Russia's diplomats were once a key part of President Putin's foreign policy strategy. But that has all changed.

In the years leading up to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, diplomats lost their authority, their role reduced to echoing the Kremlin's aggressive rhetoric.

BBC Russian asks former diplomats, as well as ex-Kremlin and White House insiders, how Russian diplomacy broke down.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    Ah yes, Russian diplomacy is so weak that pretty much all of the world outside the west is aligned with Russia

    • https://ecfr.eu/publication/united-west-divided-from-the-rest-global-public-opinion-one-year-into-russias-war-on-ukraine/
    • https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/02/27/the-global-south-refuses-pressure-to-side-with-the-west-on-russia/
    • https://usrussiaaccord.org/acura-viewpoint-krishen-mehta-the-ukraine-war-viewed-from-the-global-south/
    • https://archive.is/2023.02.23-211202/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/02/23/world/russia-ukraine-geopolitics.html
    • https://archive.ph/4kbWG
    • https://www.eiu.com/n/russias-pockets-of-support-are-growing-in-the-developing-world/
  • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    Russian diplomacy is actually pretty good with many successes, but to notice that you should look at something other than USA and EU.

  • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    It might be hard to imagine now, but Mr Putin himself told the BBC back in 2000 that "Russia is ready to co-operate with Nato... right up to joining the alliance".

    "I cannot imagine my country isolated from Europe," he added.

    Back then, early in his presidency, Mr Putin was eager to build ties with the West, a former senior Kremlin official told the BBC.

    Gotta wonder how Russia never ended up being able to NATO despite this.

    • OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      NATO laughed them out of the room, then proceeded to pretend they were still the USSR.

      https://www.cato.org/commentary/why-didnt-russia-join-west-after-soviet-union-died-blame-bill-clinton

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO%E2%80%93Russia_relations

    • xill47@lemm.ee
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Declassified (by the US) documents mention that Putin wanted to join without waiting in queue with "insignificant countries" (in early 2000s, who would that be? Baltic countries?), and as late as 2012 there was a contract for usage Russian airport as transit hub to Afghanistan (https://m.gazeta.ru/politics/2012/06/29_a_4650373.shtml, was looking specifically for pro-Russian media as a source)

      • Dolores [love/loves]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Putin wanted to join without waiting in queue with "insignificant countries"

        this is the dumbest excuse ever trotted out in explanation for why Russia wasn't allowed to join. because the largest military and nuclear arsenal in europe should for some reason wait in a "line" in joining an allegedly defensive alliance, when they'd be the greatest possible contribution to common defense? why on earth would there be a "line" to enter an alliance in the first place? surely they had more than a single clerk doing nations' paperwork to join?

        • xill47@lemm.ee
          ·
          1 year ago

          Something about "you should apply" vs "you should invite us". Noone wants to bow to another and then tension raised over it. Seems pretty believable to me, especially with what was going on domestically

          IMO, the new council they have made in Rome in 2002 (NATO-Russia Council) and its predecessor (Permanent Joint Council, 1997) existence should have stopped the farce with "oh no, they are expanding", and a start of joint cooperation. Maybe not as NATO memebership, but as a new working alliance. Right after founding of NRC though, Russia decided that it wont proceed with NATO membership

          Quotes of Putin from Ukraine joint press conference, 2002 (source: http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/21598)

          Russia does not intend to join NATO. Russia, as you know, is engaged in a very constructive dialogue with NATO to create a new Russia-NATO structure “at twenty”, in which all twenty countries will be represented as nations, each having one vote, and all the issues will be solved without prior consultations, without any prior decisions on a number of issues being taken first within the bloc.

          And a curious snippet

          I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.

          Guess money and power do change people.

          • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            I personally can't think of anything that's happened with NATO since 2002, so you might have a point here

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I have secret intelligence that the actual reason Putin didn't join NATO is because he was angry that Romania joined first because he wanted to be the first country starting with R in NATO. NATO officials begged, pleaded with him to join the organization, but he's just such a petty man.

        • xill47@lemm.ee
          ·
          1 year ago

          I do not get your take. It is obvious that early 2000s Russia wanted special treatment. It is also obvious that it was not getting it, ever. If it did not take a stance of "special treatment country", Russia would most likely be a NATO member without "special" priveledges (I assume that most notable is selling war assets to allied countries). Still, the intent was to cooperate, as late as 2012. Internally, there was even a promise of Visa-free access to Schengen

          • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Of course Russia should get special treatment! They were America's greatest foe in the Cold War!

            The US not letting Russia into NATO might be their single greatest error. Ever.

  • Piye@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The British Bullshit Corporation is one to talk, they've been seething about India gaining Independence now for decades, and despite them literally going to the moon they still can't bring themselves to show any measure of respect

    Also lets just magically all forget all these NATO trash "diplomats" walking out of Lavrovs speech at the UN like 13 year olds having a tantrum instead of actually engaging in the one thing they were supposed to do, "diplomacy". The west is the entity that didn't even want to negotiate with Russia, NATO is the one who decided to egg Russia on until this happened, despite Ukraine not even being a NATO member.

    But yeah sure, whatever BBC, it's totally Russia's fault you acted like babies and backtracked on all your agreements

  • socsa@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    It's actually hilarious how millennials are refusing to shit themselves in fear over hollow threats of nuclear apocalypse like the boomers did for decades.

    Like, I'm going to die a slow death from microplastic poisoning. My kids will slowly cook to death as the earth warms. Instant death by fireball sounds pretty nice.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      idk, I think I prefer the constant fear, at least compared to the bloodthirsty calls for nuclear war to begin over Ukraine because ackstually Russia's nukes don't work anymore, and also nuclear war isn't really that bad anyway

        • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I've seen this on reddit and other hellholes from time to time

          most people tend to have a degree of separation from it, like early on in the war when people were calling for a no-fly zone over Ukraine (which would have necessarily meant NATO strikes into Ukraine or Russian territory, which would put us at the closest humanity has ever been to a nuclear exchange); about mid-way through the war when some countries were trying to form a "coalition of the willing" (article is more recent than when I was thinking though) to enter Ukraine that wasn't technically NATO forces but like, my god, you're really cutting it fucking close there; and some people nowadays are musing if F-16s could be used from NATO territory

          there's also been some vague threats from time to time over Kaliningrad but luckily that's never escalated to outright military rhetoric, at least not yet.

        • Piye@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          1 year ago

          NATO wants nuclear genocide to happen against minorities, they brag about genociding minorities all the time in fact

    • ArthurParkerhouse@lemm.ee
      ·
      1 year ago

      The young scions of our age find themselves in a curious juxtaposition to their forbearers, who once trembled at the thought of world-ending calamities unleashed by the fiery engines of the Autarch's weaponry. These newer souls scoff at such fears, deeming them hollow echoes of a past era, perhaps because they have been raised in the shadow of subtler, yet equally inexorable, dooms. To them, the threat of slow ruin wrought by the invisible maladies that pollute our waters and air, or the gradual inferno that the Sun's ever-increasing wrath promises to our world, hold more tangible dread. For these youths, the prospect of instantaneous annihilation in a blaze of cosmic fire seems almost a reprieve, a quick severance of life's Gordian knot, sparing them the prolonged suffering promised by the ills that plague our slowly deteriorating Urth.

    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
      ·
      1 year ago

      Your sentiment is not, in fact, new. It existed back then as well.

      millennials are refusing to shit themselves in fear

      Started good...

      Like, I’m going to die a slow death from microplastic poisoning. My kids will slowly cook to death as the earth warms. Instant death by fireball sounds pretty nice.

      ...And then you wrote this. I see contradiction.

      I'm really sorry to piss on your little eco-statement here, but climate change fears are relevant for decadent rich societies only. Most of the actual humanity is still more concerned with poverty, illiteracy, hunger, epidemics and genocide.

      But I agree that those threats are hollow now, because people who'd never actually fulfill them are voicing them. Mostly thieves from the Russian "elite".

      In 1984 the threat would be voiced by bureaucratic leaders of a block occupying large part of the globe which was more or less designed from the ground up for playing "Global Thermonuclear War", you can see than even in the way Soviet military in its every component was being developed starting from the 50s. Those leaders were not even that corrupt, usually (well, such famous Politburo members as Boris Yeltsin and Heydar Aliyev obviously were, but still), what they owned officially and unofficially is upper middle class level, in Western terms.

      So maybe boomers were not so cowardly, yes?

  • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Nah, Russian diplomacy is at their highest once they realize they could write off the West as a loss instead of sucking up to them, who sees the Russians as Asiatic orcs anyways. Russia is somehow able to be friends with both India and China, they have made huge diplomatic (and military) strides in Africa, and they're not doing too shabby in SEA or WANA either. That's almost two continents right there.