The Russian Federation’s Aggression against Ukraine – an attack against the international law-based security system

Abstract

In the realistic paradigm within the discipline of international relations in which states act based on a lucid and rational analysis of their own interests, the actions of the Russian Federation at the international level can be given justifications located in a gray area characterized by imprecision par excellence, between the necessity of ensuring its own security and the desire to dominate the space adjacent to its imperial center. In this context, the boundary between the prevalence of the conceptions specific to the natural law that determine the specified actions and the manifest justification of real interests based on these conceptions blurs in turn. What persists is Russia’s refusal to accept a rulesbased international order, seen as a conceptual framework of America in particular and Western origin in general. In this context, Russia takes, at least on a superficial level, the desideratum of such an international order, but interprets it through its own filter, based in particular on natural law.