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8 Beyond Ukraine. EU and Russia in Search of a New Relation undisputable Russia’s influence. To this aim and with the view to highlighting the goodwill of the Russian government to enhance cooperation with the European Union as a pro-active and equal partner, some important steps were taken including the Bologna process (implemented by Russia in 2007), visa liberalization for some categories of Russian citizens, Partnership for Modernization (promoting EU-Russia technological scientific exchange) and, to some extent, energy security cooperation. However, this strategy proved to be short-lived. Clearly Russia overestimated its ability to convince its European partners to share the same path – on equal footing – to build a common economic and security architecture. Sooner than expected, political divergences and vital interests emerged. As a result, the Greater Europe project was progressively frozen, if not plainly abandoned. As of 2012, Russia started to actively promote its “turn towards Asia”, or simply put towards China, which is, at the same time, both a key partner and a major challenge for Moscow. So it comes as no surprise that the Eurasian project started to rank high in Russia’s foreign policy. The Ukrainian crisis made this trend crystal clear, and inevitably led to Russia’s isolation from the West, which, in turn, ignited a strong anti-Western stance, shared by the vast majority of the population, also thanks to the effective state propaganda. To make things worse, the Kiev protests that broke out in autumn 2013 further aggravated Russia-EU misunderstandings, with the risk of completely compromising 25 years of efforts by both sides. Indeed, this showed how weak such efforts had always been as the EU-Russia dialogue had never really taken off and never achieved high-level and concrete results. Against this background, it goes without saying that Moscow has always perceived the EU-NATO expansion with hostility. By the same token, the EU has regarded with suspicion any form of economic and political integration between Russia and post-Soviet countries, reading such initiatives as Moscow’s clear attempt to restart an imperialist project. Ukraine has thus become the main
Introduction 9 ‘battleground’ where years and years of misunderstandings, frustration and “missed opportunities” converged. However, the joint EU-Russia joint attempts to solve the Ukrainian crises, which were undertaken during the “Normandy Four” meetings (Germany, France, Russia, Ukraine), resulted in signing the weak – but still important – Minsk agreements. This helps to prove that there is still room for cooperation between the two sides. These agreements may hopefully set the stage for a more comprehensive deal aiming to close the gap between the EU’s and Russia’s competing visions. Bearing all this in mind, this Report investigates the main causes of the revived ‘Cold War’ by providing the points of view of the main actors involved (Russia, the U.S., the EU as a whole and the “New Europe” in particular) and, at the same time, by sketching out viable options to restart the EU-Russia dialogue. In their opening chapter, Carmen Claudín and Nicolás de Pedro analyse the relationship between the European Union and Russian federation in the post-Soviet period. In particular, they place the spotlight on the EU ‘soft power’. This concept has acquired a negative connotation in Russia’s view, since ‘colour revolutions’ are often interpreted as a result of the EU’s expansionism under the ‘soft power’ policy umbrella. In particular, the ultimate goal of the ‘colour revolution’ – a democratic Ukraine – would be a denial of ‘Putinism’. Accordingly, this would demonstrate that there is no such thing as an Eastern Slavic specialness that legitimizes a model of democracy specific to some Russian tradition. However, as Aldo Ferrari put it in chapter 2, competition over the post-Soviet space remains the major obstacles to reach mutual understanding. The different assessments of ‘colour revolutions’, the clash over missile installations in Eastern Europe, the Russian- Georgian conflict in 2008, the opposing political projects regarding post-Soviet states gradually strengthened a sharp contrast that exploded at the end of 2013 in Ukraine. According to Ferrari the weight of history and the determination of Russia to defend its interests have to be seriously taken in account by the EU when drafting scenarios for the post-Soviet space.
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