After the collapse of the USSR, the policy of the Western states towards Central Asia was focused on the issues linked to the expansion of trade and economic relations, gaining access to hydrocarbon resources of the regional countries and organizing their reliable export to foreign markets. In recent years, due to changes in technological development, the Western countries have increased their interest in rare-earth metals. Competition aimed at getting control over explored and prospective deposits is unfolding in different regions of the world. One of the promising areas with significant reserves of rare-earth metals is Central Asia. For this reason, in the last few years the USA, the EU, Great Britain and other countries have become increasingly interested in the region. The West is pursuing an active policy course towards Central Asian states. Such an approach is aimed not so much at developing the countries of the area as at expanding the presence of the West and reorienting the foreign policy course of the regional states towards the interests of non-regional actors. The ultimate goal of the Western states is to gain control over the deposits of rare-earth metals, which are located in Central Asia. The article covers the main directions of the policy the Western states apply in the region and underscores the mechanisms they use to promote their interests in gaining access to promising deposits of rare-earth metals. At the same time, the countries of the region generally welcome the Western policy, believing that it will attract additional investments into their economies. In turn, some influential and rich Western states along with companies they support exert pressure on Central Asian countries, seeking the most favorable conditions for themselves in the development of deposits and control over the resulting resources. The article concludes that Russia and China are competing with the Western states in Central Asia for getting access and gaining control over the deposits of rare-earth metals.

NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept views China as a “systemic challenge” to the Alliance. Joint statements regarding China began to appear several years before the adoption of the new Concept on the official NATO agenda in response to increasing pressure from the Trump administration. The military-political, technological and discursive power of the PRC is perceived by the bloc as a threat to their strategic interests. The greater military-political presence of China in the Arctic and in the Middle East and North Africa is regarded by NATO countries as strengthening the hegemonic aspirations of the PRC. Technological dependence on supplies from China harms the Alliance’s operational capabilities and military mobility. NATO has set itself the goal of adapting to strategic competition with China, particularly in the areas of advanced technologies, artificial intelligence and 5G. China’s influence on the media agenda, as well as its ability to promote its own narrative, threatens transatlantic solidarity and the “soft power” of the Alliance countries. Moreover, China is accused of systematically seeking to sow divisions in transatlantic relations and exploit differences between Western countries to its own advantage. China’s efforts to forge a multipolar world order pose a direct challenge to Western liberal democracies and the rules-based international order. European NATO states have begun to regularly encounter the “China factor” when interacting with the United States. However, there remains disagreement over what policies should be pursued toward Beijing. Those who see China as a security threat advocate general policy coordination with the United States. Those who recognize Beijing as a necessary economic partner and participant in global governance insist that Europe pursue independent policies that distance itself from US strategy. All this suggests that practical steps within the Alliance to counter China, especially outside the Euro-Atlantic region, will face resistance from the United States’ European allies.

The article examines some problems of Russia’s humanitarian policy and humanitarian cooperation. According to the author, domestic humanitarianism does not go beyond the boundaries established by the Helsinki Final Act. The formulation of tasks and directions of domestic humanitarian policy contained in strategic planning documents is reduced only to a description of the methods and conditions of communication, leaving the specifics of humanitarian activities and humanitarian instruments outside the scope of strategic planning documents, thereby complicating its institutionalization. The author believes that the goal of humanitarian cooperation may be the formation of a global structure of support for domestic foreign policy initiatives, representing a dense network of interactions that provides ripple effects, expanding Russia’s influence and forming new dependencies. But achieving such a goal is impossible without putting forward a clear alternative to the modern world order, which will reflect not only the interests of Russia, but also of countries that disagree with the Western-centric world order.

Ethnic diversity has an impact on many areas of social life, which has led to an extensive layer of research on relationships in this area. Many authors have studied in detail the impact of ethnic diversity on conflicts, instability, domestic politics, other various social and cultural aspects. At the same time, the relationship between ethnic fractionalization and economic parameters remains insufficiently studied, which leaves a wide field for relevant research, especially at the level of individual countries, since most of the work is devoted to cross-country comparative analysis of the relevant parameters. One of the most actual problems in the context of ethnic heterogeneity is its relationship with income inequality. This article presents the results of a study of the relationship between ethnic diversity, estimated on the basis of the ethno-linguistic fractionalization (ELF) index, and two indicators of income inequality — the Gini coefficient and the inter-decile income share ratio (S90/S10). The analysis of this relationship was carried out on the example of one country — Kazakhstan — by comparing the corresponding indicators for seventeen regions. The results of the analysis showed the presence of a stable and noticeable relationship, expressed in the growth of income inequality as ethnic diversity grows in the regions of the country. It was revealed that in the most ethnically homogeneous regions, income inequality indicators are minimal, while in the most ethnically diverse regions they are much higher. A significant correlation was also found between ethnic fractionalization and indicators of income inequality. The results obtained are generally correspond to the results of a number of cross-country studies, but in the case of Kazakhstan they are more distinct, which can be interpreted as confirmation of the relationship between ethnic diversity and income inequality in general.

The article is devoted to the study of the current state of integration of the Union State in the context of the modern transformation of the world order. The article identifies the reasons for the rapprochement between Russia and Belarus which made it possible to create and develop the integration project. Despite the objective difficulties, the two states have been successfully developing joint economic projects for a long time. Special attention is paid to the identification of external factors affecting the development of the Union State. Since the creation of the Union State western countries have pursued a policy aimed at weakening the potential of the integration association. The article examines the last years of the Union State’s activity, reveals the impact of sanctions pressure on Russia and Belarus, and analyzes the steps taken by the leaders of the two countries to further develop the integration project.

The article considers the foreign policy aspects of the activities of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation of the First convocation. The specifics of the main results of parliamentary votes of this period, which were related to international-political realities, in the context of their relationship with the conceptual foundations and implementation of Russian foreign policy, have been characterized. Features of the composition and nature of the activities of the lower house of the Russian parliament of this period have been identified. The conceptualization of the Russian Federation’s foreign policy has been analyzed. The initiatives and decisions of the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the First convocation in the field of foreign policy and international relations have been assessed. It is shown that these were due to the specifics of its personal composition, where there was no strict factional discipline and a clear advantage of any political force, which determined the need for situational interaction. The normal work of the lower house of parliament became possible largely due to the efforts of its Chairman, who took a centrist position. It is substantiated that the State Duma, operating in conditions of complex socio-economic problems and the colossal weakening of Russia’s international political positions, demonstrated significant activity in international political initiatives that covered a wide range of topical issues with an emphasis on the situation in the states of the post-Soviet space. These decisions were relatively balanced, which was explained by the approximately equal distribution of resources between the so-called “left”, “right”, “centrists” and “national patriots”, as well as the presence of “common bloc” issues, positions on which coincided or did not cause obvious contradictions. The international political initiatives of the State Duma of the First convocation were distinguished by greater realism and emphasis on the protection of national interests than the content of conceptual documents and the foreign policy course pursued by the state. This happened against the background and simultaneously with the beginning of the process of rethinking the foreign policy approaches of the Russian Federation, which had a significant influence on it.

The article analyzes the political institutions, processes, technologies characteristic of the period of formation of Soviet power in Crimea after the end of the large-scale Civil War. The phenomenon of the Civil War, from the author’s point of view, was expressed in an irreconcilable struggle between the centers of power that emerged from the ruins of the empire, with the geopolitical factor itself playing an important role. The article notes that in Crimea in 1921, emissaries of British and German intelligence services were actively working, that is, those forces that had previously made considerable efforts to overthrow the monarchy and unleash a Civil War in the Russian Empire. The formation of the Crimean ASSR as part of Soviet Russia in the fall of 1921, as well as the creation of a new powerful state of the USSR with its own social project in December 1922, was not at all part of their plans. Therefore, Western opponents tried as much as possible to use the inertia of the Civil War to destabilize one of the key regions of the RSFSR. Under the current conditions, it was quite logical that a number of leaders of the anti-bolshevik underground wanted to establish close contacts with opponents of Soviet power abroad in order to combine efforts in the fight against it, which objectively became a factor of geopolitical tension in the Soviet Republic in general, and in Crimea in particular. In conditions of increasing conflict in Crimea, a system of emergency institutions is being formed. This system included the Crimean Revolutionary Committee and its local bodies, the establishment of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, Special Purpose Units, and revolutionary tribunals under the general ideological leadership of party bodies. The author comes to the conclusion that emergency institutions objectively opposed the implementation of projects of Western powers to destabilize the situation in Crimea and contributed to a certain ethnopolitical stabilization of the situation in the region. On the other hand, their activities were characterized by a class approach, which led to thoughtless repressive policies and inevitable “excesses” in their work, aggravated by weak coordination of actions and the lack of strict control at the first stage.