This chapter examines the domestic factors and describes the conceptual and institutional environment in which the foreign policy of the Russian Federation is being formulated. Accordingly, some elements of Russia’s political culture—especially in such conservative strongholds as the armed forces and certain large economic enterprises related to the former “military-industrial complex”—demonstrate significant continuity with Soviet era thinking. Since the creation of the executive presidency in the USSR in 1990, and continuing in independent Russia, the office of the president has been the institutional centerpiece of Moscow’s foreign policy decision making. The longest-serving Soviet foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko—a product of the career foreign affairs bureaucracy—was initially regarded as a technician. With the establishment of a direct reporting link from the foreign minister to the president, the constitutional foreign policy role of the prime minister and the government has been reduced.