The author analyzes on the example of the USSR/Russia the role of personality and national elite in history; points out the importance and necessity of ideology in the development of national strategy; does not exclude the influence of subjective factors on the international situation.

The article examines conceptual approaches of NATO expansion’s opponents including former Western policy-makers, diplomats and experts in the 1990-s. Special attention is paid to the critical geopolitical and liberal assessments and possible consequences of NATO expansion threatening both to European and Russian security.

The article analyzes the transformation of the foreign and military policy of the Federal Republic of Germany. The authors highlighted the key theses of German Federal Chancellor Scholz’s new foreign policy entitled the Global Zeitenwende, examined in detail the personnel and organizational changes in the structure of the Federal Ministry of Defence and the armed forces.

The author analyzes trasformation of the program settings of the leaders of the Belarusian opposition in the period 2020-2023. The key factor in changing political goals and objectives, moving away from the constitutional methods of the struggle for power, was the presence of political emigrants in the centers ofgenerating Russophobia and hatred for Russia – Warsaw and Vilnius. The moral decline and political collapse of the Belarusian opposition was most clearly manifested with the beginnig of the SVO in Ukraine.

On the example of Kyrgyzstan, as a typical representative of post-Soviet Central Asian countries, the consequences of many years of living on borrowed money, which led to a multi-billion dollar foreign debt, which does not allow to talk about the independent foreign policy of the country and the welfare of the population, are considered.

The importance of sports diplomacy, which has been growing in recent years, allows us to consider this direction as an important and effective resource of foreign policy. When the rules and norms of international communication are reconsidered after the start of the Special Military Operation, an objective need to create new platforms and institutions for the presentation of our country has been emerged. The most promising in this series are the BRICS structures. Based on the analysis, it was concluded that the resources and capabilities of the BRICS member countries make it possible to create alternative international sports grounds.

The article analyses the role of prominent Kazakh writer Ilyas Yesenberlin in the formation of post-soviet national identity in Kazakhstan. As an outgrowth of soviet nation-building, this writer used literary fiction in order to address the shortcomings of Kazakh historiography whose representatives couldn’t pay proper attention to nomadic political and sociocultural entities’ study in Central Eurasia for political reasons.

The article examines the question of the degree of its impartiality in the structure of an international intergovernmental organization using the example of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. This is relevant not only in the context of the activities of the Council of Europe, compliance by the States parties to the Convention on the Protection of Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950 and the exercise of monitoring powers by the European Court of Human Rights, but also in the activities of other international intergovernmental associations and integrations.

The author analyzes how comprehensively the textbook «Scientific and Technological Progress and International Relations», prepared by a team of well-known scientists and diplomats, examines the impact of scientific and technological progress on international relations, in particular the impact of the hybrid war against Russia unleashed by the collective West.