Contenu du sommaire : Le Kremlin et les Occidentaux depuis la fin de la guerre froide

Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine, secessionist conflicts, and antagonism with the West: since Vladimir Putin came to power, war and confrontation have been ever-present in Russia. However, Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February came as a surprise to most observers. How can this be explained? The purpose of this article is to try to answer this question and to shed light on the causes of Russian aggression by the existence of a link between the disastrous decision of 24 February, the incessant conflicts since 2000, the reception of these conflicts in the Western countries, and the way Moscow reacted.

This article looks back at the concept of the “Russian world”, which is now a central element of Putin's ideology. First coined in 1997-1998, the “Russian world” – a somewhat vague term at the time – was initially confined to the cultural and linguistic sphere. It was gradually transformed, and in 2007, strengthened by the creation of a structure jointly financed by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Science and Education, it became the instrument of a diplomacy of influence. But from 2014, and even more so from February 2022, it was transformed into an operational tool in the service of Vladimir Putin's warmongering imperialism, which it still is today.

On 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin justified the invasion of Ukraine by invoking the need to “denazify” the country. In so doing, he used a term that Stalin himself discarded, since the elites of the Soviet Union – whose memory is so highly valued by the current President – always spoke of fighting fascism. This seemingly insignificant difference in language serves as the starting point for research in conceptual history tracing the rhetorical power and genesis of the notions brandished in this anti-Western crusade. This investigation provides a different perspective on the war aims invoked by Russia and highlights the importance of a factor not fully explored so far: the need to call upon the world as bear witness in order to find supporters – even in the West!

Relations between Russia and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have been marked from the outset by the ambivalent attitude of the Russian authorities. On the one hand, from 1998 to 2000, the Russian authorities endeavored to bring Russian legislation into line with European standards on fundamental rights. On the other hand, Russia was reluctant, to say the least, to comply with ECHR rulings in sensitive areas such as the war in Chechnya. Gradually, especially from the early 2010s, this ambivalence gave way to growing hostility. For example, the Russian Constitutional Court has opposed the ECHR in several cases and has obtained the power to block the execution of its judgments. This rejection of the Strasbourg Court's authority, mainly due to the hardening of the Russian regime, paved the way for the divorce that took place in 2022, after Russia's exclusion from the Council of Europe.

This article analyses the evolution of Russo-Western relations based on texts discussed in three security organizations: the United Nations (UN), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). It demonstrates that these relations have deteriorated, and that this deterioration did not occur at the same time, in the same manner, and with the same impact on these different institutions.

Europeans were cautious about Ukraine's independence in 1991 and 1992, and the European Commission and EU Member States set conditions for concluding a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement in June 1994 and for granting financial aid, hoping in this way to speed up the country's political and economic reforms. It was not until 1998 and the prospect of EU enlargement to the east that Euro-Ukrainian relations improved, but they remained weakened by Ukraine's political difficulties.

Combining three levels of observation – the evolution of Russia's nuclear strategy, the negotiations between Russia and the United States of America on arms control and disarmament, and the denuclearization of Ukraine – this article offers a first historical periodization concerning the nuclear trajectories of Ukraine and Russia since the end of the Cold War. The objective is to provide some elements of interpretation and perspective regarding the role played by the nuclear factor in the wars which broke out between Russia and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.

No adjective is too many to describe the enormity of this aggression, which undermines the cardinal principles of the contemporary international legal order rooted in the United Nations Charter. This contribution analyses the fundamental principles governing Russian aggression against Ukraine and the rights and obligations applicable to the aggressor, the aggressed and the international community. Therefore, we deal only with one of the two branches of the old law of war, namely the regime governing the use of force ( ius contra bellum), thus excluding the rules governing the use of force during an armed conflict, whether international or non-international, the ius in bello or law of armed conflicts. This contribution dwells also on the legal consequences, under the Law of State responsibility, between the Russian Federation and Ukraine on the one hand, and between the Russian Federation and third States on the other. In this context, we will delve into the issue of neutral states, particularly Switzerland. Finally, this contribution will peruse the role of the UN, of the International Court of Justice – its principal judicial body – and of the Security Council and the General Assembly, which have been entrusted by the Charter with the duty to maintain and restore international peace and security.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the multipolar order has been increasingly asserted together by China and Russia. This multipolar order is an expression that became established after the end of the Cold War, but it was Kissinger who first formulated it in 1969. Since 2009, after the joint declaration presented to the UN in 1997 by China and Russia, the multipolar world has become a major demand of the South vis-à-vis the North, especially the United States. Since the early 2000s, it has been refined by Alexandre Douguine and Zhao Tingyang, to the point where it presents a strangely common vision. The multipolar order is now being built by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, step by step, with their allies of the BRICS and the SCO.