beyondukraine.euandrussiainsearchofanewrelation

Conclusions.
What Policy Actions for the EU?
Aldo Ferrari
After the Ukraine crisis, relations between the EU and Russia hit
rock bottom, the lowest point from the end of the Cold War. To
make things worse, today’s dispute is nothing but the latest
chapter of an already long story of misunderstandings and
conflicting strategies on the post-Soviet states of Eastern Europe
and South Caucasus. The further deepening of this cleavage may
inflict serious damage on all interested parties: the EU, Russia and
several post-Soviet states. Therefore it is crucially important to
overcome a scenario which may recreate the atmosphere of
confrontation that marked the Cold War. It will not be an easy
mission because of the very different aims of the involved actors.
As Carmen Claudín and Nicolás de Pedro put it in chapter 1, “the
centrality of the Ukrainian question for Russia lies in the fact that
it is not simply a foreign affairs issue – like Iran or China is.
Ukraine is at the heart of Russia’s national interests and
essentialist narrative. On the contrary, for the EU, Ukraine was an
issue of mere foreign policy – with no perspective at all of an
institutional integration - but now it has become a matter of selfassertion
and inner coherence of its own values”.
Although the Russian proposal of the idea of a ‘Greater
Europe’ – from Lisbon to Vladivostok (see Timofeev’s chapter 5)
– appears scarcely feasible in the present day scenario, the gravity
of the Ukraine crisis imposes a profound rethinking of the
relationship between the EU and Russia. The competition for post-
Soviet space represents the most serious threat to the partnership
between Brussels and Moscow. Indeed, relations with Russia are