6 May 2024

“Russia cannot afford to lose, so we need a kind of a victory”: Sergey Karaganov on what Putin wants

The Kremlin adviser explains how Russia views the war in Ukraine and the fate of liberalism.

By Bruno Maçães

A former presidential adviser to both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, Sergey Karaganov is honorary chair of the Moscow think tank the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy. He is associated with a number of key ideas in Russian foreign policy, from the so-called Karaganov doctrine on the rights of ethnic Russians living abroad to the principle of “constructive destruction”, also known as the “Putin doctrine”. Karaganov is close to both Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and he formulated many of the ideas that led to the war in Ukraine – though he has also expressed disagreement with the idea of a long-term occupation of the country.

In 2021, Russia’s foreign policy seems to have entered a new stage. Let us call it the “constructive destruction” of the previous model of relations with the West. Elements of this policy kept piling up for some fifteen years, approximately since Vladimir Putin’s well-known speech in Munich in 2007. But residual attempts to fit into the Western system with a defensive approach still prevailed in politics and rhetoric.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2024/05/russia-cannot-afford-lose-need-victory-sergey-karaganov-what-putin-wants