Abstract: The existing literature largely agrees that Russia and China actively bolster and protect authoritarian regimes as alternatives to liberal democracies. While empirical research predominantly focuses on economic and military aid as primary mechanisms, emerging studies on ‘leader visits’ reveal that great powers send visible, immediate, and robust signals of support to their protégés, especially against domestic and regional threats. Given that face-to-face interactions enable host leaders to more precisely discern their patrons’ intentions, we argue that leader visits constitute a critical strategy employed by Russia in its global efforts to bolster authoritarian durability. Our empirical results demonstrate that although domestic instability generally deters foreign official visits, domestic instability actually increases authoritarian regimes’ chances of attracting a Russian official visit. We also find that Russia’s visits to authoritarian regimes experiencing domestic turmoil are linked to its power competition with the United States, particularly following a series of democratic revolutions in Russia’s former protégés during the early 2000s. The findings underscore the strategic use of leader visits as a tool to bolster autocratic allies in times of global power competition, thereby advancing scholarship on authoritarian resilience. Policy implications include recognizing the geopolitical significance of diplomatic visits in signaling support for instable regimes and the need to incorporate such symbolic gestures into assessments of great power competition and authoritarian diffusion strategies.
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