EU–Russia Relations in Crisis

Abstract

This chapter outlines substantially diverging views of Russia and EU on post-Cold War Europe. It highlights some key trends in Russian foreign policy and in EU's policies towards its eastern neighbours. The chapter also explores dynamics of action-reaction to explain how a logic of competition has developed in interaction between Moscow and Brussels, distinguishing between three stages in their relations. The Strategic Partnership became a continuous balancing exercise between preferences of Brussels and Moscow. The constructed dichotomy between perceived normative foreign policy of EU and perceived Realpolitik of Russia seems to lead EU policymakers to believe that its policies have neither a geopolitical motivation nor geopolitical consequences. Denis Volkov states that 'successive Russian governments had exploited the situation if not of conflict then of controversy between Russia and West'. With Ukraine crisis, constraints on this logic of competition disappeared and escalated into direct confrontation.