Moscow's foreign policy has been getting increasingly mysterious for several months. Much about Putin's policies harks back to czarist expansionism and Soviet ambition, says Christian F. Trippe, reports GHN based on DW.
The Russian eagle has two heads: one looks to the left, the other to the right. It's an age-old motif that many countries share, but only the Russian double-headed eagle mirrors the crisis diplomacy of its country. The Russian eagle looks West and East - it represents a country between two geopolitical poles.
On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke to the lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma, about the international politics, Russia's positions, and the Ukraine crisis. He achieved the diplomatic feat of looking both East and West - he praised relations between Moscow and Beijing, while at the same time describing relations with the European Union as "without alternative." But Lavrov knows only too well how severely these relations have been tested in the past few months. Lavrov alleged that the West was to blame for the crisis in Ukraine.
Once again, Russia's leadership is washing its hands of any sin and turning the causal chain round. President Vladimir Putin recently said the "freedom fighters" of Donbass would "find" their tanks and artillery guns. This mixture of outright lies and an attitude of innocence and paranoia is currently driving Russia's negotiating partners mad.
The constant denial of the obvious - the massive support of the separatists in eastern Ukraine by the Russian military - recalls the political style of the Soviet Union. Moscow's current abrasive style can be explained by a glance into the past - it's like a mixture of czarist expansionism and Soviet ambition.