JOURNALS

ABSTRACT

The Soviet Union as a super power was committed to the promotion of communism throughout the world. Today, Russia as a continuation of the Soviet Union is not a communist country but is striving to win back its global status, backed up with adequate military capabilities. In the post Cold War era, Russia resolved never to follow the leadership of the West, particularly the United States, but in the stead would position itself as a leading sovereign power in the international community, that cherishes multilateralism as the pathway to world peace. Convinced that the break-up of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, Russia is determined to achieve the global super-power status. To ascertain whether the Russia Federation has achieved its self-assigned foreign policy objective the qualitative research method is used in this study. This method helped to examine and analyze the extant literature on international politics, particularly the ones that affect the subject of study. The paper argues that Russia’s foreign policy like that of many other nations is not based on altruism; the Russia’s foreign policy post 1991 had been set to achieve a rationally packaged national interests meant to secure the security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia. The achievement of these interests meant that Russia must never sheepishly follow the dictates of its geographically placed Western neighbours, in what some analysts have dunned a uni-polar international system, propagated by the United States.