beyondukraine.euandrussiainsearchofanewrelation

10 Beyond Ukraine. EU and Russia in Search of a New Relation
The Ukrainian crisis is therefore the latest episode of a
progressive deterioration in relations as Luca Ratti highlights in
chapter 3. Both NATO and the European security architecture are
still facing unresolved issues which are a legacy of the Cold War.
Their origins has to be found in the volatile nature of the East-
West settlement which brought the Cold War to an end, with the
agreements of 1989-1990 failing to clarify the former Soviet
space’s collocation in the new European security architecture.
However, one should not make the mistake of considering the
EU’s policy towards Russia as a monolith, one consistently
backed by all the member states together, suggests Stefan
Bielański in chapter 4. The Baltic States with a large Russianspeaking
population and Poland have traditionally had strong anti-
Russian sentiments, fearing the revival of Russia’s imperialistic
ambitions, which led them to join NATO. On the other hand,
Hungarian and Czech Republic leaders seem much less worried
and do not intend to close the door on a foreign policy stance built
upon closer (at least bilateral) relations with Russia.
By any account, today’s confrontation between Brussels and
Moscow is a lose-lose game, according to Ivan Timofeev in
chapter 5 who underlines the need to relaunch the Russia-EU
dialogue, and establish a mechanism of regular multilateral
consultations (contact groups) on the crises in Europe. A key
condition for this is sparing no effort in achieving a cease-fire in
Ukraine, by jointly promoting negotiations among the conflicting
parties and aiming at a long-term solution to the conflict by reshaping
the country’s territorial structure.
The benefits of talking with adversaries is also underlined by
Sean Kay in chapter 6. Even though the United States has often
sought to isolate governments not adhering to international norms,
there have been exceptions, like during the 1962 Cuban missile
crisis, that brought significant results. He argues that Russia’s
illegal annexation of Crimea has added greater cohesion to the
West while accelerating a rebalancing of responsibility sharing
between the United States and Europe. According to Kay a careful
mix of political and economic punishment, diplomatic