... and the wider post- Soviet spectrum, advanced the Eastern Partnership. Both initiatives have attempted to solidify strategic and geopolitical interests whether one gazes at Romania’s regional ambitions of counterbalancing a historical Turkish-Russian hegemony around the Black Sea or Poland’s resurging presence as a regional mediator, which strongly reminds of previous instantiations, particularly the Promethean movement. The Eastern Partnership initiated by Poland with Swedish support aimed to restructure relations with the post-Soviet space, preserving incentives for compliance in absence of actual enlargement or accession guarantees. The bilateral agreements, channeling ...
... stage of development demanded by the EU. And at the same time, these countries have to go through a series of reforms and of course show that they have adhered to the desired values, especially those related to democracy.
Salomé Zourabichvili
In Russia, the Eastern partnership programme is seen more as a method to decrease Russia’s influence in the region, to progressively disassociate its neighbours from it and to weaken Russia politically and economically. How would you answer these claims?
Knowing ...
... momentum to the swinging of the ‘Ukrainian pendulum’. The false ‘Europe or Russia’ choice offered by the European Union further polarized Ukrainian society. Two alternative structures of the region were set against one another: the Eastern Partnership under the auspices of the European Union and the EurAsEC Customs Union. Russia could not remain an onlooker and managed to convince Yanukovych that signing the Association Agreement with the European Union was not good for Ukraine. Thereafter the crisis escalated, not least because Western countries supported the Maidan protesters ...
... have been his most important ever —, Putin hit a markedly anti-Western tone. Partially rewriting history, he bemoaned the West’s hypocrisy, double standards, and mingling in foreign countries; this time, ‘crossing a line’, in Russia’s sphere of interest. We have a Russia-West situation; we have hostility. Yes, it looks like a new ‘Cold War’.
But it won’t get to that. It can’t get to that, because there is a huge disparity in power. Russia is ...
... policy chief. It needs to be someone with a vision and strategic thinking; someone whose allegiance to European ideals is unquestionable but who is a realist and not ashamed, or worse, afraid of geopolitics. Someone who will rethink and re-calibrate the Eastern Partnership, acknowledging its geopolitical nature. Someone who can make it fit the new reality shaped partly by a self-assured Russia, protective of its sphere of influence and as disinterested in modernising trade and security cooperation with Europe as in modernising its own economy or its foreign policy toolkit.
Photo: PAP/Paweł Supernak
Fortunately, a change of EU leadership ...
The Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius in November 2013 demonstrated that the European Union’s policy toward its eastern neighbors has developed into a highly contentious issue between the EU and Russia. The summit was overshadowed by the decision of the Ukrainian government not to sign an Association Agreement with the EU and the following mass demonstrations in Kyiv. This paper analyses the EU’s relations with the EaP countries and illustrates ...
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However, Armenia's choice in favor of the Customs Union seems fairly conscious and dominated by security considerations, as currently Russia is Armenia's only security guarantor, and with no alternative in the works.
At a joint press conference with Belorussian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei on November 19 in Moscow, Sergey Lavrov said that "Moscow's approach implies that signing or not signing appropriate documents with the EU is a sovereign choice of any Eastern Partnership state."
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No doubt, Yerevan's decision has been sovereign and conscious. It is another matter that the choice was historically predestined by the well-known and still effective legacy of the Soviet commonwealth. This legacy ...
... developments seem to be on the way. In light of the happenings of the past few days, Europe may come out of this better than it would have, had things gone another way.
It has long been known that the talks between the EU and Ukraine should end at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius, with the signing of a Free Trade and Association Agreement. It’s been known that such an agreement would be against Russia’s well-articulated geopolitical interests, and that it would much prefer to see its South-Western neighbour join its own regional integration project, the Customs Union. It’s been known that Moscow will deploy every tool to undermine ...
... Vladimir Chizhov
As the Eastern Partnership Summit is approaching, discussions about the foreign political course of Ukraine and its relations with Russia and the European Union are intensifying. How will Kiev’s choice affect relations within the Russia – Ukraine – EU triangle? What is the future of the Eastern Partnership? We discussed these questions during the presentation of “Four Scenarios for Russia-Germany Relations” with Permanent Representative of Russia to the European Union and member of RIAC,
Vladimir Chizhov
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Vladimir Alekseevich,...
... combatting natural disasters, and an environment protection program. The defining feature of this new stage in EU policy towards the East is the demand for the harmonization of national legislation with EU legal provisions.
RIA Novosti
EU Enlargement (in russian)
It is this component of the “Eastern Partnership” aimed at influencing the development of the multilateral regional cooperation and the economic convergence of the partner-states with the EU markets that has caused the greatest concern in Russia. Russia sees it as a threat ...
