AS WE enter the new year, it is worth taking a glance in the rearview mirror. The events and processes of the past year do not simply come to a halt when its calendar’s final page is torn off. Reflecting on the core developments of recent months is meaningful and valuable in attempting to understand the prospects, limitations, and opportunities of the coming period.
Reflecting on 2024, it is worth noting that the year initially aroused certain apprehensions. First, as a leap year, it carried connotations of misfortune dating back to ancient times. Second, it marked the beginning of a three-year cycle of solar activity, which is often claimed to provoke conflicts. Indeed, the year had its fair share of challenges. The comprehensive aggression launched by the West against Russia – manifested as a proxy war launched from the Ukrainian bridgehead, unprecedented economic sanctions, informational and civilizational assaults, and technological restrictions – was met by the country with an immense exertion of effort.
The conflict in Europe, where Russia found itself effectively confronting several dozen countries drawn into a military venture by the US, was compounded by an equally perilous conflict in the Middle East. The latter conflict saw the ruthless destruction of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians by Israeli military forces and terrorist attacks targeting
Iranian leaders and figures of Arab resistance movements. European and other nations, swept up in Washington’s militaristic frenzy, obediently participated in this spiraling conflict despite it running counter to their own interests.
Meanwhile, in the World Majority nations, there was a growing aspiration for sovereign development and participation in international formats free from Western dominance. The year began with the expansion of BRICS1 to include five new members.2 The BRICS summit, held in October in Kazan, showcased the desire of more than 30 countries to participate in its activities. Given the time required to assess candidates’ readiness for membership, a BRICS Partner Countries status was established, which was granted to 13 countries.3 The summit was a pivotal event of 2024, highlighting the increasing momentum among World Majority countries toward a fairer multipolar world order.4
Returning to the beginning of the year, on February 8, the world witnessed a true sensation: a televised interview between American journalist and political commentator Tucker Carlson and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The significance of the interview lay not only in the fact that it was the first granted by the Russian president to a Western journalist since the start of the Special Military Operation in February 2022. Its impact on America and other countries was profound, as the in-depth analysis provided by the Russian leader shed light on the nature and character of the conflict, opening the eyes of a vast number of people abroad.5
In March, Russia held a presidential election. Voter turnout was a record 77.49%. Putin won approximately 90% of the vote nationally and garnered an even greater share of the vote in several regions. These resounding results convincingly demonstrated the failure of those who had hoped to divide Russian society amid clear and unequivocal support for the president and his course toward affirming Russia’s sovereignty, power, and greatness.6
Russia’s foreign policy, together with China’s, acted as a driving force behind the movement toward a new, fairer world order. It garnered broad support from World Majority states and inspired liberation struggles against the West’s aspirations for global dominance and its neocolonial practices. Early in the year, national liberation movements in Africa gained momentum as former French colonies – Burkina Faso, Mali, and
Niger – left the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). ECOWAS had intended to use its military forces to restore neocolonial order in these nations but refrained, as Russia lent support to national liberation forces.7
The globalists in the US, who envisioned globalization as the Americanization of the world, failed to implement their project despite pouring massive amounts of money and weaponry into Ukraine, a once-thriving Soviet republic now doomed to perish ingloriously for the sake of others’ interests. The notion of “defeating Russia on the battlefield,” repeated like a mantra by short-sighted Western politicians, has not come true. The much-vaunted Ukrainian “counteroffensive,” on which the US and NATO had pinned their hopes, ended in failure. Desperate to overcome Russia, the West resorted to reckless gambles, crossing red lines and employing unacceptable methods. Tactics of terror and attacks against civilians were used, along with the mobilization of Banderovite, Islamist, and neo-Nazi militants, as well as so-called Russian opposition activists, sent to kill by Western instructors and criminals serving the Kiev regime.8
The transition from the current world order – stigmatized by Western notions that allow the “golden billion” to continue living at the expense of the rest of the world – to a society shaped by the will of the World Majority as a more just world order is a critical aspect of envisioning and building a better future.
In January, the terrorist Darya Trepova was sentenced to 27 years in prison for the assassination of journalist Vladlen Tatarsky. Trepova had been recruited by plotters of the terrorist act from Kiev.9 Terrorists responsible for killing and injuring nearly 400 people at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall concert venue attempted to flee to Ukraine but were intercepted on the way.10 In the first half of 2024 alone, Russia thwarted 110 terrorist acts and detained 1,050 individuals recruited by the enemy and involved in terrorist activities. Russia called on the UN to assess the role of the West and Ukraine in organizing terrorist attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure that resulted in casualties among noncombatants, including women and children.11
In 2024, the European Union disgraced itself through outright robbery and financial banditry, granting Ukraine the right to use interest accrued on frozen Russian bank accounts in European institutions, amounting to approximately $2.7 billion annually, despite having no legal right to use those funds. In essence, the EU decided to simply steal those assets to fund the war against Russia from Russia’s own pockets.12
The year was a difficult one for Russia. Driven by pathological envy and hatred, the West crossed previously unthinkable boundaries, leaving no alternative but a forceful response. On September 25, President Putin announced that Russia was compelled to reconsider its nuclear weapons policy, permitting their use in response to an attack by a nonnuclear state supported by a nuclear power.13 As Dostoevsky once wrote, “The most characteristic trait of our people is the thirst for justice.” The West, openly declaring its desire to destroy Russia, acted unjustly and ungratefully, and it has already paid the price with the noticeable erosion of the prosperous life it was used to building for itself at others’ expense.
For the first time in its 87-year history, the German automotive giant Volkswagen faced the prospect of closing several factories and laying off thousands of workers because its products, deprived of cheap Russian energy resources, had become unprofitable and could not compete with Chinese manufacturers.14 Similar crises have beset other European countries.
It appears that neither the British, who have been undermining Russia for centuries; nor the Germans, who instigated two world wars and are once again sending to our fields Leopard [tanks] with the cross insignia; nor the Americans, who suffered setbacks in Korea and Vietnam; nor the French, who have seemingly forgotten Napoleon’s humiliation, can grasp that it is unwise to provoke Russia. What happened in 2024 reiterated that nothing good will come of it for them. This criticism, of course, applies to the ruling elites and not to the peoples themselves, who are ready to live in peace and friendship with Russia.
Meanwhile, Russia, strengthening its ties with China and India, jointly offered the world a positive agenda. This vision of globalization as an objective process of building global partnerships and fostering cooperation among nations to address shared challenges and existential threats gained traction. The interaction of these three “civilizational states,” as some scholars term them, saw new developments throughout the year, marked by a series of visits and meetings among their leaders.
On May 16, during an official visit by President Putin to the People’s Republic of China, he held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who had visited Russia in 2023. Following their meeting, the two leaders issued a joint statement on enhancing comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation, emphasizing the special nature of their collaboration, outlining paths for joint development, and underscoring the leading role of Russia and China in shaping a just and democratic world order.15
In July, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Russia, reaffirming that both countries view their partnership as strategic. Both sides noted the significant growth in bilateral relations since 2022, including a fourfold increase in trade volume – from $15 billion to $60 billion.16
Relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea were solidified during President Putin’s official visit to Pyongyang in June, resulting in the signing of a Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.17 In September, President Putin’s official visit to Mongolia reinforced the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two nations, with discussions highlighting growth across nearly all areas of bilateral cooperation.18
Thus, contrary to the global isolation that the West unsuccessfully sought to impose on Russia, a vast framework of comprehensive strategic partnerships emerged and solidified in the Asian region in 2024. The US, which had declared the Indo-Pacific region a priority of its foreign policy,19 sought to disrupt this development but clearly failed to do so.
This framework included strengthened ties with Iran that reached a new level, continuing to evolve as a strategic partnership. Following the tragic deaths of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and other high-ranking officials on May 19, 2024, some in the West harbored hopes that Iran’s new leadership would be more pliant. However, those hopes proved unfounded.
The framework also expanded toward the Middle East and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. Alongside Russia’s traditional partners in this critically important region, its relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia increasingly took on the nature of strategic partnerships. Since early 2024, the UAE had been mediating humanitarian efforts in the Ukraine conflict, facilitating the exchange and repatriation of some prisoners of war.20
Throughout the year, Russia repeatedly expressed its readiness for negotiations and a cessation of hostilities, provided that Ukraine abandoned its course toward NATO membership and its role as an “anti-Russia.” However, the instigators of the war, who imposed this role on Ukraine, were not about to open the possibility for a resolution. Their aim was to perpetuate the conflict, deriving military profits and weakening Russia. A new level of tension was provoked by the West in August 2024, when it spurred Ukraine to invade [Russia’s] Kursk Province, providing Western weapons, logistics, and specialists for the reckless gambit. Regarding plans to strike deep into Russian territory with long-range missiles, Moscow issued a clear warning on September 14 that such actions would be treated as NATO entering the war against Russia, given that Ukraine lacked the capability to launch such missiles without NATO personnel and guidance systems.
After Donald Trump won the US presidential election on November 5, promising voters to end the war in Ukraine, despondency spread among the war’s instigators. Reports surfaced of French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer deliberating on how to prolong the conflict – whether to persuade the outgoing Joe Biden administration to authorize Ukraine to strike Russia with American missiles or to convince incoming President Trump not to scale back US military aid.
“Global power is exactly what the so-called West has at stake in its game,” President Putin explained during his October 27, 2022, address at the Valdai Discussion Club. “But this game is certainly dangerous, bloody and, I would say, dirty. It denies the sovereignty of countries and peoples, their identity and uniqueness, and tramples upon other states’ interests.”21
The president emphasized that “a future world arrangement is taking shape before our eyes. In this world arrangement, we must listen to everyone, consider every opinion, every nation, society, culture and every system of world outlooks, ideas and religious concepts, without imposing a single truth on anyone. Only on this foundation, understanding our responsibility for the destinies of nations and our planet, shall we create a symphony of human civilization.”22
“[T]he West will have to start a dialogue on an equal footing about a common future for us all,” the president stressed, as “this historical period of boundless Western domination in world affairs is coming to an end. The unipolar world is being relegated to the past. We are at a historical crossroads. We are in for probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and at the same time most important decade since the end of World War II. The West is unable to rule humanity single-handedly and the majority of nations no longer want to put up with this. This is the main contradiction of the new era.”23
Speaking in 2024 at the plenary session of the Valdai Forum, the president stated: “I would not want Russia to return to the trajectory it was on before 2022… That path involved covert interventions aimed at subordinating Russia to the interests of other nations that believed they had the right to do so.”24
In 2024, it became widely understood that February 2022 was a watershed moment, a starting point for reassessing and departing from the worldview that the West persistently sought to impose, in which it assigned itself the role of leader with the right to govern others.
From time immemorial, in seeking to unravel the mysteries of the future, humanity has turned to the predictions of seers and interpretations of natural phenomena, signs, and symbols. Starting in the mid-20th century, there has been a growing reliance on methods of cyclical modeling and mathematical simulation. For instance, the phases identified by Russian scholar Nikolai Kondratiev predict in each 45-60-year cycle a sequence of growth, its peak, and then a decline, transitioning into depression, followed by the rise of a new wave.
Many scholars believe that humanity is now at the end of the fifth cycle, which began around 1978 and is expected to conclude in 2024. Starting in 2025, a new phase of global development is anticipated.25
Thus, the prospects for the near future, both for the world and for Russia, appear encouraging. This is echoed in the conclusions of a report to the Club of Rome prepared by a team of scholars from Lomonosov Moscow State University under the leadership of its rector, Academician Viktor Sadovnichy. The report, titled “Beyond the Limits to Growth,” was released in the year marking the 50th anniversary of the Club of Rome’s seminal 1972 report “The Limits to Growth,” which profoundly altered existing paradigms and became a global sensation. The new report utilized mathematical modeling to analyze humanity’s current state and possible trajectories for its future development.26
The report, presented in Russia during its April 2024 release at Moscow State University, offers a forecast based on its analysis, findings, and conclusions. Within a broad spectrum of potential changes, it envisions the emergence and competition of two global systems: a hierarchical, caste-based totalitarian society led by an explicit or implicit “world government” controlling resource and information flows and employing digital technologies for total behavioral control and mental manipulation; and a so-called global organism – an egalitarian society of cooperation, individuality, and initiative, free from discrimination and intrusion into the privacy of its citizens. In this context, a key challenge lies in developing a new ideology framed as an ethical system that prioritizes collective values and social solidarity. The transition from the current world order – stigmatized by Western notions that allow the “golden billion” to continue living at the expense of the rest of the world – to a society shaped by the will of the World Majority as a more just world order is a critical aspect of envisioning and building a better future.
NOTES:
1 BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.
2 Egypt, Iran, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia.
3 Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.
4 XVI sammit BRIKS v Kazani, https://brics-russia2024.ru/summit/?ysclid=m3adc48ym0291646024
5 Intervyu Takera Karlsona s Prezidentom Rossii, http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73411
6 “Rezultaty vyborov Prezidenta Rossii-2024,” Kommersant, March 18, 2024, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6579312
7 “Dalshe bez EKOVAS: kak tri strany Sakhelya reshili zhit’ samostoyatelno,” TASS, February 2, 2024, https://tass.ru/opinions/19884999
8 “Naiboleye rezonansnyye prestupleniya kiyevskogo rezhima,” MID RF, June 20, 2024, https://www.mid.ru/ru/foreignj3olicy/mtemational_safety/1958204
9 ‘”Menya poslali s bomboy na smert’: kak Darya Trepova stala terroristkoy,” news.ru, January 22, 2024, https://news.ru/society/menya-poslali-s-bomboj-na-smert-kak-darya-trepova-stala-terroristkoj
10 “Zaderzhany terroristy iz ‘Krokus Siti Kholla.’ Kto ustroil samyy strashnyy terakt poslednikh let?” Lenta.ru, March 24, 2024, https://dzen.ru/a/Zf9SMX-gvDhj_U05?ysclid=m3anhdf17j301142340
11 “V RF v 2024 godu predotvratili 110 teraktov,” TASS, August 13, 2024, https://tass.ru/proisshestviya/21592503
12 “Evrosoyuz otdal Kiyevu russkiye dengi,” RIA Novosti, May 13, 2024, https://ria.ru/20240513/evrosoyuz-l 945439111.html?ysclid=m3b4opp3r0510786675
13 “Putin predlozhil izmenit yadernuyu doktrinu Rossii,” RBK, September 25, 2024, https://www.rbc.ru/politics/25/09/2024/66f43e279a7947da96ff7cc27ysclid=m3b69hy4w4204464660
14 “Volkswagen mozhet zakryt zavody v Germanii vpervyye v istorii,” Pikabu, September 2, 2024, https://pikabu.ru/story/volkswagen_mozhet_zakryit_zavodyi_v_germanii_vpervyie_v_istorii_11771659
15 “V Pekine zavershilis rossiysko-kitayskiye peregovory,” RIA Novosti, May 16, 2024, https://ria.ru/20240516/peregovory–1946323882.html?ysclid=m3b916zl19478933359
16 “V MID Rossii prokommentirovali vizit Modi,” RIA Novosti, July 10, 2024, https://ria.ru/20240710/indiya-1958791145.html?ysclid=m3b9gio0up619046133
17 “Rossiya i KNDR podpisali Dogovor o vseob” yemlyushchem strategicheskom partnerstve,” RIA Novosti, June 19, 2024, https://ria.ru/20240619/dogovor-1953890806.html?ysclid=m3ba9ob6fy848088501
18 “Rossiysko-mongolskiye peregovory,” Prezident Rossii, September 3, 2024, http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/74991
19 US Indo-Pacific Strategy, February 12, 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/U.S.-Indo-Pacific-Strategy.pdf
20 “Minoborony o posrednichestve OAE pri vozvrashchenii plennykh s Ukrainy,” Kommersant, January 31, 2024, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6480209?ysclid=m3c17n2ijg459471409
21 “Valdai International Discussion Club meeting,” http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69695
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 “Valdai Discussion Club meeting,” http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/75521
25 Akayev A.A., Korotayev A.V. “O nachale fazy pod” yema shestoy kondrat’yevskoy volny i problemakh global’nogo ustoychivogo rosta,” Vek globalizatsii, No. 1 (2019), pp. 3-17.
26 Preodolevaya predely rosta. Osnovnyye polozheniya doklada dlya Rimskogo kluba, ed. Academician V.A. Sadovnichego. Authors: V.A. Sadovnichy, A.A. Akayev, I.V. Ilin, I.A. Aleshkovsky, A.I. Andreyev, S.E. Bilyuga, A.L. Grinin, L.Ye. Grinin, O.I. Davydova, N.O. Kovaleva, A.V. Korotayev, S.Yu. Malkov, D.M. Musiyeva, Yu. N.Sayamov, V.V. Ustyuzhanin. Izdatelstvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 2024.