| Summary/Abstract |
The impact of the Ukrainian crisis on the structure of international relations as well as accelerated Russia's turn toward Asia as one of its widely discussed consequences can be hardly overestimated. Reorientation, very much within the concept of the multipolar world, began long before the crisis: Russia was seeking wider cooperation with the APR countries as the future center of world politics and economy; wider investments and high technologies of the most developed countries to whip up the economies of Russia's Asian regions and diversify political and economic cooperation so that to reduce its dependence on the West. Before the clashes in Ukraine, the leading Russian politicians were unanimous in their conviction that closer cooperation with Asia would complement rather than weaken Russia's partner relationships with the U.S. and the EU. Amid the Ukrainian developments the West is cutting down its cooperation with Moscow to force it retreat from its positions; this has woken up the Russian elite to a simple thought that there is no alternative to intensified cooperation with Asia.
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