Russia, BRICS and Cyber Power:

Abstract

When one thinks about powerful and influential traditional actors of the International system, Russia cannot be ruled out of this select group. Despite the oscillations by which the State had been through in the post-Cold War period, the international community witnessed, since the beginning of the 21st century, the recovery of its status quo as an influential power among both the developed countries and, mainly, the developing countries, and the BRICS is perhaps the greatest expression of this rise. As the dynamics of power within the system become more flexible on the threshold of the 21st century, moving from a traditional range of military resources to covering new demands linked to new technologies, especially the internet, Russia seeks to use them as a resource of power. Thus, this paper aims to understand how cyber resources takes part of the Russian strategy to rebuild its power in the International System and how significant these resources are to the new understanding of the State capacity of the Russian Federation. It's then believed that cyber resources act as a profitable power tool for Russia’s reentering the international arena. It is supported by the concept of “strategic deterrence” assumed in the country’s Military Doctrine (2014), which sustains military (conventional and nuclear) and non-military tools (political, economic, scientific measures). Keywords: Russia. Power. Cyber Resources.