... see the 25th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s breakup and the emergence of new Russia on its ruins. Time is ripe for taking stocks and mapping a road into the future... ... potential at a qualitatively new level and at still tolerable costs. The expansion of Western alliances to the territories Russia considers vital to its security has been... ... China have been established. The agreement to pair the Silk Road Economic Belt and the Eurasian Economic Union has proved helpful in avoiding rivalry in Central Asia. Vast...
In a thought-provoking paper, “How to talk with Russia?”, Kadri Liik singles out three types of Russian analysts: “Many ... ... immediate reactions to it.
Kadri Liik knows Russia better than most of those in the West who write about Russian foreign policy. She was born in the Soviet Union and shares... ... opinion are exactly the parts of the narrative that should remain at the centre of future EU-Russia discussions, at least at the expert level.
The “Western” system;...
... mandate to handle just the trade issues, but one of the Union’s members, Belarus, is not a member of the WTO. For the EU, all trade negotiations are based on WTO rules. This means that is hard to find an actual agenda for any discussion with the EEU: one can think only of low-level technical issues, such as standards and customs procedures. To invest such low-level interaction with expectations of a major break-through would be not just futile, but also dangerous.
It might happen that Russia would just fail to appreciate the proposal, but in a worst-case scenario it would misinterpret it altogether. It may hope that the West has finally granted it its due geopolitical entitlement and other sorts of unconditional acceptance. But this would not be ...
