Description
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the question of Russia’s power and its challenge to international order and European security has come to the fore with renewed potency. However, in that time little attention has been paid to Russia’s position as a space power in the changing international environment. Given the new ‘space race’ in the 21st century and the salience of space both for Russian policy makers and in Russia’s popular culture and imagination, making sense of Russia’s current space policy is critical to fully understanding its great power ambitions. How Russia navigates contemporary matters and issues regarding outer space will shape, to a greater or lesser degree, the new space race in the future, and will have an impact on global space governance and on whether space will be a realm of rivalry or cooperation. By adopting a social constructivist approach, the paper will look at the ideas and meanings around Russia’s and other states’ roles in space affairs as seen by Russian elites, and at how the latter’s perceptions create a context for certain foreign policy behaviours regarding space and not others (cooperation, competition, international law-making, participation in global governance structures).