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An important aspect of US policy towards the Russian Federation in the years following the implosion of the Soviet Union was the generally unstated effort to contain the new Russia and ensure that it could not successfully re-impose its influence across former Soviet space (see Cohen, 2014; Mearsheimer, 2014). In some respects, as the Eastern policy of the European Union evolved after 1991, it also included elements of what, from the perspective of Moscow, were seen as efforts to expand its influence over areas that Moscow viewed as the legitimate sphere of Russian influence. Initially Moscow facilitated this process by virtually ignoring what was then termed the 'near abroad' and focusing its foreign policy interests on gaining acceptance by the West and integration into the community of 'civilized nations'.
More than two decades later the situation has changed dramatically. Already by the middle of the 1990s, the dominant political elites in Moscow revived their interest in their new neighbours. The entrance onto the political scene of Vladimir Putin at the turn of the century resulted in a commitment to reassert Russia's greatness as a regional, even global, power and to begin that process by re-establishing what Nygren (2008) has called 'Greater Russia'. At the same time, the West proceeded with its efforts to limit the reassertion of Russian influence with a variety of policies beginning with NATO and EU incorporation of former communist states, including former Soviet Baltic republics, and the establishment of special relationships with other former Soviet republics via NATO's Partnership for Peace Programme and the Eastern Neighbourhood policy of the European Union.
As the leadership under Putin succeeded in revitalizing both the Russian economic and the political system, it came increasingly into conflict with the United States and the European Union. Western refusal to respond as Russia wished about its criticisms of NATO expansion, Western intervention in former Yugoslavia and a US anti-ballistic missile system, along with criticism of the suppression of human rights, especially in Chechnya, began to sour the relationship already in the 1990s. Later, EU and US support for the colour revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in 2003-2005 was followed by largely successful Russian efforts to undercut the democratization processes in post-Soviet areas, including in Russia itself. This...