Анджела Стент - Putin's World - Russia Against the West and with the Rest

The legal framework that governs Russia’s relations with the EU is the 1994 Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, which has been renewed annually since its initial ten-year mandate expired. It was further refined in 2005 by the addition of a road map for four Common Spaces, projects on which Russia and the EU are supposed to work together: the Common Economic Space; the Common Space of Freedom, Security, and Justice; the Common Space of External Security; and the Common Space in Research, Education, and Culture. Initially intended to give new momentum to the relationship, this road map has never been implemented. 14The problem with the EU-Russia relationship is one of incompatible structures and misunderstanding of the relationship. The EU is all about detailed formal rules. Russia operates largely on the basis of informal arrangements, in which formal institutions are far less important. It has always, therefore, been a challenge for the EU and Russia to make progress on complex issues because of these fundamentally different—and often diametrically opposed—political and legal cultures.

During Putin’s first term in office, Russia was officially committed to improving ties to the EU. Annual summits were held, and Brussels maintained its promise to seek to integrate Russia into Europe and nudge it toward accepting EU standards. They had important mutual interests. After all, Europe was importing 30 percent of its gas from Russia after the 2004 enlargement, Russia was one of the EU’s most important trading partners, and Russia is the EU’s largest neighbor. However difficult a neighbor, it was imperative to maintain and seek to improve relations. But after the 2004 enlargement it became more challenging to move the relationship forward. The new members from Central Europe and the Baltic states, despite their overwhelming dependence on Russian energy, were far more suspicious of Russian intentions and policies, and the new common neighborhood between the EU and Russia became increasingly contentious.

This was evident after the EU introduced its Eastern Partnership initiative in 2009, a joint program between Brussels and six of Russia’s neighbors—the three South Caucasus states (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) plus Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus—designed to bring them closer to European standards. Its most visible and controversial—from Russia’s point of view—achievement has been the signing of Association Agreements with Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova. 15From the EU’s perspective, these agreements are intended as a substitute for EU membership, but Russia has chosen to interpret them as a prelude to membership and to bringing the EU to Russia’s borders.

The Kremlin has always objected to the EU’s attempts to bring Russia’s western neighbors into its orbit. After all, this threatens Russia’s ability to secure a “sphere of privileged interests” in the post-Soviet space. Moreover, Putin’s major project for his third term was the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), a union of post-Soviet states that is intended to strengthen Russia’s influence in its neighborhood. The Association Agreements are incompatible with the EEU, as the Ukraine crisis has demonstrated.

The origins of the 2013 Ukraine crisis go back to Brussels’s negotiations with Kyiv for an Association Agreement, which began in 2008 and were completed in 2013. Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych himself was ambivalent about whether Ukraine should sign on with the EU, but many of Ukraine’s influential oligarchs favored closer economic ties to Europe. The Kremlin viewed Brussels’s negotiations with Kyiv with suspicion but did not pay undue attention to them until the summer of 2013. Until then, Russia had always depicted NATO as a much greater threat to Russia’s interests than the EU. Meanwhile, EU negotiators focused on a myriad of technical issues. With hindsight, people have criticized Brussels for not understanding the broader geopolitical implications of its negotiations with Kyiv. EU officials argue that they offered to talk to Russia, but Moscow showed no interest. Whatever the truth, Ukraine was a core interest for Moscow, and in mid-2013 the Kremlin woke up to the fact that the thousands of pages of EU legal documents essentially meant that Ukraine—an important trade partner for Russia—would not be able to join the Eurasian Economic Union and that it would eventually orient its trade more West. So Russia belatedly began to pressure Yanukovych not to sign the deal, with Putin eventually offering him a $15 billion loan if he turned down the Association Agreement.

Since the annexation of Crimea, EU-Russia relations have dramatically deteriorated, although there are considerable differences between the ways individual members view the relationship. Following the Crimean annexation, Brussels imposed sanctions on individual Russians said to be involved in the seizure, but these were modest. The July 2014 downing of MH-17, the Malaysia Airlines flight shot down in the fields of the Donbas that was transporting many Europeans to an AIDS conference, convinced the EU—led by Germany—to impose much tougher financial sanctions. Russia retaliated by imposing counter-sanctions on European foodstuff imports, which initially had a negative impact on some European economies. So far, the EU has reaffirmed its sanctions every six months since July 2014, despite considerable opposition from Italy, Greece, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, and business groups in many countries. The EU has accepted that Russia does not desire to be integrated into Europe on Europe’s terms, and it remains conflicted over how to deal with Moscow.

The EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has led several efforts to redefine Brussels’s relations with Moscow, the latest being the declaration of five principles that will govern the relationship: full implementation of the Minsk II cease-fire agreement designed to end the war in the Donbas as a precondition for any change in EU policy; an increase in ties with Russia’s neighbors; a strengthening of the EU’s resilience, “and that of our neighbors, to future Russian pressure, intimidation, and manipulation, including energy security, cyber security, security of civilian aviation, a response to Russia’s financing of radical parties in Europe, and the countering of Russian propaganda”; selective engagement with Russia on foreign policy issues vital to the EU; and a boosting of people-to-people contact and support of Russian civil society. Moscow has pushed back, accusing the EU of “making the future of EU-Russia relations hostage to the Ukrainian authorities.”

The Ukraine crisis has unfolded during a time when the EU itself has come under increasing strain, both as a result of problems with the EU’s and Greece’s near default and as waves of migrants from Syria, other countries in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa have provoked opposition in European societies and led to the rise of populist, anti-EU parties. Germany alone has taken in more than one million migrants since the intensification of the Syrian Civil War in 2015. Russia’s actions in Syria have exacerbated the refugee crisis since it began its bombing campaign in September 2015. Tensions over migrants have manifested between countries such as Germany, which has pursued a generous policy toward admitting refugees, and Poland, Hungary, and other former communist countries, which have insisted on accepting only Christian migrants and have claimed that their societies are not equipped to integrate these migrants. Tensions have also flared up within most countries, notably Germany, where the anti-migrant party AfD (Alternative for Germany) gained 13 percent of the vote in the September 2017 elections, making it the largest opposition party in the Bundestag. Russia has sought to take advantage of these EU tensions and has given support to groups and countries that oppose accepting migrants. Moreover, the 2015 British vote to leave the EU has further weakened it.