Russia’s world order vision after the invasion of Ukraine: toward an alternative?

Russia’s encroachment into Ukraine has revived the debate about the future of liberal international order, Russia’s discontent, and its alternative vision. This article demonstrates that Russian discontent with the liberal international order has entered a new phase marked by efforts to undermine and replace it. Framing it as a tool of Western hegemony, Russian leadership and affiliated intellectual circles have increasingly promoted a counter-narrative rooted in the notions of sovereignty, civilizational plurality and resistance to universalist liberal norms in an attempt to lay the ideational basis of an alternative world order vision. This article explores how Russia has gone beyond challenging the biases of LIO to undermining its foundational principles and has been advocating for a post-liberal, multipolar, sovereignty-focused, and pluralistic world order vision. It concludes that Russia’s vision remains a work in progress that has developed at the ideational level, yet still lacking a coherent institutional and operational framework.