ABSTRACT
Russia’s multilateralism in the ‘near abroad’ is not the same as in the far abroad. This is to a large extent structurally determined. On the global arena, Russia is but one of many larger states, whereas in the Eurasian setting it is massively superior to the other post-Soviet states in terms of territory, military power and economic strength. Nevertheless, Russia after 1991 did not succeeded in building a viable multilateral structure to entrench and institutionalize this predominance. The conventional verdict on multilateralism in the near abroad was that Russia was ‘getting it wrong’.1
