The Russian Far East (RFE) is supposed to play a decisive role in what has been labelled the country’s Pivot to the East (povorot na Vostok). The pivot gained traction among the policy-making elite in Moscow after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. But there had been earlier moves in a similar direction. The global financial crisis of 2008 spurred various initiatives designed to strengthen both the development of the Far Eastern Federal District or Dal’nevostočnyj federal’nyj okrug (DVO) as well as the geopolitical and economic presence of Russia in the Asia-Pacific region (APR). Key elite actors from Sergey Lavrov to Dmitri Medvedev to Vladimir Putin himself have repeatedly made a case for the interrelationship of RFE’s socio-economic development and the firm stance Russia should be adopting in the APR.
