Abstract

This article analyzes the resurgence of anticolonial rhetoric in Russian foreign policy since 2022 and conceptualizes it as a form of illiberal anticolonialism. It argues that contemporary Russian discourse toward the Global South should not be reduced to tactical propaganda but understood as part of a broader ideological configuration structured around majoritarianism, sovereigntism, civilizationism, and conservatism. Reworking elements of Soviet internationalism through a conservative lens, Russian elites frame de-Westernization as a struggle against Western normative hegemony and promote a vision of multipolarity grounded in state sovereignty, cultural authenticity, and traditional values. The article pays particular attention to Sergey Karaganov’s concept of the “World Majority,” which seeks to symbolically unite non-Western states against the “collective West” and to legitimize Russia’s foreign policy, including the war in Ukraine, as part of a wider anticolonial project. It concludes by assessing the appeal and limits of this illiberal emancipation narrative, emphasizing that de-Westernization does not necessarily imply de-liberalization.

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Russia’s De-Westernization and Its Ideational and Narrative Features

It is against this layered historical backdrop that contemporary Russian anticolonial discourse must be read. This section examines two key features of Russia’s illiberal anticolonialism, which drive its “de-Westernizing agenda”^\35]) and attempts to erode the liberal international order. First, a renewed prominence of anticolonial rhetoric in Russian political discourse since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine beginning in 2022 and its promotion in the Global South. Second the crafting of the notion of a “World Majority,” as advanced by Russian foreign policy expert Sergey Karaganov.

Russia’s New Anticolonial Strategic Narrative and Its Objectives

As discussed above, the language of anticolonialism was central to Soviet foreign policy, but largely faded from the lexicon of Russian politics in the post-Soviet era until 2022. Although traces of anticolonial rhetoric were already discernible in the late 2010s, notably during the First Russia-Africa Summit, held in Sochi in October 2019, it was the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine that firmly reintroduced anticolonialism into contemporary Russian official discourse and diplomatic language.^\36]) This strategic narrative is not only deployed domestically (for instance, to denounce alleged Western attempts to politically and ideologically “colonize” Ukraine and Russia) but is extensively used in international forums and in messages directed at foreign audiences to promote the de-Westernization of the international order.

According to our analysis, Vladimir Putin has used the lexical field of colonialism three times more frequently throughout all of 2022 (44 occurrences), 2023 (84 occurrences), and 2024 (33 occurrences) than during the entirety of his presidency prior to the war (54 occurrences from 2000 through 2021, see Figure 2). In an article published ahead of the 2023 Russia-Africa Summit in Saint Petersburg, and translated into English, Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, the Russian president asserted that “a new multipolar world order, the contours of which are already seen, will be more just and democratic. And there is no doubt that Africa, along with Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, will take its worthy place in it and finally free itself from the bitter legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism, rejecting its modern practices.”^\37]) In another interview, published in June 2024 in the official North Korean newspaper Rodong Shinmun (Workers’ Newspaper), on the eve of a state visit to Pyongyang, Vladimir Putin went further, suggesting that “the United States is going out of its way to impose on the world what it calls the ‘rules-based order,’ which is essentially nothing more than a global neo-colonial dictatorship relying on double standards.”^\38]) Finally, during a forum gathering numerous BRICS parliamentarians in Saint Petersburg in July 2024, Putin compared the practices of Western elites to “classical colonialism at its best,” through which they “seek to cement a certain order based on their own so-called rules that nobody has ever seen, discussed or adopted.”^\39])

Anticolonialism is also now formally enshrined in the latest Russian Foreign Policy Concept, that of 2023, which defines the main strategies of the Russian Federation’s foreign policy while also providing discursive guidelines for the various administrators responsible for implementing it. Article 5 of the document states that:

Reflecting the close interdependence between state discourse and state media production, this resurgence of anticolonialism has extensively permeated the Russian media space, and it informs both domestic and international news coverage. Excluded from Western markets, and seeking new audiences in the Global South, the transnational Russian state-run media outlets RT and Sputnik have incorporated anticolonialism as a new key pillar of their editorial line, supporting their redeployment in Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Brazil.^\41]) In a notable advertising campaign conducted in the summer of 2023 across several major English-speaking African cities and entitled “Your Values, Shared,” RT promoted itself by displaying the faces and quotations of prominent leaders of independence movements, anticolonial struggles, and pan-Africanism. Billboards in Accra, Ghana, for instance, featured the image of President Kwame Nkrumah (1960–1966) alongside the slogan: “Neo-colonialism is the worst form of imperialism.”^\42])

The anticolonial narrative has finally been employed in Russia’s information operations targeting countries of the Global South. This is exemplified, for instance, by content disseminated in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in the Sahel region and the Central African Republic, by Wagner mercenaries seeking to discredit the French military, and through the late warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Lakhta project and its regional branch of troll farms, Africa Politology.^\43]) The organization and news agency African Initiative, which is allegedly supervised by Russian intelligence services, has played an active role in promoting Russia’s strategic narratives and interests in the Africa since the death of Prigozhin in an airplane crash in August 2023 that most observers have seen as orchestrated by the Kremlin.[44]

A key concept in this anticolonial strategic narrative is the notion of “World Majority” (mirovoe bol’shinstvo), which, in its Russian version, can be attributed to the academic and former presidential adviser Sergey Karaganov, who first mentioned it in an article published in September 2022.[45] He proposed this term to replace that of “non-West” (ne-Zapad), which designates the highly heterogeneous group composed of all non-Western states. Karaganov criticizes the designation of “non-West” as being overly negative and Western-centric, explaining that “World Majority” also emphasizes the idea that the West constitutes a minority. Furthermore, the emergence of this narrative can be seen as a conceptual effort to find an alternative to the “Global South,” within which the inclusion of Russia can be easily challenged, at a moment when Russia needs to rethink its identity, moving ever further away from the West.[46]

From the Russian perspective, the world is now divided into two camps (See Fig. 1). On the one hand, countries included in the Russian government’s list of “unfriendly states” that condemn Russia in international forums, levy economic sanctions against it, and provide military or economic aid to Ukraine—these constitute the “collective West.” On the other hand, there are all the others, including neutral states, which the Kremlin conveniently presents as “friendly” or “constructive.” The goal of the “World Majority” narrative is to get this division internalized by the entire non-Western world as the new, defining geopolitical cleavage in international relations.  

Opposing the West to the non-West, the “World Majority” narrative directly echoes Samuel Huntington’s 1993 theory of the “Clash of Civilizations,” in which he argued that “the paramount axis of world politics will be the relations between ‘the West and the Rest.’ ”[47] It is worth noting that Huntington’s ideas gained significant popularity in Russia as early as the 1990s, particularly because they positioned Russia as the core of a distinct Orthodox civilization, offering symbolic comfort in the face of the sense of decline and the ideological void caused by the collapse of the USSR.[48] However, many in Russia criticized Huntington’s theory for its destabilizing potential, arguing that it fuels hostility toward China and the Muslim world and exposes Russia’s internal fragility. According to Tsygankov, the world system theory developed by Immanuel Wallerstein is more consensual among Russian scholars.[49]

The civilizational foundation of the “World Majority” narrative also places it within the intellectual lineage of neo-Eurasianist thought. This is particularly evident in the work of its most influential figure, Alexander Panarin, who has argued that Russia acts as the guardian of civilizational diversity against the expansionist ambitions of a declining West.[50] Parallels can also be drawn with the ideas of the far-right ideologist Alexander Dugin, whose far more nationalist and antagonistic interpretation of Eurasianism centers on the defense of Traditionalism. He argues that Western global dominance will lead to “the destruction of racial, religious, ethnic, national, and cultural boundaries.”[51] By combining aspects of both Panarin’s and Dugin’s thought, the “World Majority” narrative positions Russia in the vanguard of the confrontation between the West and the non-West—united in the defense of civilizational diversity.

While no clear link has been established yet, the Russian version of the “World Majority” is preceded by another formulation with a distinct origin. The “Majority World” idea was first coined in the 1990s by Bangladeshi photographer and political activist Shahidul Alam. In a 2008 article, he explained that his goal was to find a substitute for the terms “Third World” and “developing world,” which he considered reductive and negative, and which were imposed by a minority of wealthier states on the rest of the world. He also emphasized that the states of the “Majority World” were those that had been colonized and continued to suffer the effects of colonialism. The aim, therefore, was to revalue the image of these states and challenge the symbolic dominance of a minority, represented at the time, according to Alam, by the G8, which then included Russia.[52] The “World Majority” therefore represents an example of an idea originating in the South that has been reshaped according to Russia’s discursive needs in the context of its post-2022 transformations.

The development and promotion of the “World Majority” narrative follows a pattern similar to the earlier promotion of the “Turn to the East” and “Greater Eurasia” concepts, which Karaganov and his team developed and advanced from 2012 onward[53] to provide the Russian state with a conceptual framework for the ongoing de-Westernization of Russian foreign policy—an agenda of which he became one of the most prominent advocates.

To promote his ideas, Karaganov can rely on a powerful network of experts and institutions, such as the Valdai Discussion Club, the Higher School of Economics (HSE), the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, or the influential journal Rossiia v global’noi politike/Russia in Global Affairs. The “World Majority” was first mentioned by a high-ranking state representative, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, on December 15, 2022, less than three months after its first appearance in Russia in Global Affairs. Over the course of 2023, this narrative became increasingly prominent in the discourse of Russian political leaders, with a first reference by Vladimir Putin during the Second Russia-Africa International Parliamentary Conference  (Moscow, March 19–20, 2023), where the Russian president stated that Russia, together with African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American countries, “constitute the World Majority.”^\54]) It then reached a broader international audience during his speech at the 2023 BRICS Summit in Johannesburg.

Demonstrating a desire to establish this narrative in the Russian and international intellectual debate, Sergey Karaganov and his team organized a consequential international conference on the “World Majority,” bringing together scholars from over a dozen countries across Asia, Africa, and South America (Moscow, November 30–December 1, 2023). Participants were welcomed by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrey Rudenko and HSE Rector Nikita Anisimov. It was during this conference that Karaganov presented what remains the most substantial conceptual text on the “World Majority” narrative to date, coauthored with Alexander Kramarenko of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Dmitri Trenin, former director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, who joined Karaganov’s team at the HSE after the war started.[55] A few days after the conference, the report was published on the official website of the Russian Foreign Ministry, granting it the status and authority of a quasi-official state concept.

The emergence of the “World Majority” narrative appeared to be well aligned with the discursive needs of the Russian state as it assumed the BRICS presidency for 2024. It was fully integrated into the official discourse of the organizers, as exemplified by the statement made on November 27, 2023, by the Head of Russia’s BRICS Organizing Committee, Yuri Ushakov, who declared that “the BRICS constitute the vanguard of the World Majority.”[56] It also appeared in the nomenclature of official BRICS events, such as the BRICS Inter-Party Forum organized by Putin’s United Russia party under the theme, “World Majority for a Multipolar World” (Vladivostok, June 16–19, 2024).

In the second major report devoted to the “World Majority,” the authors emphasized that the diffusion of ideas and narratives constitutes Russia’s most important task vis-à-vis the non-West: “The competition of ideas means as much as the competition of economic and military capabilities.”[57] Although it is now firmly entrenched in domestic state and media discourse (Putin used the concept seven times during his Valdai speech of October 2, 2025)[58] the “World Majority” narrative has not, for now, achieved comparable resonance internationally. As the same report acknowledges, “the World Majority concept has not yet been incorporated into the discourse of countries that are friendly to Russia and is not used at the level of political statements, documents, or declarations.”[59] According to Kapoor, the main obstacle to its diffusion in the non-West lies in its lack of originality, as it reproduces ideas that have been developed for more than seven decades in the Global South, dating back at least to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and in the fact that it dismisses the agency of non-Western countries in doing so.[60]

Discursive Evidence of Illiberal Anticolonialism in Russia’s Turn to the South

The limits of the “World Majority” narrative’s international reach do not diminish the analytical interest of its content: it remains a revealing lens through which Russia’s four illiberal registers (majoritarianism, sovereigntism, civilizationism, and conservatism) operate in practice. As seen in Figure 2, the expansion of the lexical field of coloniality in Russian presidential discourse, which we use as a barometer of a broader consensus among the Russian elite, since February 2022 has been indeed accompanied by a growing prominence of references to multipolarity and traditional values.

The roots of Russia’s contemporary majoritarian rhetoric lie in the reorientation of its foreign policy initiated with the appointment of Yevgeny Primakov as Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1996. Breaking with the Western-centric foreign policy that had reflected the dominance of liberals during President Boris Yeltsin’s first administration, the new foreign minister focused on restoring Russia’s status as a great power.^\61]) His doctrine of a “multipolar world” rested on the premise that US unipolarity was both illegitimate and dangerous, and it encouraged Russia to seek partners outside the West while presenting these partnerships as the foundations of a more democratic international order.^\62]) Over the following two decades, this approach became institutionalized through successive efforts to strengthen ties with China, consolidate Eurasian regional structures, and build coalitions through non-Western groupings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS. The growing demographic and economic weight of these groupings contributed to the development of Russia’s majoritarian rhetoric, used to legitimize its foreign policy and its critique of the Western liberal international order.

The “World Majority” can be seen as the narrative materialization of Russian majoritarian rhetoric, specifically tailored for the Global South. It frames Russia’s conflict with Ukraine and its Western allies as a struggle against a self-serving minority, whose primary objective is to maintain American hegemony and an unequal international system through imperialist and neocolonial policies that favor developed countries at the expense of the Global South. This argument is reinforced by the theory of the “golden billion,”^\63]) widely disseminated by the Russian president and his entourage since the beginning of the conflict and directly incorporated into the “World Majority” narrative: “The unipolar model of global development has served the golden billion, which for centuries has fueled its excessive consumption by relying on Asian, African, and Latin American resources.”^\64]) This framing allows Russian leaders to present their challenge to Western governance and values as part of a broader movement for the democratization of the world order.

The analysis of the “World Majority” narrative shows that majoritarianism as mobilized by Russian leaders is profoundly instrumental. According to Sergey Karaganov’s definition, “The ‘World Majority’ means a community of non-Western countries that have no binding relationships with the United States and the organizations it patronizes—those who do not impose sanctions against Russia, recognize American dominance, etc.”[65] It appears that this group of non-Western states, allegedly united by common interest, is not defined through objective criteria but through such states’ political alignment with Russian interests. This self-referential definition reveals the instrumental function of this strategic narrative. It aims to create a symbolic community in which Russia can claim to speak on behalf of the Global South while legitimizing its actions—including the war in Ukraine—as part of a wider anticolonial struggle. The manifest instrumental nature of the “World Majority” narrative may help explain its failure to gain traction internationally and more broadly illustrates one of the limits of Russia’s discursive strategy towards the Global South.

Sovereigntist Convergences

The Russian anticolonial stance and its critique of the liberal international order clearly align with the contours of sovereigntism.^\66]) First asserted in Putin’s 2007 Munich speech, Russia’s sovereigntism takes concrete form in Europe through its critique of the European Union as a supranational entity that denies the sovereignty and independence of European nation-states. The editorial line of the European branches of the RT network is an illustration of this ideological posture.^\67]) In recent years, however, this political orientation has found new manifestations in Russia’s foreign policy toward the Global South.

The growing Russian presence in Sub-Saharan Africa offers a particularly relevant context for examining the convergence of sovereigntist and anticolonial discourses among Russian and African actors. Both draw on these two repertoires to legitimize their respective positions through a shared denunciation of Western “neocolonialism.” Historically shaped by the “dilemma” between advocates of continental unity and defenders of national sovereignty, pan-Africanism, as Rita Abrahamsen notes, can accommodate both a commitment to multilateralism, on the one hand, and a sovereigntist, antiliberal understanding of the international order, on the other hand.^\68]) The “neo-Pan-Africanist” and “neo-sovereigntist” African actors^\69]) with whom Russian counterparts engage, especially in the Sahel region and with the Alliance of Sahel States, align themselves with this latter interpretation.

The “neocolonial” presence of France has, of course, been a primary target of these Russian and African actors in recent years. However, their sovereigntist critique has also been directed at supranational actors operating in Africa, such as United Nations and European Union missions. The UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) and its counterpart in Mali (MINUSMA) have been accused of defending Western interests by local organizations supported by Russian actors, including Bangui-based Radio Lengo Songo, the news website Ndjoni Sango, the NGO Aimons notre Afrique (ANA: love our Africa), and the pan-Africanist activist group Yerewolo-Debout sur les remparts (“The Dignified Ones-Standing on the Remparts”).^\70])

Civilizationism against Western Universalism

The emergence of the “World Majority” narrative must also be understood within the broader civilizationist turn in Russia that was formalized in the 2023 Foreign Policy Concept.^\71]) This critique of Western universalism is central to contemporary Russian civilizationist discourse,[72] which sees it as “both a philosophical threat to the God-given diversity of the world and as a political lie organized by the West to obfuscate its strategic interests.”^\73]) As Karaganov, Trenin, and Kramarenko argue, the “World Majority” should oppose “the extremist mutation of the liberal idea currently underway in the West,” and instead articulate its own response to global challenges, aligned with “the cultural and philosophical traditions of different civilizations.”[74]

From this point of view, the “World Majority” is presented as the political awakening of non-Western civilizations, whose collective resistance is supposedly led or inspired by Russia, which constitutes “its military-political core.”[75]  According to Putin, “the phenomenon of the world majority is a new development in international affairs. The overwhelming majority of states worldwide are oriented towards pursuing their own civilizational interests.”^\76]) Drawing on its multiethnic, multireligious, and multicultural character, Russia is portrayed as uniquely positioned to mediate between other civilizations and to guide the emergence of a polycentric order. In line with the Kremlin’s increasingly messianic rhetoric, Karaganov estimates that Russian civilization holds a unique historical mission: “we are a civilization of civilizations, called upon to unite those of Greater Eurasia and the world.”^\77])

This logic also structures Russia’s interpretation of the war in Ukraine. By reversing the accusations leveled against them, Russian leaders present the February 2022 invasion as a defensive act against the United States and its allies, who allegedly instrumentalize Ukraine to prevent the loss of their hegemony.^\78]) The goal of this narrative is to rally non-Western public opinion (as well as to provide talking points for pro-Russian foreign leaders) by presenting the war as a struggle against imperialism, in which a Russian victory would signify the dawn of a multipolar and “multicivilizational” era: “Russia’s victory in Ukraine will give an impetus to further efforts to change the global balance of power in favor of mutual respect and equal dialogue, and eventually establish a world order based on cultural and civilizational diversity.”[79]

Defending Traditional Values against Western Post-Humanism

The conservative component of Russia’s new anticolonialism is at last salient in the discourses and content about traditional values produced by Russian actors in their communication aimed at audiences in the Global South.The above-mentioned first usage by Vladimir Putin of the notion of a “World Majority” during the 2023 Russia-Africa Parliamentary Summit was clearly associated with the defense of traditional values and resistance to Western ideological “colonization”: “Russia and the countries of Africa uphold the moral norms and social foundations traditional to our peoples, and resist the externally imposed neo-colonial ideology. Incidentally, many states in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America hold similar positions—together, we constitute the World Majority.”[80]

The Russian leadership frames Africa in particular as a normative ally in a global confrontation between liberal and traditional values systems, portraying shared moral conservatism as the basis for resisting Western “neocolonial” influence.^\81]) In Sub-Saharan Africa, numerous political and cultural events have been organized in recent years at Russia’s initiative to embody this conservative ideological convergence between Russian and African societies. The first edition of the BRICS Traditional Values Forum was held by the State Duma in Moscow in November 2024, at the initiative of the Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin and the national-conservative deputy and cofounder of the World Christian Association of Parliamentarians, Dmitry Kuznetsov.

The forum, attended by parliamentarians from Egypt, Ethiopia, South Africa, the Republic of the Congo, and Uganda, suggested that “countering the LGBT propaganda of the collective West” represented “one of the most important tasks of the BRICS countries” in the emergence of a world “without Satanism and obscurantism,” to use Prilepin’s expression.^\82]) Russia’s revamped cultural diplomacy in Africa also participates in this process. In January 2024, the Russian Federal Agency for Cultural Diplomacy, Rossotrudnichestvo, inaugurated a new Russian House (russkii dom) in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, alongside members of the Burkinabè government. A few weeks later, the Russian House and the Burkina Faso branch of African Initiative co-hosted a conference devoted to “the protection and preservation of customary and traditional values in the face of Western influence.”^\83])

Russian diplomacy is also involved. In an interview with African Initiative, Anatoly Bashkin, Director of the Department of African States South of the Sahara at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated that Russia’s “main difference with the former colonial powers” lay in the fact that it does not “impose ready-made models on Africans.” According to him, “the foundation for intercultural interaction in Africa rests on the solid base of traditional values, which play a dominant role in almost all African communities. In this respect, we have much in common with our partners, including the need to counter the neoliberal pseudo-values being promoted everywhere by the West.”^\84])

This issue has crystallized around LGBTIQ+ rights, on a continent where 31 out of 54 African countries still criminalize consensual same-sex relations between adults.^\85]) An investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed that Russian Ambassador to Uganda Vladlen Semivolos reportedly played a significant role in accelerating the legislative process leading to the adoption, in March 2023, of a particularly severe Anti-Homosexuality Act in a country already known for its governmental homophobia. The Russian ambassador is said to have argued for the need to counter what he described as the promotion of “homosexuality propaganda” by Western governments in Ugandan schools^\86])—mirroring the situation in Russia, where the Law for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating a Denial of Traditional Family Values, commonly known as the “anti-LGBT law,” was adopted in 2023.

At last, the Russian Orthodox Church is a key actor in the intertwining of anticolonial and conservative discourse. During the Russia-Africa Summit in Saint Petersburg of 2023, Patriarch Kirill contrasted what he described as the “arrogance,” “moral relativism,” and “cultural and spiritual degradation” of the Western world—still unable, in his view, to overcome its colonial past—with the supposed moral affinity uniting African and Russian peoples. He emphasized their “shared understanding of the fundamental tenets of human life” and common attachment to “imperishable moral values,” citing faithfulness to tradition, the heteronormative concept of family, and respect for one’s country’s history as “essential principles of our civilization.”^\87]) Founded in 2021, the Patriarchal Exarchate of Africa of the Russian Orthodox Church actively participates in promoting traditional values across the continent while aligning itself with the anticolonial rhetoric advanced by Russian foreign policy.^\88])

Conclusion

Russia’s illiberal anticolonialism designates a distinctive mode of resistance to Western dominance. Reworking Soviet internationalist legacies through sovereigntist, civilizational, and conservative frameworks, it advances a vision of decolonization centered on normative pluralism and state sovereignty rather than individual emancipation. To appeal to countries of the Global South, these narratives mobilize familiar themes of political and economic emancipation: the democratization of the international order, resistance to economic imperialism, and the rejection of neocolonial hierarchies. But this “illiberal emancipation” targets mostly the collective body of the nation and the state as its champion, while abandoning the liberal idea of a progress for individuals and their right to free themselves from different forms of domination.

This hybrid configuration allows Russia to present itself as a champion of the post-Western international order while revealing the internal tensions of an emancipation project grounded in illiberal premises.First, despite a genuine power of attraction and ability to promote its strategic narratives in the Global South, Russia remains seen by many, both at home and abroad, as culturally, demographically, and economically being a country from the Global North, and as the continuation of the former socialist Second World rather than a member of the former Third World. Second, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and alignment with China, Iran, and North Korea diminish its credibility among actors such as Brazil and South Africa, who are disillusioned with the West, but where a large part of the population is skeptical of authoritarian alternatives.

Indeed, what limits Russia’s anticolonial appeal is that de-Westernization does not automatically equate with de-liberalization. The rejection of Western epistemic authority and geopolitical leadership does not inherently imply the abandonment of democratic norms and the embrace of illiberal governance. Many actors in the Global South articulate demands for greater sovereignty, recognition, and multipolarity while simultaneously reaffirming commitments to pluralism and individual rights. Russia’s trajectory thus represents not the only option for de-Westernization but a particular trajectory that speaks to some but not all of global public opinion.