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The purpose of this study is to present the neo-imperialist character of the Russian Foreign Policy and to identify Russia´s foreign policy levers towards post-Soviet countries since the collapse of the bipolar world order. The author attempts to find the reasons of it and to explore the issues that will be central to those relations in the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The foreign policy was examined in the Kremlin´s relations toward its Near Abroad in last twenty years. The work is aimed at the analysis of the following questions: How does Russia perceive the post-Soviet countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union? What is the place of the former Soviet republics in the Russian debate on foreign policy and what are the objectives of Russian foreign policy in relation to those countries?

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Elnur Ismayilov is a Ph.D Researcher in International Politics at the Graduate School of Politics at Westphalian Wilhelms-University Muenster, Germany. He studied International Relations and International Law at BSU in Azerbaijan and later attended master program in Peace and Conflict Studies at Otto-von Guericke University Magdeburg in Germany.

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