Özet:

The objective of this article is to investigate whether Russia is really a great power in the context of the policies that it has pursued in the crisis in Libya. In order to avoid the limitations of the Classical Realism and Neo-realism prioritising state or international system in their level of analyses, the study examines the question of if Russian great power status is relevant within the framework of the presumptions falling into the Neo-classical Realist thinking in international politics. Having defined the necessary elements determining the great power status of states in the sets of the realist theoretical analyses, the work intends to explain the extent to which Russia’s policies and de facto presence in Libya are part of those conceptual settings. In line with these objectives, the article argues that Russia’s policy in Libya, after the interference of NATO to the country, has been largely shaped by the acceptance of being a great power, as being the main driving force, fed by the ideational and material sources of the Russian state. Having used the method of qualitative content analysis, the article has proved that the policies of Russia in Libya and towards the same country in international level are to a large extent related to maintain and further expand the Russian great power status and could be best explained by the assumptions that the Neo-classical Realist theory contains in international politics.

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