National Security Strategy 2021
Decode Russia's 2021 National Security Strategy (Ukaz No. 400) — its nine priorities, civilizational framing, and how MID and Kremlin officials cite it operationally.
Ukaz No. 400 and the Doctrinal Hierarchy
The National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation was approved by Presidential Decree (Ukaz) No. 400 of 2 July 2021, signed by Vladimir Putin and published the same day on pravo.gov.ru. It superseded the 2015 Strategy (Ukaz No. 683 of 31 December 2015) and reset the doctrinal baseline less than eight months before the 24 February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Article 1 of Federal Law No. 390-FZ of 28 December 2010 'On Security' designates the Strategy as the foundational planning document from which subordinate doctrines flow: the Military Doctrine (last revised 2014), the Foreign Policy Concept (revised 31 March 2023 by Ukaz No. 229), the Information Security Doctrine (2016), and the Maritime Doctrine (revised 31 July 2022).
The 44-page text is organized into five sections and 106 numbered paragraphs. Section I (paragraphs 1–7) defines terms. Section II (8–24) assesses the international environment. Section III (25–32) lists national interests and strategic priorities. Section IV (33–100) elaborates each of nine strategic national priorities. Section V (101–106) addresses implementation. Analysts reading MID statements should treat paragraph numbers as citation handles: Russian diplomats and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev — who chaired the drafting — routinely invoke specific paragraphs in interviews to Rossiyskaya Gazeta and Kommersant.
The Nine Strategic National Priorities
Paragraph 26 enumerates the priorities in a deliberately ranked order that departs from the 2015 text. The 2021 sequence is: (1) saving the people of Russia and developing human potential; (2) defense of the country; (3) state and public security; (4) information security; (5) economic security; (6) scientific-technological development; (7) ecological security and rational nature use; (8) protection of traditional Russian spiritual-moral values, culture, and historical memory; (9) strategic stability and mutually beneficial international cooperation.
Two shifts deserve attention. First, demography was elevated to the first priority — a reflection of the population decline documented by Rosstat (the 2020 census recorded 147.2 million, down from a 1992 peak). Second, paragraph 91 introduced 'protection of traditional spiritual-moral values' as a stand-alone priority for the first time in any Russian strategic document, codifying language that had previously appeared only in subordinate texts such as the 2015 'Foundations of State Cultural Policy.' This priority was operationalized on 9 November 2022 by Ukaz No. 809 ('On the Approval of the Foundations of State Policy for Preserving and Strengthening Traditional Russian Spiritual-Moral Values').
The demotion of 'international cooperation' from a higher position in 2015 to ninth — and last — in 2021 is the single most telling textual signal. Paragraphs 101 and 8 frame the external environment as one of intensifying 'geopolitical instability,' Western containment, and the erosion of international law as a constraint on what Moscow calls 'unfriendly states' (nedruzhestvennye gosudarstva). The phrase entered formal legal use via Government Decree No. 430-r of 5 March 2022, but its conceptual basis sits in paragraphs 18–20 of the Strategy. Paragraph 19 specifically names attempts to 'isolate Russia' and the use of 'double standards' in international relations as principal threats, language that MID spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has since repeated in nearly every weekly briefing.