Karmo Tüür is head of the Centre for Baltic and Russian Studies at the University of Tartu in Estonia. He is an acknowledged political scientist with an expertise in Russia and its relations to the Baltic region and the EU. In this short interview, conducted on the sidelines of the international conference ‘Russia and the EU: potential for partnership?’, he comments on Estonia’s role in the widening of Russo-European cooperation
Mr Tüür, do you see a certain...
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Apart from the early planning stages, Russia has not taken part in the Eastern Partnership or the European Neighbourhood Policy. Amongst a number of practical reasons, they fear it endangers their own regional integration projects as well as their own rapprochement with the EU. But let’s not underestimate the role of national pride here. How could the world’s largest country by territory, a crucial global player in economic, military, and foreign policy terms, accept being put into the ...
... easily result in her being locked up for life. No less counter-effective was the (alleged) rigging of last year’s parliamentary elections.
As Martin Lukac rightly points out in his insightful article on the Russian attitude to the EU-Ukrainian rapprochement, there are signs of a lack of political will both to release the leading figures of the Orange Revolution and to address the issues of the bloc’s concerns. According to what was agreed last Monday, Mr Yanukovych now has until the Eastern ...
