ABSTRACT
The depiction of the late 1990s as a crisis period played a pivotal role in the Putin regimes reading of Russia immediate circumstances and priorities for the future. Putin regime continued to hold the ambition of Russia rejoining the ranks of other great powers on the international stage, but argued this could only occur once it had dealt with its internal problems. The apocalyptic language of existential threats, and a fear that unless the authorities act now then Russia would disintegrate further, was at the heart of official security discourse. It investigates the nature of Putin's political project and his particular reading of Russia as a weak power in 2000, and outlines how this wider perspective was central to the way in which the Russian authorities chose to deal with individual security concerns, such as Chechnya. According to this logic, the first decade of the post-Soviet era had left Russia domestically weak and rife with internal insecurities and instabilities.
