Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 07/2008

Putin-3

Leon Aron

January 2008

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

Abstract

In the past nine years, Russian foreign policy has been examined several times in these pages.[1] At no other time, however, has its direction been as troubling as it is today. To understand the causes of this disturbing evolution and to gauge its future course, the changes have to be examined in the context of the regime's ideological and political transformation since 2000, when Vladimir Putin was elected president.