Russia's roadmap for a new world order, in the shape of its National Security Strategy (2021) and its Foreign Policy Concept (2023), is well explained by Jade McGlynn (Jade's Substack, 5.4.2025), save for one massive confusion. That universalist 'liberal order' which the Russian documents portray as passing into history, was never based on any coherent ideology and did not really exist.
'Classical' liberalism - as exemplified by the fairly unsystematic J. S. Mill - had already disintegrated before World War II. By the 1930s the likes of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek had launched what became known (especially to academics) as 'neoliberalism' with its reliance on free markets, whilst Lloyd George's plan in Britain and Roosevelt's New Deal in the USA meant state action to tackle unemployment. These were separate - and even opposing - pieces of what Victorians might have understood as 'liberalism'.
That breakdown went much further after 1945. The rules-based international order was always more about avoiding repeats of the Second World War and the Holocaust than any clear 'liberal' vision. As the later 20th century developed, the political Left - already heir to socialism which claimed to surpass liberalism - allied with new nationalisms as European colonial empires dismantled. Sometimes resisting Communism meant backing one set of authoritarians against another. Meanwhile, apologists for what McGlynn calls liberal ideals (in fact cultural liberal), such as gender equality, LGBTQ rights,secularism, and multiculturalism, were usually opposed to neoliberal economic policies from Reagan, Thatcher, and their successors. In this sense McGlynn is quite correct to say the Russians have not created these developments, but are (accurately) describing the new world (dis)order they lead to beceause the West is incapable of providing an alternative. But that has much to do with there already being no 'liberal order' before 2022.
The Russian imperialists have not needed to contribute at all to the process. Indeed, by pushing Sweden and Finland into joining NATO they are actually delaying the West's breakdown. McGlynn is entirely right to point out that Russia's claim to embody humanity's 'traditional moral heritage' is spurious in the extreme. But cultural and economic wars ensure no one agrees what 'civilisation' consists of, let alone whether it is worth supporting.
Maybe its still possible for liberals(?) like McGlynn and myself to win over those young people who say they prefer a dictator who doesn't need to bother with elections. But in reality aggressive dictators like Putin may be the only people capable of driving all the West's variegated groups of campaigners into thinking through what they are doing and arguing out their differences.