. The adjective 'vast' is not used as purely descriptive. True sovereignty can only be possessed by 'vast' powers. Here we see a direct reference to the notion of 'vast space', which is a necessary component of strategic sovereignty in its own right. A power that does not fulfil these requirements cannot be truly sovereign. The Eurasian and Euro-Pacific character of Russia points directly to the full recognition of Eurasian geopolitics and its basic provisions. Russia-Eurasia in the Eurasian philosophy is an opposite concept to the interpretation of Russia as one of the European countries. The very term 'power' is to be interpreted as a synonym for empire.
Very important is the reference to the Russian people and other peoples who share with the Russians their historical, geopolitical and civilisational destiny. The Russian people became a people of various East Slavic, Finno-Ugric and Turkic tribes precisely in the process of historical nation-building. By building a state, the nation also built itself. Hence the indissoluble link between the Russians and their independence and statehood. But at the same time, it is also an indication that the state was created by the Russian people, preserved and sustained by them.
The introduction of the concept of the 'Russian world' into the body of the foreign policy concept is highly revealing. The state never coincides - with rare exceptions - with the borders of civilisation. Each time around its established borders there are zones of intensive influence from the beginning of civilisation. The Russian world is a circumscribed historical and cultural area, which certainly belongs to Russia as a civilisation, but is not always part of Russian power. In some cases, with harmonious and friendly relations between countries, the Russian world can exist harmoniously on both sides of the border. But in the presence of interstate conflicts, the civilised state, which is what Russia is (according to this foreign policy concept), has every reason to defend its civilisation - and in the most critical cases ignore the borders themselves. Thus, the concept of the Russian world in the overall context of Russia's definition clarifies the logic of its actions in the post-Soviet space and, in particular, gives the NWO doctrinal legitimacy and ideological validity.
— The long road to a sovereign civilisation
The concept of foreign policy as the apotheosis of multipolarism and the catechism of sovereignty