Bodishteanu Nicole Vitalevna – Ph.D. Student, Junior Researcher, International Laboratory on World Order Studies and the New Regionalism, Faculty of World Economy and International Af-fairs, National Research University «Higher School of Economics».
At the end of the 20th century, the former republics of the USSR, in addition to the classic dilemma about further self-determination and geopolitical choice, faced the problem of ensuring security at both the micro and macro levels. One of the states that finds itself in a situation, where ensuring security at the expense of its own internal resources has become impossible is the Republic of Moldova, which is part of Eastern Europe, like Belarus and Ukraine. When analyzing the general security architecture of micro- and macro-regions, each of these states deserves special attention due to the specifics of their participation in regional organizations of the post-Soviet space and the foreign policy strategies they have chosen. However, all these states have gone through certain identical stages in building relations with the Russian Federation, the European Union and the United States. The article ex-amines and analyzes informalized security relations between the Republic of Moldova and the Russian Federation in the period between 2015 and 2023. The relatively new shelter theory was chosen as a theoretical framework explaining the for-eign policy strategy of the Republic of Moldova. The author comes to the conclusion that, despite its «impulsive» political behavior, determined by various internal factors, the Republic of Moldova, in different periods of its existence, turned to the Russian Federation to form short-term or long-term shelter alliances. Within the chronological framework of 2015–2023, both gradual rapprochement and distancing between the two countries can be traced, depending on the internal situation, as well as on which players (pro-Western or pro-Russian) dominated the poli-tics of the Republic of Moldova in a given period.
Republic of Moldova, Russian Federation, Eastern Europe, small state, shelter theory, shelter alliance.
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