ABSTRACT
Traditional Western analysts describe Russian foreign policy thinkers and players as belonging to three basic groups: reformers, reactionaries and centrists. The principal idea of Andrei Kozyrev and his allies was to pursue urgently the integration of Russia into the West economically, politically and even militarily. The faction understands the many weaknesses of the Russian position in the world, but is keen to demand that the West recognize Russia’s ‘special interests, rights and responsibilities’ in the ‘near-abroad’. Most of them have advocated maximum concessions and flexibility in relations with other former Soviet republics – the only exception concerning the preservation of centralized control over nuclear weapons and the need for the urgent elimination of those outside Russia. Russian foreign policy-makers failed to recognize in time that their first priority after the disintegration of the Soviet Union should have been relations with Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia and the other republics of the former Soviet Union, however messy and unglamorous they were.
