Russia’s multilateral cyber norm promotion: The duality of great power projection and digital authoritarianism

Since the 2010s, the Russian Federation has devoted significant resources to promoting its own interpretation of cyber norms. To this end, Russia has engaged in various cyber dialogues in different multilateral settings. The article adopts a constructivist perspective to explain Russia’s role as a norm entrepreneur, shaped by its great power identity and underlying vulnerabilities both domestically and internationally. We examine Russia’s norm-promotion strategies within the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the United Nations (UN). We argue that within the CSTO – where cultural homogenisation among members promotes a common outlook – socialisation is an effective approach for advancing cyber norms. In contrast, within the UN – where actors from diverse backgrounds converge – Russia persuades others to endorse its proposed cyber norms by clustering them together with founding international principles, such as national sovereignty, non-interference, and territorial integrity. Against this backdrop, we further inquire why Russia’s promotion of cyber norms within the UN has not been significantly affected by its malign cyber activities and its ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine, while these developments have partly challenged Russia’s entrepreneurship and cyber cooperation within the CSTO.