... Russia succeeds in Ukraine, it would be somewhat naive to expect our adversaries to change their views on the world, since it is tantamount to demanding a change in their philosophy of life.
Russia has traditionally had a difficult relationship with the Western international order based on power. From the moment of the first contacts between the Russian state and Europe at the end of the 15th century, our neighbours reasonably came to the conclusion formulated by the ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund von Herberstein: Russia is very large and very different from Europe. From that moment on, Russia ...
... other similar crises should in the long term be addressed on the basis of agreed permanent neutrality and merger in new formats of cooperation and security. In the first place, Eurasian.In view of the new realities, above all, China’s movement westward, the stake should be put on replacing Russia’s failed unilateral European geopolitical integration by Eurasian one, by transition from the aborted Greater Europe project towards Greater Eurasia or, in the long term, even towards a Community of Greater Eurasia from Singapore to Lisbon. The purpose of relations with ...
... suspect each other of using particular professional or social groups as an instrument of “soft power”. Nonetheless, in my view, the pitch is worth making.
Working on current openings and opportunities we should not forget that long-term Russian attitudes Europe and even the West at large will, to a large extent, depend on the success or failure of the European project. For centuries, educated Russians looked to the West in search of modernisation patterns, best social practices, and intellectual inspiration. Today many critics ...
... do anything other than support. Moscow, on the other hand, is fixated on the elites it can control – and is therefore bound to resist the change. Furthermore, it would interpret any difficulties with the societies as subversion originating in Europe. That way, even if the West did concede Russia a sphere of influence, it would never reap the desired benefits in terms of stability – but it would have lost the OSCE-based principles of the European order.
Finally, the third option – a combination of firmness and an appealing project ...
Russia and the European Union (EU) are currently engaged in a geopolitical struggle for control of the post-Soviet space. While Russia is the current regional hegemon, the European Union and NATO have been trying to gain influence in what Russia refers to as its “near ...