Challenges to Russian security were regarded as a consequence of circumstances inside the nation after the Soviet Union fell apart.
External difficulties were to be addressed in partnership with the West if they arose.
Russia seemed to be open to cooperating with, if not joining, the West.
However, most of Russia's interests and concerns were largely overlooked by Europe and the United States (Cohen 2001).
Rather, the West increased its participation in what had previously been the Soviet sphere of influence, attempting to restrict Moscow's ability to reclaim authority in the area (Kanet 2015; Kanet 2018a; and Spechler and Spechler 2019).
This expansionist policy, which included NATO action in former Yugoslavia and the integration of former Warsaw Pact nations and Soviet republics into NATO, met with strong and persistent hostility from Moscow, and undoubtedly influenced Mosoc's attitude.
At the same time, criticism of Russia's political moves grew in both Brussels and Washington.
In order to prevent the Communist Party from regaining power, the US played a key role in guaranteeing President Boris Yeltsin's re-election in 1996. (Goldgeier and McFaul 2003).
In the mid-to-late 1990s, Russian views and policies toward the West began to alter.
Moscow's strategic culture and sense of national identity started to change — back toward that which had ruled the USSR and Russia for millennia – only after Vladimir Putin became president and surrounded himself with former personnel of the Soviet secret services.
It was concluded by the Russian leadership that accomplishing security and foreign policy goals via collaboration with the West was unattainable.
Official responses to what they regarded as mounting threats to key national security interests included a reinvigorated sense of national identity that questioned Russia's European origins and linked it to a larger Eurasia.
As Russia pursued its objective of re-establishing itself as the main regional force throughout Eurasia and as a vital global player, this vision was joined by a rising challenge to the West's dominating position, both in Central and Eastern Europe and worldwide.
The Russian military was rebuilt, and military actions in Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine were launched in reaction to "Western expansion." Putin's remarks at the Valdai Discussion Club from autumn 2014 through fall 2016 reflect his views on the West's antagonism and threats against Russia, as well as his renewed commitment to being acknowledged as a "Great Power" (Putin 2014, 2015, 2016).
He repeated Russia's reluctance to acknowledge as legitimate the post-Cold War international order, which he sees as nothing more than a set of norms established by the West – to its benefit – that the US and other Western powers often ignore.
President Vladimir Putin talked about new and improved Russian nuclear weapons in the spring of 2018. (Putin 2018).
Soon after, Prime Minister Teresa May's administration withdrew 23 Russian diplomats in retaliation for what it saw as a Russian state attempt to murder a former Russian agent on British territory (Asthana et al. 2018).
The US government accused Russia a few days later with "creating a series of hacks that targeted American and European nuclear power facilities, water and electric networks, and could have destroyed or shut down power plants at whim" (Perlroth and Sangermarch 2018).
Furthermore, from Donald Trump's inauguration as president in early 2017 until the emergence of coranvirus , Russia's intervention in the 2016 US presidential election dominated most of the political headlines in the United States (Isikoff and Corn 2018).
All of this has happened during a time of harsh Western economic sanctions on Russia in punishment for the latter's seizure and incorporation of Crimea, as well as its engagement in the eastern Ukraine civil war.
As a consequence of these events, Russia feels itself as being hemmed in by Western forces.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov addressed the Academy of Military Sciences in 2005, "Let us face it, there is a war against Russia going on, and it has been going on for a long time." There was no declaration of war against us.
There isn't a single nation that would go to war with Russia.
However, individuals and organizations from a variety of nations participate in hostilities against the Russian Federation (Ivanov, cited in Blank 2017, 729).
In a similar spirit, the current Defence Minister, Sergey Shoigu, described color revolutions as a new type of warfare invented by the West with the goal of weakening the Russian Federation's and its allies' defenses in a speech to a conference on international security in May 2014. (Papert 2014).
By the time of the Ukrainian Crisis and the imposition of the first Western sanctions on Russia, military and security officials in Moscow had concluded that the West was engaged in a new type of warfare, justifying a cyberwarfare response targeting electoral systems and critical economic infrastructure in the United States and European Union countries.
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