Russia’s Soft Power in Decline since 2007, Moscow is Using ‘Sharp Power’ Instead, Grantseva Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 13 – The current dismantling of American government soft power institutions has increased attention to what has been happening with their counterparts in Russia. According to Vera Grantseva, Russia’s soft power has been in decline since at least 2007 and instead has been ramping up what she calls its “sharp power” instead.
    The Russian specialist on public diplomacy at the Paris Institute of Political Studies says that unlike soft power which seeks to gain support for its country of origin by offering a positive message, sharp power seeks to win its positions by attacking others and sowing discord in their ranks (meduza.io/episodes/2025/02/10/kak-rossiya-ispolzuet-svoyu-myagkuyu-silu-i-pravda-li-chto-vliyanie-kremlya-v-mire-vyroslo-dazhe-nesmotrya-na-voynu-v-ukraine).
    Grantseva argues that Russia made this shift as it became more authoritarian and the state exerted ever greater control over the traditional tools of soft power – educational exchanges, recruitment of students, and the like. And as that has happened, “its soft power had taken on more ‘destructive’ and ‘negative’ aims.”
    Now, in contrast to the past, Russian efforts in this sector seek “to ‘destabilize and undermine’ instead of fostering cooperation and finding common ground.” And “today, Russain influence looks for ‘weak points’ in its adversaries.”
    As that happened, Moscow devoted less attention to “disseminating Russian perspectives in a world dominated by Western and especially American thinking” and shifted “from defense to offense,” especially in such projects as Russia Today, “which shed its earlier goals of building cultural and educational ties and was effectively ‘repurposed as a tool of aggression.’”