The EU and Russia

The significance of Russia's war against Ukraine can hardly be overestimated. This is the biggest interstate war in Europe since the Second World War. On the 24th of February 2022, the largest country in Europe, Russia, attacked the second largest, Ukraine, on three different fronts, with massive military force, with the clear purpose of territorial control and at an immense human cost. In doing so, the Kremlin broke one of the most important taboos in European security, that on territorial expansion through military force. Confronted with a massive war along its borders and no normative framework for security negotiations left, the EU operates in an entirely new strategic environment, one that is based on pure confrontation and determined by an imminent threat. This generated a sense of urgency and unity in the EU unseen before. It created a window of opportunity for the reinforcement of European Security and Defence Policy. Even more, the EU took up a new role as security actor that would have been unthinkable without the context of a massive war so close by. This article will briefly discuss Russia's motives for the invasion. A good understanding of the reasons for this war is crucial to comprehend the strategic context the EU is operating in and the policy options it has. The next section will outline four ways in which the war has affected the EU's foreign policy role and relations with Russia. This will be followed by some reflections on the impact and significance of these changes. For many years, and very assertively since 2007, Russia has voiced its security concerns, in particular over NATO enlargement. Many analysts have concluded that Russia's motives to invade Ukraine on 24 February 2022 were the result of these security concerns and the gradual deterioration of relations with the West.1 Yet, as Kimberly Marten argues, 'to disentangle the relationship between NATO's geographic enlargement and Russia's relations with the West is not as easy as it first appears. The causal chains that may seem to link the two are complex, subject to interference by many other variables, and mediated by the evolving subjective interpretations of a diverse cast of Russian actors.' (Marten 2023, p. 210) The question whether antagonist relations over security that preceded the war also caused the war is one that deserves more attention, in particular in a context where debates are mostly driven by theoretical assumptions. This is not to deny the reality of tensions over security that have existed for many years before the war but to explore whether they are the reason why the Kremlin went for war and whether opposition to NATO enlargement was driven mainly by concerns over security or over loss of status (Sarotte 2021). It is beyond the scope of this article to analyse the Kremlin's motivations for the war in 2022 in detail (see Casier 2023 for a more extended analysis). Yet, a couple of lines need to be set, as they are essential for understanding the political context in which EU-Russia relations operate. Undeniably, president Putin carefully built up and escalated a rhetoric about Russia's security concerns over 2021, the year preceding the war. In his state of the nation address of 21 April 2021, Putin used the term 'red lines' as a clear warning to the West. 'Those behind provocations that threaten the core interests of our security will regret what they have done in a way they have not regretted anything for a long time. ... I hope that no one will think about crossing the "red line" with regard to Russia. We ourselves will determine in each specific case where it will be drawn.' (Putin 2021a). Only by the end of the year, Putin specified where the red line would be drawn, formulating three 'unconditional demands' (Trenin 2022b)2: no further expansion of NATO to post-Soviet states, no deployment of offensive weapons in the proximity of Russia and the withdrawal of NATO military infrastructure from member states that joined after 1997. In spite of these statements, the likelihood of NATO expansion being the main motive for Russia's invasion deserves a closer look. First of all, it should be noted that the idea that the fear of Ukraine joining NATO led Russia to a pre-emptive invasion is also dismissed by some close to the Kremlin. Dmitri Trenin, one of Russia's leading foreign policy analysts, stated just before the invasion: 'No degree of NATO expansion, including to incorporate Ukraine, will threaten the military balance and deterrence stability. ... Therefore, in terms of military security, it's correct to say I don't see NATO expansion as such a terrible threat.' (Trenin 2022a). From an unexpected corner, leader of the Wagner group Prigozhin stated at the start of the mutiny on 23 June 2023: 'The Ministry of Defence is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block. The special operation was started for a completely different reason.' (Prigozhin quoted in Van Brugen 2023). Turning to actual arguments, there are different reasons to assume why fear of NATO expansion to Ukraine was unlikely one of Russia's main motives for the war (Ferraro 2023; Marten 2023). First, it should be noted that NATO accession for Ukraine was all but imminent when Russia waged war on Ukraine. A vague prospect had been given to Ukraine at the NATO Bucharest summit of 2008, but that was fourteen years before the invasion of February 2022. The vague formulation then was largely a compromise resulting from a sharp disagreement between the US administration and European member states. While rhetorical references to the prospect were made occasionally after 2008, most importantly at the NATO Brussels summit in June 2021,3 little significant progress had been made towards Ukraine's accession (Ferraro 2023, p. 14), nor was membership expected any time soon. It is interesting to note that military co-operation between Ukraine and NATO only increased substantially after Russia's annexation of Crimea (Ferraro 2023, p. 13). Increased co-operation was thus a reaction to Russia's offensive, in a context where the annexation of Crimea was not followed by a Ukrainian counter-offensive, let alone one supported by NATO. Moreover, before 2022 US weapon deliveries were fairly limited and 'Ukraine had absolutely no capacity to attack Russia' (Marten 2023, p. 238-239). It was also in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine that the Ukrainian parliament on 23 December 2014 renounced the 'non-bloc status' of the country, that former president Yanukovych had introduced (Pifer 2014). At a more general level, there are indications that NATO enlargement was not perceived by Moscow as such a profound threat as often assumed. Between 2000 and 2010, for example, when most of NATO's eastern expansion took place, the numbers of troops and weaponry that Russia deployed along its borders closest to the enlarged NATO (its Western and Southern military districts) 'fell steeply' (Marten 2023, p. 220). Nor did Putin express serious concern in 2022 about the effective accession of Finland to the alliance, despite its great military importance, with a capacity of mobilising an army of 280,000 and adding 1340 km to the NATO-Russia border.4 These and other arguments lead Kimberly Marten to conclude that there is 'evidence that the whole NATO enlargement issue has been more a symbolic red herring than a real security problem for Russian leaders, used strategically abroad to try to manipulate the West into taking Russian security interests seriously, and at home as a way of manipulating nationalist support' (Marten 2023, p. 234). When it comes to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the question needs to be asked how the Kremlin expected the latter would improve its security situation, in particular in a context whereby the security demands of December 2021, mentioned above, were 'far beyond Kyiv's reach' and no ultimatum was posed to Ukraine (Ferraro 2023, p. 13). Inevitably, there is a degree of speculation in answering this question, but it is striking that with a full-scale war against Ukraine, the Kremlin opted for one of the most risky and costly scenarios, without trying alternative options (Ferraro 2023). Russia may have miscalculated the chances of success of its military invasion and the reaction of the Euro-Atlantic community, but if it genuinely believed the US wanted to make Ukraine a bridgehead, it would for sure have expected the US to help Ukraine significantly after the 24 February 2022 invasion. It is improbable that Moscow would have expected the West to take limited retaliation measures against a war on that scale, against a country of the size and strategic importance of Ukraine, and while breaching the vital principle of non-violation of borders, and threatening European security on a scale unseen since World War II. What can be said with certainty, is that Russia's security situation has all but improved since 24 February 2022. Finland and Sweden have given up their traditional neutrality status to join NATO. German Chancellor Scholz announced a Zeitenwende or historical shift, sealing the end of the classic axis of reconciliation between Russia and the West, dating back to the Ostpolitik of Brandt. All NATO countries increased their defence budgets. Furthermore, there is little doubt that Russia has suffered a loss of prestige due to its heavy military losses (Dalsjö et al. 2022) and has lost regional and global influence. If NATO expansion is unlikely to be the main reason for this war, what then was the Kremlin's motive? There was a second line in Russia's official discourse prior to the war that drew much less attention than the one on Russia's security. It was one of undeniable irridentist claims on Ukraine. In Summer 2021, for example, Putin wrote an article in which he claimed that Russia, Ukraine and Belarus formed one 'triune' nation and Ukrainians and Russians 'one people' (Putin 2021b). On many other occasions, he referred to Ukraine as 'Russian lands' and Ukraine as a Bolshevik creation (Putin 2022a), suggesting its dissolution. During the war, in what seemed a comparison to tsar Peter the Great, he suggested that Russia was just taking back what was theirs (Putin 2022b). Against this background, Russia's war against Ukraine appears as 'an epitome of its struggle to reconnect with its past imperial self' (Mälksoo 2022, p. 7). Beyond the scope of this article, this reconnection can be seen as part of a bigger social transformation in three decades of post-Soviet Russia.5 In terms of foreign policy doctrine, there was a clear shift over time in how Russia regards itself as a great power and how the latter is connected to territory. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has aspired to be a great power. The ambition is at the heart of its strategic culture (Götz and Staun 2022) and is embedded in the old state tradition of 'derzhavnost', whereby Russia can imagine itself only as a great power (Legvold 2007). The concept suggests that Russia is not just seeking recognition as great power but also feels entitled to this status. Back in 2003, Putin referred to great power status as a condition for Russia to flourish within the borders of the Russian Federation: 'such a country as Russia can only survive and develop within the existing borders if it stays as a great power.' (Putin quoted in Tsygankov 2005, p. 132). By the time of the 2022 invasion, the reasoning had been reversed: the point was no longer that great power status enabled Russia to operate within the post-Soviet borders, but the Kremlin came to believe that territorial expansion had become the condition for great power status. The idea of Russia's identity as great power had blended with a geopolitical idea of irridentism, whereby Russia is seen as 'naturally' bigger than the borders of the Russian Federation. This blending can be called a geopolitics-identity nexus, the belief that only a territorially greater Russia could be a great power. It is indeed reconnecting to old imperialist interpretations of derzhavnost, as this quote by Vladislav Surkov (until February 2020 personal advisor to Putin on Ukraine and often dubbed the Kremlin's ideologist until then) illustrates: 'For Russia, constant expansion is not just one of the ideas, but the true existential reality of our historical being. Imperial technology is still effective today, with empires renamed superpowers.' (Surkov 2021). This, however, does not explain why the invasion happened in 2022 and why not earlier, for example in 2014, when the Ukrainian army was much weaker and taken by surprise. The Russian reading of the developments in the Ukraine crisis in early 2014 – experienced as an 'existential crisis' (Youngs 2017, p. 14) – have no doubt accelerated and radicalised the transformation of hegemonic discourses about Russian 'greatpowerness' and how it is linked to territory. As Torbakov argues: 'The Ukraine conflict [of 2014] has undoubtedly been pivotal. It threw into question Russia's self-understanding as a great European power and smashed to smithereens the two main pillars of the Kremlin's long-term strategy: maintaining good working relations with Europe, especially with Germany and France, and promoting the 'Eurasian integration' of former Soviet lands.' (Torbakov 2021). It radicalised Moscow's policy towards Ukraine but was not driven by a coherent policy. Arguably, a sequence of policy failures between 2014 and the February 2022 invasion radicalised the Russian policy choices (Watling and Reynolds 2022). Initially, Moscow's strategy was one of keeping a foot in the door in Ukraine through the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The provision for far-reaching autonomy for the Donbas under the Minsk II agreement would have facilitated this but ended up in a stalemate. Apart from fuelling the war in Eastern Ukraine, Moscow tried a variety of policies to destabilise Ukraine and to gain control. They included economic coercion, exploiting energy dependence, the distribution of Russian passports in the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, the naval blockade of the Kerch strait, intelligence operations, support for pro-Russian politicians, operations to topple the regime and troop mobilisation along the border in 2021 (Hurak and D'Anieri 2022; Watling and Reynolds 2022). All delivered few results and Ukraine was only alienated more from Russia. Frustration over these failures may have pushed the Kremlin towards the use of massive military force, hoping for a permanent solution for the 'Ukraine problem' through the dissolution of Ukraine as sovereign state. The significance for the EU goes without saying. With the large-scale and violent invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the confrontation with Russia, that had started in 2014, was taken to a new level. Russia became nothing but a strategic adversary and major threat for European security. With the crumbling of the post-Cold War security order, there was no normative framework left to dialogue with Russia on security issues. In contrast to 2014, this time the developments pushed the EU to a radical revision of its policy. Less than two decades before the 2022 invasion, relations between the EU and Russia were still characterised by optimism. The EU and Russia entered into a Strategic Partnership and had high ambitions to develop their collaboration. It was the most institutionalised partnership the EU had. Yet, it was a marriage of convenience, rather than a love affair. Despite the steady increase of trade volumes, the marriage started to decay quickly, resulting in an escalating logic of competition and dwindling trust. The breakup came with the Ukraine crisis of 2014. When Russia annexed Crimea, the EU suspended the Strategic Partnership and imposed sanctions. From a logic of competition, we entered into an era of confrontation. However, this confrontation was characterised by a high degree of ambiguity. Sanctions largely excluded the energy sector, revealing a pragmatic understanding that energy trade was too important for both sides to be targeted. To a certain extent, business continued as usual. The EU remained the first trading partner for Russia and Russia the third trading partner for the EU. Despite sanctions, the EU saw a record import of Russian natural gas in 2019, representing 41% of all imported gas (European Commission 2021). Also, the of The between confrontation and business as came to an end with Russia's large-scale offensive against Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The war ended the in the EU's policy. I will that radical happened along four First, the EU had been over Russia, it took a as as the invasion were also between the EU and the The EU the line since its on the first of the in the terms Russia's military aggression against Ukraine. By its and military Russia is and European and global security and (European 2022a). On both sides of the within and within the the war was as a regional conflict to which the NATO or the EU were not a As NATO are not part of this we have a to it does not and beyond 2022). At the it was clear that Ukraine large-scale support to itself against Russia. The EU support' from the but the degree of support over time. While at early of the war, the seemed to be to support Ukraine to this over time. As Ukrainian defence seemed much than expected and as it control of of in 2022, over Kyiv's war deliveries started to the hope that Ukraine would the war and back Russia. It should also be noted that the EU was much than in 2014. from the annexation of Crimea, it was not taken by when Russia in 2022. US had announced for that Putin was to the EU time to its to on against Russia and to support for Ukraine. in its support for the of Ukrainian the EU unity in an policy On 2022, the was Ukrainian and to social security, and A second was the of enlargement policy. When took as Commission in 2014, he announced to enlargement for the next years 2014). took with a to lead a geopolitical vague this may have been at the the of enlargement was in geopolitical as a foreign policy to Russian influence. The European of June 2022 its to enlargement in the Western it status to Ukraine and and a prospect to (European 2022b). The symbolic significance of Ukraine EU status can hardly be overestimated. at a time when the Kremlin Ukraine's sovereign to and waged a war at territorial the EU in to Ukraine's sovereign and its to its The may have a far-reaching impact on the Eastern Partnership that may all but in as a policy at but not the Eastern Partnership will its main the states, three have the prospect of Ukraine, and is under EU sanctions. country, has no in co-operation with the not if it with normative has been in a to closer to the but being to Russia for reasons of its the Eastern Partnership may thus over time. This is a new in a of and whereby the EU's eastern are A third of to the window of opportunity that the war has created for the EU's Security and Defence The EU's on the threat posed by Russia's war and the sense of urgency a president used the opportunity to an summit in on the issue on 2022. It led to the that Russia's of a shift in European EU member states to defence to energy and to a more economic in As this to the EU's capacity to in the of security was nothing The drew on for strategic autonomy and but the war an opportunity to it The EU's for Security and that was in when the war broke was to a new and much more radical threat with Russia in the of the 2022). The behind the Strategic was 'The more security us to make a and increase our capacity and to our and and 2022, p. significant than these rhetorical are the real in the EU's security role in to the war. They a The EU became an actual of military to Ukraine. By early 2023, it had of military to Ukraine under the European The had been created as an for defence and military with the EU's classic or in In the context of the war, the was used to military support to one in a Ukraine. The increased the of the to The shift of military for Ukraine for the of a first for the EU. first came with the EU in support of Ukraine up with the purpose of Ukrainian All this a security role that is new for the a of weapons to a conflict a couple of should be at the the support by the EU is still rather than military contrast to the and a of the military support is still by member states 2023). the EU's new security role goes in with a of NATO. as by president or as by his NATO is back in and It the first states of the Euro-Atlantic to for their security. the EU's new security role is to where it comes it will in the of NATO as security The has to with EU sanctions. In contrast to 2014, the imposed on Russia are radical and and 2023, p. At the time of the EU had against Russia in to the war imposed on Belarus for its in the (European of the EU with the of 2014, over and and have been The EU has imposed import and They were by the European Commission as of and of in 2022 to 2021). as as and and There are import on and Sanctions in the the of the EU for Russian A was imposed on Russian four and to the was the EU has The import on in December 2022, excluded by by but is still expected to of EU from Russia. The EU also imposed on Russian and While the of the import of natural gas is not part of the sanctions, there has been a in this gas from Russia by the had by the end of 2022 to one of the one year 2023). the often voiced concerns that EU on Russian natural gas created a of power for this is a The EU and its member states to the and itself to a from Russian Moreover, the energy measures taken by the EU in to Russia's aggression the of energy security and policy in as the and 2023). These are not only They also have a different purpose than the in 2014, that mainly had a The new in the of was 'to to his war 2022). The economic of is to but it is clear that the EU has not to this The Russian has in 2022 with a The for 2023 from a further with over status to a of the Russian of in 2023 (European of the EU 2023). over gas be one of the main reasons why the on Russia did not have the a of its in 2022, due to and a but it still to make a of the gas on the European in 2022. the EU became the of its policies in the gas of the that made this speculation This of speculation is unlikely to be in 2023 and may still have a on the Russian Russia's war against Ukraine thus the EU's policy in four significant a on Russia, the of enlargement a new security role and sanctions. While they a some reflections are in the question should be whether the are The EU has in a new security but will it also to this role in case the sense of urgency and threat For this to be the a of for and will be from With the Strategic a is to the defence and strategic autonomy of the but many are to make the referred Russia's war against Ukraine has a in the use of the or the of but one that needs to be and further if it is to be Moreover, the EU may have it is also with a It may have given a to the war, this does not it has a foreign and security policy that is in of the and the EU's is not determined by the need to in a but by the that the of what is for the EU to its are and 2023, p. The EU's new security and foreign policy role at the regional does not into a role at the global level. there is a of global in the In

Economic history · Political science · Economic Sanctions and International Relations · European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies · History · Post-Soviet Geopolitical Dynamics

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