The Case of the Ukraine–Russia Undeclared War 2013/2014: Lessons for the EU’s Estimative Intelligence 1

Abstract

How did the EU’s foreign policy machinery anticipate and handle the events leading from the summer of 2013 to the late summer of 2014 starting with Russia increasing pressure on Eastern Partnership states up to the to the annexation of Crimea by force and the military intervention in Donbass. The authors find that some aspects were less surprising, such as the U-Turn of President Yanukovych before the Vilnius summit, whereas the Russian annexation of Crimea came as a complete surprise to officials in the EU institutions, if not in all member states. The EU should have performed better when anticipating events in Ukraine but was not well enough equipped in terms of legal authority, collection capacities, and organisation of diplomatic and assessed intelligence to anticipate Russia’s actions, which represented a major discontinuity. The EU machinery suffered from geo-political and security blind spots regarding the role of Russia, disregarded some warnings because of suspicions of national bias, and some political agendas limited receptivity in relation to events in Ukraine. This chapter discusses potential lessons such as bringing together analytical resources to analyse the Russian threat, analytical dissent procedures and structural reforms relating to the decision of labour between Commission and EEAS.