Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S.

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Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S.

By Catherine Belton
April 17, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT



The Russian Foreign Ministry building in Moscow. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has been drawing up plans to try to weaken its Western adversaries, including the United States, and leverage the Ukraine war to forge a global order free from what it sees as American dominance, according to a secret Foreign Ministry document. ... In a classified addendum to Russia’s official — and public — “Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation,” the ministry calls for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures spanning “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” against a “coalition of unfriendly countries” led by the United States. ... “We need to continue adjusting our approach to relations with unfriendly states,” states the 2023 document, which was provided to The Washington Post by a European intelligence service. “It’s important to create a mechanism for finding the vulnerable points of their external and internal policies with the aim of developing practical steps to weaken Russia’s opponents.”

The document for the first time provides official confirmation and codification of what many in the Moscow elite say has become a hybrid war against the West. Russia is seeking to subvert Western support for Ukraine and disrupt the domestic politics of the United States and European countries, through propaganda campaigns supporting isolationist and extremist policies, according to Kremlin documents previously reported on by The Post. It is also seeking to refashion geopolitics, drawing closer to China, Iran and North Korea in an attempt to shift the current balance of power.

Using much tougher and blunter language than the public foreign policy document, the secret addendum, dated April 11, 2023, claims that the United States is leading a coalition of “unfriendly countries” aimed at weakening Russia because Moscow is “a threat to Western global hegemony.” The document says the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine will “to a great degree determine the outlines of the future world order,” a clear indication that Moscow sees the result of its invasion as inextricably bound with its ability — and that of other authoritarian nations — to impose its will globally.

The Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation, which was published March 31, 2023, and approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin, deploys bland diplomatic language to call for “the democratization of international relations,” “sovereign equality” and the strengthening of Russia’s position on the global stage. Though the Foreign Policy Concept also charges that the United States and “its satellites” have used the Ukraine conflict to escalate “a many-years-long anti-Russia policy,” it also states that “Russia does not consider itself an enemy of the West … and has no ill intentions toward it.”

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By Catherine Belton
Catherine Belton is an international investigative reporter for The Washington Post, reporting on Russia. She is the author of “Putin's People,” a New York Times Critics’ Book of 2020 and a book of the year for the Times, the Economist and the Financial Times. Belton has worked for Reuters and the Financial Times. Twitter https://twitter.com/CatherineBelton