Regional obstacles to regaining power in the Russian Federation during Putin's second term, from 2014 to 2019

The Russian Federation has been increasingly affected by growing regional and international developments since Putin's second term. Putin sought to regain power by adopting the policy of pragmatism and the strategy of the normative great modern power; However, the path to regaining power since 2014 has been accompanied by regional obstacles, which have manifested themselves in two general categories: the crisis in Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula, and the leverage of Russian gas exports to Europe. In this study, we sought to understand the regional obstacles to regaining power in the Russian Federation during Putin's second term from 2014 to 2019, from the perspective of defensive realism theory. The research method was descriptive and library studies. The study found that Russia was facing obstacles in regaining its power, such as the Ukraine crisis, NATO's expansion to the east, the deployment of a missile defense shield, leverage to export gas to Europe, and the issue of EU energy security.