Moscow’s Strategic Targets are Africa and the Arctic not Ukraine and the Baltic, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 28 –Moscow’s long-term strategic goals are revanchist rather than defensive, seek for Russia a larger place in the world than it was allotted at the end of the Cold War, and have as their most important targets not Ukraine and the Baltic countries but the Arctic and Africa, Vladimir Pastukhov says.  

            Moreover, the London-based Russian analyst says, the Kremlin is “confident that the West and the US in particular are on the verge of a severe crisis and possibly a civil war and that Russia’s nuclear missile shield and its authoritarian system gives Russia significant competitive advantages” in its pursuit of these larger goals (t.me/v_pastukhov/1135).

            Unfortunately, the current consensus among Western experts on Russia is at odds with all of these underlying realities, Pastukhov says; and as a result, many of them are misjudging both what Putin is doing now and why and also why “no temporary truce in Ukraine, if it happens, will change the overall offensive vector of Russian foreign policy.

            According to the Russian analyst, Moscow is convinced that it was “deprived” of its proper place in “the post-modern redistribution of zones of influence” and has set as its task the pursuit of “a more equitable redistribution” of those zones. Ukraine and Russia’s other neighbors are only a small part of this, despite the attention they are now getting in Moscow and the West.

            Instead, Pastukhov argues, Moscow is now focusing and will continue to focus on Africa and the Arctic, two regions where power relations remain in flux and where the presence of enormous natural resources will give those who control them a disproportionate influence on political arrangements throughout the rest of the 21^st century.