Fyodor Lukyanov Quotes

Anti-Western resentment and Russian patriotism appear particularly pronounced in Putin’s personality and life experiences, but a different Russian government not run by former KGB types would still be confronted with the challenge of weakness vis-à-vis the West and the desire for a special role in the world. Russia’s foreign policy orientation, in other words, is as much a condition as a choice. But if Russian elites could somehow redefine their sense of exceptionalism and put aside their unwinnable competition with the West, they could set their country on a less costly, more promising course.

I often heard Latvians compare Russia and America. Latvians find both countries and their leaders possessed of the same mysterious confidence.

It looks like the so-called "winners" of the Cold War are determined to have it all, and reshape the world into a place that could better serve their interests alone.

He rejects the New World Order established at the Cold War's end by the United States. Putin puts Russia first.

In international relations, in foreign policy, a great deal has to do with historical circumstances, a great deal has to do with the sense and perception of people.

Russia doesn’t like it when it is humiliated, when it is pressured.

The only things that matter in the world are Japan and China, Russia and Europe. Latin America doesn’t matter…. And … there’s nothing you can do about the Middle East.

The Cold War is over. The world has become much more complicated.

A new multipolar world has brought more uncertainty into international affairs.

Both Russia and the United States are struggling to define their proper roles in the world.

The problem is not so much that they are Communists as it is that they are Russians.

Russia is an important power upon which the U.S.A. imposed a Cold War.

Putin's Russia is our adversary and moral opposite. It is committed to the destruction of the post-war, rule-based world order built on American leadership and the primacy of our political and economic values.

I believe some of the tensions the U.S. has had with Russia and that the Europeans have had with Russia... China is taking advantage of some of those dealings.

We should force European governments to choose between Paris and Washington.

We must rid this nation of the United Nations, which provides the communist conspiracy with a headquarters here on our own shores, and which actually makes it impossible for the United States to form its own decisions about its conduct and policies in Europe and Asia.

Since the end of the Cold War, America has been grasping left and right for an identity.

Everybody pursues their national interests. The only one who gets blamed for it is the United States.

President Obama, like every other leader on Earth, is still going to be looking out for national and economic interests. States don't cease to be states overnight just because they get a great visionary as their new president.

Since the end of the Cold War, hegemonism has become increasingly unpopular.

Force-backed humanitarianism, which relies on rational influence over events in other countries, may have been a more feasible project in the bipolar era of the Cold War, with its relatively defined and stable web of alliances and proxies.

It is clearly unwise for us to continue the attempt to carry alone, or largely single-handed, the opposition to Soviet expansion. It is urgently necessary for us to restore something of the balance of power in Europe and Asia by strengthening local forces of independence and by getting them to assume part of our burden.

There will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, balances of power ...

Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all — in one way or another — obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster…

Is the balance of power a fixed and unalterable standard? Or is it not a standard perpetually varying, as civilization advances, and as new nations spring up, and take their place among established political communities?