President Vladimir Putin took the stage at the Valdai Discussion Forum on November 7 in Sochi and laid out his idea on what the new world order should look like.

The speech lasted over three hours, where he decried what he termed the West's "neocolonial policies" and the erosion of "traditional values."

The annual event addresses a select group of journalists, academics and in better days, leading international journalists covering Russia. It is a pseudo-intellectual summit, part policy and part platform for the Kremlin.

Putin depicted Russia as the linchpin of a "multipolar world," asserting that “Russia’s existence” secures “diversity, variety, and complexity” on a global scale, which he argued are essential to “successful development.”

Putin’s “new world order doctrine” can be broken into six points:

• Openness between states;
• The absence of “universal dogmas”;
• The necessity of considering each country’s voice in making “global decisions”;
• The rejection of certain international blocs (this apparently doesn’t apply to the BRICS+ organisation, but is a jab at Western-led bodies like the G7 and IMF);
• Closing the developmental gap between countries; and
• Pursuing equality for all peoples.

Over the years Putin has given a number of key addresses where he has outlined changes in the Kremlin’s basic policies.

Following the forum, the Kremlin issued guidelines to state-aligned media and government-approved analysts, which were obtained by Meduza, a Russian news website. Notably, they omit any mention of Putin’s remarks where he admitted that he had congratulated US President-elect Donald Trump on his victory on November 5 or the potential for peace talks with Ukraine. Instead, the guidelines position Putin’s speech as “the event of the year in the realm of ideas and meaning,” casting him as “a major global leader” behind a “doctrine of a new world order.”

Highlights from the speech

• Theme: Discussing “Lasting Peace” with a focus on common security and equal development opportunities for the 21st century.
• Historical Context: Putin reflected on major global revolutions and asserted that the world is in a new era of fundamental changes.
• New World Order: Observes the emergence of a new, unpredictable global structure as old systems fade, with rising regional powers and nations asserting independence.
• Global Challenges: Lists issues like technological change, economic crises, social division, and regional conflicts.
• Western Critique: Putin criticised Western liberalism as intolerant and self-righteous, claiming it undermines democracy, promotes division, and hinders a multipolar world.
• Multipolar World: Advocates for a world system with multiple power centres, urging mutual respect for cultures and the rejection of coercive practices.
• Russia’s Position: Asserts Russia does not view the West as an enemy but will defend its values and interests.
• Economic and Security Systems: Calls for new economic frameworks and cooperative security systems across Eurasia, with emphasis on non-Western alliances like BRICS and regional partnerships.
• Equality and Justice: Highlights the need for equitable global development, criticising the economic and social divides between the “Global North” and “Global South.”
• Climate and Environment: Discusses the importance of a collective approach to climate challenges and criticises the use of green policies as neo-colonial tools.
• Russia-China Partnership: Putin lauds Russia's strategic relationship with China as an example of mutual respect and beneficial cooperation.
• Opposition to Western Dominance: Claims the US and allies are trying to impose a unipolar world order, which Russia and like-minded nations resist.
• BRICS and Economic Reform: Emphasises BRICS’s role in creating alternatives to the US dollar-dominated financial system and advocates for the use of national currencies in trade.

Foreign Policy concept

The Valdai speech follows on from a revision to Russia’s basic foreign policy concept, released in March 2023. That document represented a radical departure from the previous version, dropping the talk of “partnership” with the West and striking an entirely more aggressive tone.

It also stressed Russia’s desire for an end to the so-called uni-polar world that is dominated by the US hegemony and shift to a multipolar world, where all countries have equal importance and their sovereign decisions are respected. In the case of conflict or disputes, Putin has long advocated that international organisations like the UN are the appropriate venue to resolve this differences through arbitration and consultations.

The Valdai speech is a continuation of this focus on a multipolar world, which Putin has largely been successful in achieving. While the purpose of the war in Ukraine was nominally to prevent Ukraine from ever joining Nato, the broader goal was to end the US dominance of geopolitics. The reaction by the Global South to the extreme sanctions imposed on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine has been flock to the new non-aligned organisations that have been established and developed by Russia, China and India in particular such as the BRICS+ and the expanded G20. While these are works in progress, they have expanded in size and importance in just the last two years.

New rules of the game

Prior to the war another key speech was delivered by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, but certainly authored by Putin – his “new rules of the game” speech delivered in February 2021 in the midst of a visit to Moscow by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell. Lavrov also warned the same month that Russia would break off diplomatic relations with the EU if his comments were ignored, and indeed did break off diplomatic relations with Nato later the same year.

In that speech, Lavrov lectured the West, saying Russia would no longer tolerate the West’s double take on Russia, doing business and buying raw materials on one hand and sanctioning Russia for its digressions with the other. This speech was the precursor to the war in Ukraine and a radical departure from the previous “suck it up in silence” stance the Kremlin had taken previously. Many of the complaints Lavrov made in that speech are echoed in Putin’s Valdai speech last week.

History essay

Probably most controversially, in July 2021 in the run-up to the war in Ukraine, Putin wrote a history essay entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” The article was posted on the Kremlin's official website and later translated into multiple languages, drawing considerable international comment.

The essay has been interpreted to mean that Putin doesn’t believe Ukraine is a separate country, but part of Russia, as has been taken as his raison d'etre for the invasion and his desire to conquer the country. A more forgiving interpretation is that Putin was framing his argument around the idea of a shared heritage and destiny in the context of his idea of the “tragedy of the collapse of the Soviet Union” and how that trapped ethnic Russians in new countries.

Putin argued that Russians and Ukrainians (along with Belarusians) share a common historical and cultural origin, dating back to the medieval state of Kievan Rus. He suggested that these ties mean that Russians and Ukrainians are "one people."

Putin also blamed the Western powers, especially the US and Nato, for exploiting Ukraine and encouraged anti-Russian sentiment, particularly since the 2014 annexation of Crimea. He specifically rejected Ukraine’s sovereignty over its western regions, including the Donbas. Putin also criticised Ukrainian authorities for allegedly failing to protect the rights of Russian-speaking populations in those regions – a recurring theme in his speeches. 

While he did not explicitly call for the annexation of Ukraine in his essay, Putin suggested that the "natural" relationship between Russia and Ukraine should be one of close unity. Following the invasion of Ukraine this essay has been constantly cited to explain Putin’s motivations for invading Ukraine and dismiss the idea that preventing Nato enlargement was the key issue for the Kremlin.

 

MSC speech

The most significant speech Putin gave in his first half of his 23 in power was an address to the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, where he complained about the broken verbal promises made to Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990 not to expand Nato “one inch” to the east and warned that Russia would “push back” if Nato expansion continued. Nato began expanding eastwards in 1999, when Poland, Hungary and Czechia joined, eventually adding eight new members. Most recently Finland and Sweden have also joined and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been insisting that Ukraine be fast-tracked to join in his recent victory plan.

Putin’s MSC speech is widely taken as the starting point of the Kremlin’s dissatisfaction with the Western security strategy that led directly to the war in Ukraine. The tail end to this particular bookstop was the eight-point list of demands issued by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in December 2021, demanding “iron-clad legal guarantees” that Ukraine would never join Nato.

Again many of the points Putin brought up in the MSC speech are also present in his Valdai speech.

Soviet Union tragedy

In another widely quoted and also widely misrepresented speech, Putin famously called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century" in his annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly on April 25, 2005 in Moscow.

In this address, Putin highlighted the social, economic and geopolitical impact of the Soviet Union's dissolution, and has been widely taken as evidence that he would like to re-establish the Soviet Union. However, the quote is shorn of its context, as the comment was made specifically referring to the fate of ethnic Russians that suddenly found themselves living in new countries, many of which have suffered from discrimination and difficulties as a result.

The full quote, rarely cited, is: “"The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20^th century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory. The epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself."

This sentiment is important, as it has fuelled Putin’s calls for Ukraine to repeal its anti-Russian language laws and also bred tension with countries like the Baltic States that have also introduced local language requirements on would be citizens; often ethnic Russians in these countries have never mastered languages like Estonian and continue to live in Russian-only speaking communities.

The Russian constitution requires the Kremlin to “protect” ethnic Russians living in other countries, especially if they have a Russian passport. The Kremlin has used passports as both a justification and a tool of annexation. About half of the population of the Crimea held dual nationality prior to its annexation in 2014 and home to a dense concentration of ethnic Russians inside Ukraine. Likewise, Russia dished out passports to the populations of Abkhazia and Ossetia in what was Georgia before recognising their “independence” in 2008 in a de facto annexation. Most recently the Kremlin has withheld state jobs such as teachers and doctors to residents of the Donbas unless they have applied for a Russian passport.

Gorby’s mistake

In a little remembered speech very early in his career as president, Putin said that Gorbachev's "biggest mistake" while head of the USSR was to initiate his perestroika political reforms before securing the economic stability of the Soviet Union, which led to the collapse of the economy and his overthrow. That ushered in nearly a decade of chaos under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s – a period most Russians still remember with horror. The bedrock of Putin’s domestic popularity is that he brought stability and economic revival in his first decade in office, something which many middle-aged Russians remain extremely grateful for.

Putin has repeated this comment about Gorbachev’s mistake many times over the years, most prominently repeating it in a December 2011 interview with Russian television channels, where he again lambasted Gorbachev's approach.

For his part, Putin began his first term in office by hiring academic German Gref and tasked him with transforming the economy with his so-called “Gref Plan”. A Kremlin outsider with no powerbase of his own, Gref began to implement sweeping reforms, facing much opposition of the establishment, but was able to proceed thanks to Putin’s personal backing.

Over the years this effort has been refined and expanded, culminating in first the May Degrees in 2012 just after Putin took office for the third time. The decrees outlined a series of ambitious social, economic and political goals for Russia, aiming to improve the quality of life, strengthen national security and stimulate economic growth, including:

• Raising wages for public sector workers
• Improving healthcare, education and housing
• Modernising the military
• Supporting science, technology and innovation
• Boosting Russia’s economic competitiveness

More recently these ideas were revised again and after the post-2008 crisis have reemerged as the National Projects, which have the same goals, and have been revised and expanded several times to the current National Projects 2.1.