THE CONCEPTS OF “VOLUNTARY ACCESSION”, “LIBERATION” AND “RETURN” IN RUSSIA’S FOREIGN POLICY

The purpose of the article is to examine three primary justification narratives Russia has traditionally used to explain its territorial growth and foreign incursions. Some of them have deep historical origins and have been repeatedly applied for centuries in order to accomplish foreign policy objectives, while others are rather a creation of the modern day and conform to the realities of the current international agenda. All of these conceptions are nonetheless unified by the fact that they are often used to justify expansion of state borders by military or other methods. And since this approach of interpreting enlargements and (neo)colonial policy is not novel, but typically has a long history, this article focuses primarily on Russian general geopolitical culture, providing a number of historical examples and also making predictions based on publicly available documents, provocative statements and general political discourse in the Russian federation of today. This study employs discourse analysis as a main research method, and its central question is “How does Russia consider the areas around it and position itself in relation to these territories?” Russia’s self-awareness as a non-aggressive nation with “exclusive interests” in its neighbourhood regions is a central theme of the whole work that deserves special attention.