This study analyzes how the Kremlin’s official foreign policy discourse has changed since the return of Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency in 2012. Existing research argues that Putin’s third term marked a turn to Russian traditional/conservative/civilizational values and that his foreign policy has changed from pragmatism to antagonism to the West. This image of Russia’s “civilizational turn” has been intensified by its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, most of the existing analyses use selective excerpts from Putin’s flashy statements and there has been few comprehensive and quantitative analyses on the Kremlin’s narratives about Russia’s role in the international society and the relations with Ukraine and the United States. We have not known what kind of changes the “civilizational turn” has caused in Russia’s foreign policy and how these changes have been represented in the Kremlin’s official statements. The author therefore analyzes official foreign policy documents and Putin’s speeches and interviews under his third and fourth terms. This study will make three contributions to the literature. First, it will provide comprehensive analysis of Russia’s official foreign policy discourse up to the time Russia started invading Ukraine, offering empirical evidence for the nature and extent of Russia’s purported civilizational turn. Second, by tracing the evolution of the Kremlin’s narratives since 2012, it will illuminate how Russia’s discourse shifted to justify its increasingly aggressive policy toward Ukraine, culminating in the full-scale invasion. Third, it contributes to our understanding of Russia’s contemporary foreign policy by demonstrating how the Kremlin has strategically used different narratives for domestic and international audiences to advance its geopolitical objectives while maintaining domestic support.
