Saving Russia. Neorealist Theorists and the Interpretation of the Kremlin’s International Policy according to the Actor-Network Concept

The Russian-Ukrainian war of 2014–2024 and the destructive role of Russia negatively affects regional and global aspects of the life of peoples and states. It has created a threat of serious chaos in international relations. Russia’s aggressive policy has caused a crisis in world politics that even the great powers of today cannot overcome. The return to a new Cold War and the outbreak of a major war in Europe threatens the entire modern international system with dangerous turbulence. The purpose of the study is to analyze the concept of effectiveness and the role of influential international actors in the modern Russian-Ukrainian war in the field of actor-network theory. The research methodology is based on the principles of science, objectivity, historicism and the basic conceptual and theoretical provisions of the study of world politics and international relations. Actor-network theory was introduced by Michel Callon and Bruno Latour in the second half of the 1980s. In accordance with this theory, relations between participants are determined by the network itself and are marked by the intensity and orientation of the network of interactions. In the sense of international relations and world politics, this means that they are under the strong or even decisive influence of powerful international actors (big powers and flexible interstate coalitions). Russia is seen as one of the most influential international players or “core of localities” that interact. Accordingly, other influential international actors are very cautious about the complete break of relations with Russia; they do not consider the possibility of its complete defeat in the aggressive war against Ukraine. Such a position was reflected and substantiated in various theoretical approaches, examples of which are the ideas of neorealism representatives such as John Mearsheimer, Farid Zakaria and Henry Kissinger.