Managing Imperial Decline: A new EU Policy towards Russia
Managing Imperial Decline: A new EU Policy towards Russia

Author(s): Huga Blewett-Mundy
Subject(s): International relations/trade, EU-Approach / EU-Accession / EU-Development, Politics and Identity, Russian war against Ukraine
Published by: EUROPEUM - Institut pro evropskou politiku
Keywords: EU-Russia relations;Russian imperialism;
Summary/Abstract: On 24th February 2022, Vladimir Putin, who was elected Russia’s president in 2000, launched a full-scale invasion (or what he called a ‘special military operation’) of Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian war that started in 2014. Notwithstanding the brutality of this unprovoked act of military aggression, it is not the first time that Russia has violated and threatened the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbours. On its eastern frontiers, what the European Union (EU) has been confronting is nothing less than the return of the centuriesold force, Russian imperialism. The existential challenge facing Ukraine, and the postwar process of European integration, means that the EU can no longer return to a business-as-usual approach towards Russia. Rather, the goal of the EU’s Russia policy should be to consolidate a secure and democratically resilient European eastern neighbourhood. As one of the world’s strongest normative and economic powers, the EU has the capabilities to address the revival of Russian expansionism, both in the short- and long-term.

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