Frozen Transition: Russia and Great Power Crisis Management

Abstract

The new IMEMO report 'Russia and the World: 2016' is, as its name suggests, an undertaking of a global scope. The one-hundred-and-forty-seven pages of its original Russian version cover all and everything that is relevant to the topic, and Russia, as the authors seem to suggest, has an acquired stake in and a legitimate right to interfere into all of that all and everything as a "great power" (p. 122 [RU]) 1 and a

Belarus as a liminal space for Russia’s ontological security before and after the 2020 protests

“…In Russia, ‘strong and resolute’ leaders such as Aliaksandr Lukashenka, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Vladimir Putin, and the way they practice ‘express realpolitik’ are frequently framed as the ideal model of conducting international politics. The international order is presented as undergoing a crisis and a transformation, and Russia, as a great power and a global player, ‘must and will participate in this re-structuring’ (Reshetnikov, 2016: 104). This model of ‘express realpolitik’ encompasses the Kremlin’s preferred rules of the game in the near abroad and is seen as the extension of its social and political order into this liminal space.…”