ABSTRACT
As the world’s biggest state incorporating most of Northern Eurasia, Russia has an unusually wide and diverse set of foreign policy interests. It has more neigh-bours than any other country – 13 in all, including the United States and China. Since the early eighteenth century, Russia has been involved in most key issues of international politics – a role that culminated in the Cold War when the Soviet Union was for, almost half a century, one of the two superpowers whose competition and cooperation affected every aspect of global politics. Post-Soviet Russia does not claim such a status in world affairs, but it does remain one of the world’s most influential powers.
