Alexander Sitin has drawn attention to the drawbacks in the information and analytical support of Russia’s foreign policy.
Ex-member of the Russian Strategic Research Institute (and a member of the Russian foreign intelligence service until 2009) Alexander Sitin has sent an open letter to the head of the Russian President’s Administration Sergey Ivanov. He has drawn attention to the drawbacks in Russia’s foreign policy information and analytical support.
Sitin is sure that ‘a number of external policy and international legal challenges are connected with the low quality of information and analytical support in the post-Soviet territory and in the international relations in general.’ He mentioned the Russian Strategic Research Institute that ‘was systematically replacing information analysis with Orthodox and patriotic declarations’.
"The empire rhetoric and neglect of CIS member states’ sovereignty and statehood have resulted in isolation and the decrease of the Institute’s authority in the expert circles of Russia’s closest partners – Belarus and Kazakhstan,” Alexander Sitin wrote on Facebook. The development of relations with a ‘limited group of like-minded foreigners’ who were marginal politicians in their countries was conducted for no reason. They are presenting a distorted version of the satiation in the CIS member states and the Russian President’s Administration has no information about the reality, he noted.
The mistakes made by the Russian Strategic Research Institute include ‘the underestimation of the CIS members states’ sovereignty’, ‘active propaganda of the revival of the empire’, ‘erroneous estimation of mass mood and the potential of creation of pro-Russia movements in Belarus and Ukraine’, he said. Serious errors were made in the study of the social and economic prospects of the inclusion of Crimea in the Russian Federation, Sitin thinks.
