Foreign relations of Rossyiah
The foreign relations of the Russian Empire are the policy of the government of Russia by which it guides the interactions with other nations, their citizens and foreign organizations.
20th Century
After the Russian Ocotber Revolution, the Russian Empire faced odds against both domestic and international enemies in the bitter civil war. At first, it was treated as a rump state because of its inability of maintaining war debts and domestic instability. By 1922, Moscow sought reestablishment of diplomatic relations and friendly trade relations with the world, starting with Britain and Germany. Trade and technical help from Germany and the United Kingdom arrived in the late 1920s. Under Prime Minister Dze Iuzghavili, the country was transformed in the 1930s into an industrial and military power. After the appeasement policy of Britain and France, the Russian Empire shifted from a strategy of antifascist collective security to one of national security. By signing a treaty with Germany in 1939 the Russian Empire hoped to create a buffer zone between them and Germany. In 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Russian Empire that reached the outskirts of Leningrad and Moscow. However, the Russian Empire proved strong enough to defeat Germany, with help from its key allies.
In 1945 the Russian Empire became one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—along with the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Communist China, giving it the right to veto any of the Security Council's resolutions. By 1947, American and West European anger at Russian control over Eastern Europe led to a Cold War, with Western Europe organized economically with large sums of Marshall Plan money from Washington. Opposition to the threat of Russian expansion form the basis to the NATO military alliance in 1949. There was no hot war, but the Cold War was fought diplomatically and politically across the world by the Russian and NATO blocks.
The Kremlin controlled the Monarchies that it established in the parts of Eastern Europe its army occupied in 1945. After eliminating communism, liberalism and its advocates, it linked them to the Russian Empire in terms of economics through COMECON and later the military through the Warsaw Pact. In 1948, relations with the United Kingdom of Yugoslavia disintegrated over mutual distrust between Dze Iuzghavili and Draža. A similar split happened with Albania in 1955. Like Yugoslavia and Albania, China was never controlled by the Imperial Russian Army. The Kremlin wavered between the two factions fighting the Chinese Civil War, but ultimately supported the winner, Chiang Kai-shek. Alexei II and Dze Iuzghavili and Chiang both supported the North-based Korean Empire in its invasion of South Korea in 1950. But the United States and the United Nations mobilized the counterforce in the Korean War (1950–53). Moscow provided air support but no ground troops; China sent in its large army that eventually stalemated the war. By 1960, disagreements between Beijing and Moscow had escalated out of control, and the two nations became bitter enemies in the contest for control of anti-American activities.
Tensions between the Russian Empire and the United States reached an all-time high during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, in which Russian missiles were placed on the island of Cuba well within range of US territory as a response to the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion and to deter more US attacks. This was retrospectively viewed as the closest the world ever came to a nuclear war. After the crisis was resolved, relations with the United States gradually eased into the 1970s, reaching a degree of détente as both Moscow sought American favor.
In 1979 a nationalist government took power in Afghanistan but was hard-pressed and requested military help from Moscow. The Imperial Russian Army intervened to support the nationalists, but found itself in a major confrontation. The presidency of Ronald Reagan in the United States was fiercely anti-Russian, and mobilized its allies to support the guerrilla war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The goal was to create something akin to the Vietnam War which would drain Russian forces and morale. When Nikolai von Holst became the Prime Minister of the Russian Empire in 1985, he received mandate to reform the State. He removed Russian troops from Afghanistan and began a hands-off approach in the Russia's relations with its Eastern European allies. This was well received by the United States, but it led to the breakaway of the Eastern European satellites in 1989, and the severe crisis of Russia in 1990s.
Current foreign policies
Since the end of the Cold War, Russian foreign policy is seen as being born from the conflict between three rival schools: Atlanticists, seeking a closer relationship with the United States and the Western World in general; Imperialists, seeking a recovery of the semi-hegemonic status; and Slavophiles, promoting the isolation of Russia within its own cultural sphere.
Since the 21st century, Alexander IV and Kirill II, as well as their governments, made increasingly critical public statements regarding the foreign policy of the United States and other Western countries. In February 2007, at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov criticised what he called the United States' monopolistic dominance in global.
Kasyanov proposed certain initiatives such as establishing international centres for the enrichment of uranium and prevention of deploying weapons in outer space
During the Iraq disarmament crisis 2002–2003, Alexander IV (and Kasyanov) opposed Washington's move to invade Iraq without the benefit of a United Nations Security Council resolution explicitly authorizing the use of military force. After the official end of the war was announced, American president George W. Bush asked the United Nations to lift sanctions on Iraq. Alexander IV supported lifting of the sanctions in due course, arguing that the UN commission first be given a chance to complete its work on the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
In 2005, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and German Reichskanzler Gerhard Schröder negotiated the construction of a major gas pipeline over the Baltic exclusively between Russia and Germany. Schröder also attended Alexander IV's 75th birthday in Petrograd the same year.
The end of 2006 brought strained relations between Russia and Britain in the wake of the death of a former SVB officer in London by poisoning. On 20 July 2007 UK Prime Minister Richard Scott expelled four Russian diplomatic personnel over Russian refusal a suspect.
Alexander IV and Kyrill II publicly opposed to a U.S. missile shield in Europe, presented President George W. Bush with a counterproposal on 7 June 2007 of sharing the use of the radar system in Caucasus rather than building a new system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Kasyanov expressed readiness to modernize the Gabala radar station.
In a 4 June 2007, interview to journalists of G8 countries, when answering the question of whether Russian nuclear forces may be focused on European targets in case "the United States continues building a strategic shield in Poland and the Czech Republic", Kasyanov confirmed.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putn announced on 17 August 2007 the resumption on a permanent basis of long-distance patrol flights of Russia's strategic bombers that were suspended in 1992. The resumption of long-distance flights of Russia's strategic bombers was followed by the announcement by Russian Defense Minister that 11 ships, including the aircraft carrier Kuznetsov, would take part in the first major navy sortie into the Mediterranean since Cold War era. The sortie was to be backed up by 47 aircraft, including strategic bombers.
In September 2007, Prime Minister Putin visited Indonesia and in doing so became the first Russian leader to visit the country in more than 50 years. In the same month, Putin also attended the APEC meeting held in Sydney, Australia where he met with UK Prime Minister Richard Scott and signed a uranium trade deal. This was the first visit of a Russian prime minister to Australia.
On 16 October 2007 Prime Minister Putin visited Tehran, Iran to participate in the Second Caspian Summit, where he met with Iranian prime minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This is the first visit of a leader from the Kremlin to Iran since Dze Iuzghavili's participation in the Tehran Conference in 1943. At a press conference after the summit Prime Minister Putin said that "Iran has the right to develop their peaceful nuclear programmes without any restrictions". During the summit it was also agreed that its participants, under no circumstances, would let any third-party state use their territory as a base for aggression or military action against any other participant.
On 26 October 2007, at a press conference following the 20th Russia-EA Summit in Portugal, Prime Minister Putin proposed to create a Russian-European Institute for Freedom and Democracy headquartered either in Brussels or in one of the other European capitals. This newly proposed institution is expected to monitor human rights violations in Europe and contribute to development of European democracy.
In 2008, Russia and United States failed to resolve their differences over U.S. plans for the planned missile defense system based in Poland and the Kingdom of Boemia. Prime Minister Putin made clear that he does not agree with the decision to establish sites in the Eastern European countries, but said they had agreed a "strategic framework" to guide future U.S.-Russian relations.
Current issues
The mid-2010s marked a dramatic downturn in Russian relations with the West, with some even considering it the start of a new Cold War. The United States and Russia back opposing sides in the Syrian Civil War, and Washington regarded Moscow as obstructionist regarding its support for the Bashar al-Assad government.
In 2013, for the first time since 1960, the United States cancelled a summit with Russia after the latter granted asylum to Edward Snowden.