The issue of the future relationship between the European Union, on the one hand, and Russia on the other, continues to remain prominent in current international relations. The issue is itself a fall-out from the collapse of the Soviet Union (the USSR) into which Ukraine was fully incorporated until the end of the Cold War. But, unlike the fate of countries like Georgia, Latvia and Estonia, once also part of the USSR, which now have more or less settled relations with the respective geopolitical spheres of Russia and the EU, the process of settlement of Ukraine’s status has prolonged itself.
Russia under President Putin, has found it necessary, at times, to allow an institutionalized relationship to develop between these various former satellites and the European Union, as in the case of Estonia and Latvia which are now members of the European Union. But with Ukraine, Russia has found much difficulty in allowing this possibility for a country which Nikita Krushchev managed as First Secretary of its Communist Party, from which position he ascended to that of General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and head of the Soviet Union.
So the ties of sentiment and, in respect of parts of Ukraine, historical and ethnic affinity between Russia and Ukraine, have meant that the leadership of Russia has had more difficulty in envisaging a Ukraine that does not have a close institutional relationship, and a diplomatic policy line that prioritises relationships with Russia over Europe (in particular the European Union) and, by extension in Putin’s’ view, with the wider Western world.
The present issue seems to have arisen as a result of what has appeared to be a growing anxiety on the part of the European Union to push ahead with a negotiation with Ukraine that would fairly quickly achieve integration. From that perspective, the model is the integration of countries like Poland and the Czech and Slovak Republics, now full members of the EU, and (in particular in the case of Poland) prone to align themselves with the objectives of Western diplomacy.
From President Putin’s perspective, and from that of the Russian public if the polls in support of him are to be believed, this orientation of the EU’s diplomacy weakens Russia’s effort to create a new post-Soviet Union diplomacy that leaves some Russian influence in respect of the orientation of its former Warsaw Pact associates; and in respect of a post-Cold War evolution of the European continent, will allow Russia a degree of diplomatic influence resulting from its own size and (even though now diminished) international influence.
The indications are that Putin was taken by surprise by the speed with which, from his perspective, the EU leadership (whose objectives he would equate with those of the wider NATO-Western powers leadership) seemed anxious to move, following what the Russian leader would feel was their rapid incorporation of the former Eastern European communist powers.
From Russia’s contemporary perspective, a Ukraine, fully incorporated into the EU would change the political or diplomatic, balance of power in Europe, this, in turn, affecting Russia’s wider global diplomatic standing. And the support that he has been getting in the polls at home, would suggest that his perspective is, so far, not far out of line with popular Russian feeling.
The Western powers have now taken a bolder step in their diplomacy, in the face of Putin’s resistance to their initiatives, and have now placed sanctions on Russia. This is a significant move, in the sense that the orientation of Putin’s economic policy for Russia, now in effect a capitalist economic power, has brought the country into substantial economic integration with the economies of the Western powers.
The shift towards economic sanctions is a serious one, to the extent that economic agents in both the EU and the US, as well as Russia, will feel the effects. So in a situation in which there has been increasing mutual influence between the Russian and Western economies, if the Russian response to the sanctions is not positive in the relatively short run, the major economic actors in both spheres will be seeking to exert influence on their respective leaderships to find an alternative approach.
To many observers, it would seem that there is now a certain diplomatic reversal to the modes of the Cold War, and thus to a choice of modes of decision-making that have probably lost their relevance. But what the present contretemps surely shows is, that this partial return on the wider European continent including Russia, of Cold War modes of diplomacy, is still felt to have some legitimacy.
From the Russian perspective, the present evolution of events including what Putin sees as an attempt at the incorporation of Ukraine into the EU, is unacceptable, and it reflects a disposition on the part of the EU to change the balance of power, between what used to be called the West and the East, on the European continent.
For Putin, it seems to represent an effort to change that balance without a wider European (including Russian) consultation, and is therefore not acceptable. But from the EU’s perspective, EU integration is an inevitable process that rejects traditional divisions as unacceptable in today’s process of global integration; and, therefore, Putin’s approach really reflects an unwillingness on his part to allow Russia and its former neighbouring satellites to engage in this inevitable process.
The EU has successfully drawn the American administration into its course of strategic thinking. And it is left to be seen to what extent this will affect other aspects of Russia-US relations.
