Russian Political Revisionism: History, Strategy, Geopolitical Consequences
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31861/mhpi2026.53.52-59Keywords:
international order, political revisionism, foreign policy concept, Russian-Ukrainian war, decline, empireAbstract
The purpose of the article is to analyze the reasons for the revisionist policy of the Russian Federation, its conceptual justification and attempts at practical implementation. To achieve the goal of the study, general scientific (analysis, synthesis, generalization) and special-historical (historical-genetic, historical-typological, historical-systemic) methods were used. It is proven that the Russian foreign policy strategy is based on the revisionist interpretation of the international order as a system of balance of forces and spheres of influence, which contradicts the principles of sovereign equality of states and international law. The beginning of the implementation of the strategy is determined by the restoration of political control over post-Soviet countries. The practical implementation of this course has long been carried out using the tools of hybrid wars. From the armed attack on Georgia (2008), Russia has moved on to the power policy familiar to the empires of the past. The most striking manifestation of Russian revisionism was the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation in 2022. The Russian-Ukrainian war has become a kind of marker for the world community on its ability to resist the revision of the foundations of the international order by revisionist states like the Russian Federation. An international coalition of 50 states of the world is called upon to promote the armed defense of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. The policy of international sanctions is capable of reducing the economic capacity of the Russian Federation to wage a war of aggression in Ukraine. The authors of the article consider the formation of key prerequisites for the final decline of the Russian Federation, such as support for the national liberation movement of the enslaved peoples of the empire and the democratization of the political system, to be an effective means of deterring Russian revisionism.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Olexandr Alieksieichenko (Author)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Accepted 2026-06-24
Published 2026-06-30