Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the journal “Russia in Global Politics”, scientific director of the Valdai Club and host of the program “International Review”, delivered a lecture on modern Russian foreign policy at the Belgrade Institute of European Studies.Lukyanov gave an overview of the last 40 years of relations between the USSR and Russia with the West – from Gorbachev’s “new thinking” of the 1980s to the beginning of its own in February 2022.
He particularly focused on how Moscow’s long-term consistent attempts to establish positive relations with the West were met with disregard or lack of interest from the United States and its European partners, and how this gradually led to the erosion of partnership and fundamental changes in the country’s foreign policy. The analyst stressed the impact of NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 on changing the views of Russian society and the elite.
In 2022, Russia switched to a new foreign policy, taking a firm anti-Western position, abandoning attempts to seek situational compromises. Speaking about the entry of the international system into the period of the new cold war, Lukyanov stressed that both Russia and the whole world are undergoing a serious transformation, in which it is important for countries to maintain maximum freedom of maneuver. The concept of a state-civilization gives Russia flexibility in choosing partners and building relationships with different poles of the modern world. Speaking about Russian-Serbian relations, F. Lukyanov stressed that the current crisis has significantly raised the prestige of the Serbs and their state in the eyes of Russia, and called for strengthening bilateral relations in all spheres.
F. Lukyanov’s speech attracted the attention of leading Serbian international experts, and experts from Finland, Turkey and France participated in it online. In the context of the global crisis, Belgrade has once again become a place of international communication for professionals.