WashPost: Russia Aims to Weaken US, Allies

(Dreamstime)

A classified addendum to an official Russian foreign policy document includes plans to weaken the U.S. and its allies in all areas, The Washington Post reported.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s addendum adds that the outcome of the war in Ukraine will “to a great degree determine the outlines of the future world order.”

The addendum, provided to The Post by a European intelligence service, calls for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures spanning “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” against a “coalition of unfriendly countries” led by the U.S.

“We need to continue adjusting our approach to relations with unfriendly states,” reads the April 2023 addendum to the Kremlin’s official March 2023 “Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation.” “It’s important to create a mechanism for finding the vulnerable points of their external and internal policies with the aim of developing practical steps to weaken Russia’s opponents.”

The April 11, 2023, addendum claims the U.S. is leading a coalition of “unfriendly countries” designed to weaken Russia because Moscow is “a threat to Western global hegemony.”

The document confirms that Russia intends to use propaganda campaigns supporting isolationist and extremist policies to subvert Western support for Ukraine, the newspaper reported Wednesday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., needs the support of the chamber’s Democrats to get an aid bill for Ukraine to the floor for debate, The New York Times reported. Conservatives have said they want concessions on border security before agreeing to foreign aid.

“The Americans consider that insofar as they are not directly participating in the war [in Ukraine], then any loss is not their loss,” Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a longtime critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, told The Post. “This is an absolute misunderstanding.”

Khodorkovsky added that a defeat for Ukraine “means that many will stop fearing challenging the U.S.”

The ministry’s addendum says that by strengthening its relationships with China, Iran, and North Korea, Russia seeks to reform geopolitics.

A leading Russian academic with close ties to senior Kremlin diplomats told The Post that Moscow’s recent veto against extending U.N. monitoring of sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program was “a clear sign” that items in the classified addendum were underway.

Vladimir Zharikhin, a Russian academic who submitted a policy proposal to the Kremlin in February 2023, said propaganda efforts against the West have resonated in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

“I think the U.S. was convinced that the rest of the world — North and South — would support the U.S. in the conflict with Russia and it turned out that this was not true,” Zharikhin told The Post. “This demonstrates the single polar world is over, and the U.S. doesn’t want to come to terms with this.”

Putin last month claimed Russia’s nuclear arsenal of weapons launched from land, sea, and air was “much more” advanced than that of the U.S., CBS News reported.

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