Russian geopolitical imagintion in Putin era

In this study, I examined the geopolitical imagination of Russia during the Putin period. The study aims to investigate Putin's vision of Russia and its position in today's geopolitical balance. I examined Russian geopolitical imagination within a critical geopolitical perspective by applying discourse analysis and redefining Putin's speeches as a geopolitical text. Due to their different characteristics, the 20 year was divided into two historical periods: 1999-2011 and 2012-2019. In the first period, it was seen that Russia entered a period of restoration following the collapse of the USSR. In this context, while trying to repair the status of great power and the area of influence in the post-Soviet countries on the one hand, on the other hand, it was observed that in face of West and the US was initiated the process of the construction of 'other'. It was understood from the speeches that the perception of the threat from the Cold War period continued and the post-Cold War new world order and the position of Russia remained a problematic issue. In the second period, civilizations were seen as units of global politics and the Russian World, where Russia is narrated as an ancient civilization, started to rise as a new geopolitical discourse. In this sense, instead of a nation-state, Russia has been redefined as a civilization-state that advocates global diversity against globalization. This study will shed light on the foreign policy dynamics of Russia and also contribute to the critical geopolitics by taking into account the naturalized geographical assumptions and geopolitical imaginations that produce the space understanding of global politics. Keywords: Russia, Political Geography, Putin, Geopolitics, Discourse Analysis