The Russian Federation's Regional Relations: Determinant Factors and Variables Involved

The collapse of Soviet Union provided a rather different situation for the union member states including the Russian Federation. Grappled with numerous challenges at its early stages, ambiguity and confusiondominated Russian foreign policy in all levels of bilateral, regional and ultra regional relations. The articlefocuses on the second level-the Russian regional relations- and attempts to identify the determinant factors for changes and developments. The article concludes that the changes which took place in Russian relations with various regions of the world were preoccupied by changes in foreign policy theory. In other words, the internal factors have had the most significant impact on the evolution of the Russian regional relations.