Russia’s Turn to Asia: More or Less Room for Manoeuvre?

Abstract As the Ukrainian crisis unfolded and the West declared sanctions against Russia, the country’s political elite returned to the rhetoric typical to its foreign policy tradition about Asia as a counterbalance to Europe and the U.S. Contrary to the previous stages, this time recognition of Russia’s objective strategic and economic needs allowed for a genuine breakthrough in the relationships with the region that had increasingly become central to international politics and economics. However, Russia had first to deal with the long-standing problems of its “Eastern vector”, the primary of which continued to be the dependence of its “Asian politics” on China. This article attempts to evaluate the correspondence between the goals proclaimed by Moscow’s foreign policy makers in Asia and the actual results achieved throughout the research period of 2014 to 2016 inclusive, with particular focus on its fundamental objective to thus gain more room for manoeuvre on the global and regional levels of international politics.