In 1992, Russia’s new leadership, led by Boris Yeltsin, explicitly committed to making Russia part of the Western hegemonic system. By the following year, and for the decade after, Russia under President Yeltsin and, from 2000, under Vladimir Putin increasingly identified itself in opposition to U.S. hegemony, but remained agreeable to participation in some kind of multipolar collective hegemony led by the West. Since 2003, however, a “new” Russia has emerged, interested neither in participating in Western hegemony nor in actively balancing against or undermining it. Instead, the new Russia, committed to being authentically Russian and not a kind of Western or Eurasian hybrid, has chosen the exit option, a strategy of selective disengagement from the West and non-participation in its hegemonic order. […]
