A Perfect Storm; Or What Went Wrong and What Went Right for the EU in Ukraine

Abstract

This essay analyses and discusses the background and the evolution of the conflict in Ukraine in light of the wider contestation between the European Union and Russia. The main argument is that the conflict in Ukraine is first and foremost a symptom and not the root cause of the wider conflict between Russia and the West. The essay puts particular emphasis on examining the problems in the EU’s approach concerning the East. In particular the problems in policy and scenario planning are pointed out. The essay ends with conclusions, warning of the potential for a wider rupture and even conflict between the EU and the West and Russia.

The severe crisis in Ukraine, generating conflict and even war, has resulted in key Western actors and institutions indulging in much soul-searching, the European Union (EU) included. This is hardly a surprise, as the collapse of the regime of President Viktor Yanukovych and the events that followed took the whole Western scholarly and diplomatic community largely by surprise. First, by annexing the Crimean peninsula and incorporating it swiftly into its federal structure and, second, engaging in continuing destabilisation of Ukraine through hybrid means, Russia has not only revealed its acute displeasure with the course of events in Ukraine and Eastern Europe but has also thrown down the gauntlet, essentially challenging the very foundations of the European security architecture and, indeed, international law.

Yet the crisis did not come out of the blue. On the contrary, it can be seen as one that has been in gestation for years and was bound to come to a head eventually (Haukkala 2015). In order to understand why this is the case, and why the eruption of the crisis nevertheless took the majority of Western actors by surprise, we must take an analytical look at how the European order, and consequently EU–Russia relations, have been developing during the post-Cold War era and how the EU’s policies, however well-intentioned, have inadvertently contributed to the negative situation in which we find ourselves. This essay seeks to accomplish both aims. This is done, first, by briefly outlining the main contours of post-Cold War order in Europe and the role the EU has played in seeking to tie Russia into that very order; and secondly by a separate examination of the role the EU policies have played in the formation of the conflict dynamics between the EU, and to an extent the West more generally, and Russia.¹

The main argument of this essay is that the conflict in Ukraine is first and foremost a symptom and not the root cause of the wider conflict between Russia and the West. In other words, Ukraine is the stage on which the main dramatis personae of the wider conflict act their roles and play out that conflict. This is not to suggest that either the EU or the wider West is the main culprit in the conflict. On the contrary, the conflict in Ukraine can be likened to a perfect storm created by the characteristics and policies of the EU, Russia and Ukraine and their consequent interaction. This is a conflict that no single party either wanted or necessarily promoted—although we now know that Russia has been gearing potentially to wage such a conflict since at least the Orange revolution of 2004 (Jonsson & Seely 2015). Laying blame is hardly ever a fruitful intellectual exercise—and in the world of international politics and diplomacy even less so—but one has to see fault in all the parties. In Ukraine, successive governments essentially ran the country into the ground, squandering opportunities for reform and meaningful economic and social development and aggravating latent tensions in its own body politic, as well as between the EU and Russia through its inept handling of relations in all directions (Dragneva-Levers & Wolczuk 2015). In Russia, the faults lay in deciding to frame the EU’s increasing presence in the so-called ‘common neighbourhood’ (a term never accepted by Russia, by the way) in zero-sum terms and taking full advantage of the opportunities afforded by the fall of President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 (Forsberg & Haukkala 2016, chs 2, 8). As for the EU—although its sins are mainly those of omission—we shall argue that, contrary to what Russia has asserted, the defining feature of its policy has been the essential unwillingness of the EU to engage in a game of ‘spheres of influence’ in the East and its propensity to develop policies devoid of long-term thinking about the strategic ramifications these policies might have. It is this continuing ‘sleep-walking’ (House of Lords 2015, p. 6) that seems to be the defining characteristic of EU responses in the East that is both the main concern and the object of criticism in this essay.

The problems of incorporating Russia into an EU-centric order

When viewed from Brussels, the Grand Narrative of EU–Russia relations has been the EU’s repeated attempts at ‘constructive engagement’ with a view to tying Russia into an EU-centric order. In this reading, ‘Brussels’ and its institutions have been the ‘unipole’ with Russia envisaged as a recipient of norms, values and a whole gamut of policy best practices promoted by the EU. It should be pointed out that although Russia has been granted several privileges by the EU—the role of special ‘strategic partner’, as well as a much more lenient application of political conditionality—Moscow has been subjected to the same treatment as the rest of the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood. For all intents and purposes, they have been based on the EU’s claim of normative hegemony in Europe, built on asymmetrical sovereignty-challenging approaches (Haukkala 2010).

The question of whether the EU is in fact a genuine actor needs briefly to be addressed. To cut a long story short, two aspects merit attention, particularly in the context of EU–Russia relations. The first deals with the extent the EU can be considered an actor to begin with. Keukeleire and Delreux have captured the essence of what they call the EU’s foreign policy by arguing that it is ‘single in name, dual in policy-making method, [and] multiple in nature’; a foreign policy system defined precisely by the, at times, uneasy co-existence of two different and, at times, clashing policy-making modes of intergovernmentalism and community method (Keukeleire & Delreux 2014, p. 61). Following White (2001, pp. 24, 40–1), the EU can be envisaged as an interacting ‘foreign policy system’ that is constituted of three different layers of foreign policy making: the EU external relations (the former Community foreign policy, or foreign economic policy), the Union foreign policy (the CFSP and to a certain extent the CSDP), and the national (member state) foreign policies. The sometimes paradoxical entity called ‘European foreign policy’ is therefore an amalgamation forged in the interaction between these three layers of foreign policy making. To a certain extent, the different layers can be expected to have competing, or at least inconsistent, objectives and agendas. What is more, it should not be taken for granted that any of the layers in their own right would be internally consistent and coherent either. In fact it can be argued that, at least some of the time, European foreign policy can be envisaged as an internal crisis-management mechanism for the Union through which the competing agendas and (national) interests are managed (Keukeleire 2003, pp. 34–6).

Secondly, at the same time it cannot be denied that regardless of the level and quality of its actorness the EU has adopted and is implementing policies. Indeed, it can be argued that the adoption and development of the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) played a role (although not necessarily the key role) in paving the way to the current conflict with Russia. But even though the EU might be promoting policies, the true origins of its objectives and agenda have been questioned. For example, Richard Sakwa (2015) has suggested that the problem in the EU’s approach has been its increasing immersion into the US-driven ‘New Atlanticism’ that has set it on a collision course with Russia, with dangerous implications for the future of European security. This seems to be an interpretation put forward by key Russian officials as well, including President Vladimir Putin himself. Yet, in our view, this is a vulgar interpretation of the EU’s international role that does not do justice to ‘Brussels’ or the member states for that matter. Therefore in this essay we will proceed from the assumption that the EU indeed has indigenous actorness and it is precisely the various shortcomings it has portrayed in this department that makes the EU also at least partly culpable for the present situation.

This is not the occasion to discuss the problems in EU–Russia relations at length (Forsberg & Haukkala 2016; Maass 2016). At least initially, Russia also subscribed to the value-driven integrationist agenda: in the early 1990s, Moscow repeatedly voiced its ambition to join the ‘community of civilised states’, a process that was seen to entail the one-sided adoption of Western liberal standards of democracy and market economy (English 2000). Although during Vladimir Putin’s leadership this rhetoric subsided, some of the calls for closer integration and cooperation with the EU put forward in the early 2000s were still based on at least a tacit acceptance of the rules of the game propagated by the EU.

That said, under Putin Russia has increasingly come to reject the notion of a unipolar Europe, an eventuality that has come about gradually in three stages (Haukkala 2013). In the first instance, already visible during the 1990s, Russia made little or no headway at all in terms of converging on EU standards, while nevertheless still paying official lip service to them and the ideals that underpin them. In the second period, from the early 2000s, Russia started to disassociate itself from most of the objectives and principles propagated by the EU. The new narrative emerging from Moscow revolved around three main complaints: first, how ‘the West’—usually understood to be represented by the US, but increasingly by the EU as well—took advantage of Russia’s temporary weakness in the 1990s and imposed an alien set of policies and principles on Russia while side-lining the country politically in Europe (Averre 2007, p. 183); second, how Moscow was consequently unable to affect the EU’s policies towards Russia, with ‘Brussels’ insisting instead on a rigid implementation of often ready-made packages without consulting Russia properly (Karaganov 2005, p. 27); and third, how the EU has used its increased presence in the so-called ‘common neighbourhood’ to force the countries to make a false choice either between the EU or Russia (Stewart 2009).

Although the rhetoric coming from Moscow during this phase was at times increasingly belligerent (Schiffers 2015), the essential gist of the Russian argument seems to have been defensive, to cordon off alien influences to enable the indigenous and somehow more organic and ‘natural’ development of Russia. This has changed in the third and most recent stage with Russia taking a much more assertive role in promoting its preferred vision of order beyond its borders. In the first instance, this took the form of the Eurasian Customs Union and Economic Union (EEU) through which Russia has started to invest in a more institutionalised bipolar setting in Europe, with Moscow as the leading power in the other half of the continent with the expectation of attracting the majority, if not all, of the post-Soviet states under Russia’s leadership (Dragneva & Wolczuk 2013). Although the EEU has gained momentum in recent years, as exemplified by the expansion of its members from the original three to five, it is too early to declare the mission completed. The fact that Russia has been forced to resort to open blackmail and coercion to attract new members to the EEU speaks volumes about the power of attraction of the new regional bloc. Also the re-imposition of customs checks on the Russian–Belarusian border by Russia in summer 2015 was an indication of how fragile the new arrangements still were.

Indeed, Russia’s inability to pull the largest piece of the sub-regional puzzle, Ukraine, into its orbit prefaced the latest phase of events, with Russia assuming an openly belligerent stance against the continued projection of EU and wider Western policies and values in the East (MacFarlane & Menon 2014). The most spectacular manifestation of this was the conflict which erupted in November 2013 due to then President Yanukovych’s decision not to sign the Association Agreement with the EU at the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius. The decision, actively spurred by both threats and promises of rewards from Moscow, resulted in a domestic uprising under the banner of Euromaidan that resulted in the collapse of Yanukovych’s presidency in February 2014. Russia’s response to these events was as swift as it was spectacular, first annexing Crimea in early March and then quickly moving on to the destabilisation of Eastern Ukraine to halt Ukraine’s march towards closer European and wider Euro-Atlantic integration in its tracks (Wilson 2014; Menon & Rumer 2015).

The problems in the EU’s approach towards its Eastern neighbourhood

This section will examine the role the EU has played in the gestation of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. It also draws from my personal experiences as a policy planner but will be backed up with documentation and secondary literature to the extent that this is possible. The discussion will proceed in the form of five brief observations that, when taken together, paint a rather grim picture of the EU’s role in the process.

The EU wanted neither an Eastern neighbourhood nor a European Neighbourhood Policy

One may argue that to a degree both were in fact unwanted by-products of a wider process that had also been essentially unwanted: the Eastern enlargement of the EU. Rhetoric about the enlargement being the biggest success story of EU foreign policy (Rehn 2006)—albeit true—masks the essential difficulties and unwillingness the EU faced in embracing the process during the 1990s (Smith 1999; Schimmelfennig 2003), a feat that was repeated when it came to the Eastern neighbourhood. Indeed, anyone who recalls the debates in the early 2000s should know that at the time the EU was not looking forward to assuming new responsibilities beyond the Eastern ‘Big Bang’ enlargement. On the contrary, the main concerns revolved around the question of the EU’s own absorption capacity in terms of new members and the perceived need to take a break from the continuous rounds of enlargements that had started to resemble a perpetual motion engine (Haukkala 2008).

The adoption of the ENP must be analysed keeping this background in mind. As a consequence, originally the ENP was not an aspirational policy aimed at achieving a genuine gear change with the EU’s relations with its new neighbours but an essentially defensive policy meant to stave off demands, expectations and obligations both from new members and prospective neighbours. It is hardly a coincidence that the essential blueprint for the new ENP was launched in 2003, prior to the emergence of both new members and neighbours: it was a deliberate move on the part of some key member states to take the initiative in the development of ties with the Eastern neighbours in order to control and contain the process that was soon forthcoming.

At the same time, the EU paradoxically adopted a policy template that was wildly ambitious both in its rhetoric and its voiced objectives. As part of a ‘ring of friends’ the new neighbours were offered ‘everything but institutions’ that would entail wide-ranging cooperation and eventual association with the EU (Prodi 2002). The aim was also to (re)invigorate the Union’s normative agenda and apply conditionality more stringently to relations with non-candidate countries. Taken together, the ENP was an attempt at squaring the circle of relinquishing—or at least deferring indefinitely—enlargement, and retaining the Union’s normative power in Eastern Europe, while controlling and perhaps even curtailing the internal dynamics concerning the issues within the post-enlargement EU itself (Dannreuther 2006; Kelley 2006; Sasse 2008). As a consequence, the policy template was loaded with internal contradictions ranging from the discrepancy between the voiced ambitions and the EU’s actual willingness and ability to deliver to the existence of contradictory logics between security and cooperation in the implementation of the policy (Christou 2010).

The EU learned the wrong lessons from the Eastern enlargement

In the aftermath of the Big Bang enlargement the EU was convinced that its own transformative power had been the key in turning the fortunes of the Central and East European countries around. Although the accession process played an important role, the real factor was the essential willingness and, more importantly, the ability of the accession candidates themselves to engage in meaningful reforms (Vachudova 2005). What is more, the EU has been operating in a fairly presentist frame of mind, neglecting the influence of historical legacies on the prospects of successful Europeanisation, in particular when it comes to securing the gains made even in some of the Central and East European countries. Indeed, some of the democratic backsliding evident in Hungary and elsewhere has hinted at the possible limits of the EU’s approach in making a lasting impact on the new members while suggesting that the impediments for the EU might be even greater in the Eastern neighbourhood (Cirtautas & Schimmelfennig 2010; Schimmelfennig & Scholtz 2010, p. 454).

On top of this the EU was also operating in a benign geopolitical environment with no third party seriously questioning, let alone challenging, its policies and strategic objectives. On the contrary, the EU was actively supported and encouraged in its tasks by the global hegemon, the US (Baun 2004). To a degree the rapid enlargement of the EU was a regional application of liberal principles that were in the final analysis backed up by US primacy. In this respect it is noteworthy than on several occasions the US played a crucial protecting, enabling and spurring role in Europe, initially by pacifying the Yugoslav wars and later supporting and encouraging the EU’s Eastern enlargement, including opening accession negotiations with Turkey (McGuire & Smith 2008, pp. 222–25).

None of these crucial factors applied in the case of the ‘common neighbourhood’: the neighbours themselves were not reliable partners and agents of change; Russia increasingly acted as a regional challenger and even spoiler; and the US increasingly took a back seat in the East, increasingly concentrating on its own domestic problems and its pivot towards Asia. None of these lessons were, however, appreciated or anticipated by the EU at the time of devising and developing the ENP. On the contrary, the EU approached its Eastern neighbourhood as essentially uncontested, where it could seek a continuation of its accession model by other means. With its ENP the EU has been busy devising relations that, when taken together, would move Eastern Europe towards becoming part of a wider EU-centred order of prosperity, stability and integration. Although this approach has been rooted in geography, it has not been a geopolitical power projection project in the crude sense of the term. Indeed, the EU has been manifestly uninterested in pursuing spheres of influence and has declined to frame its role in the East in this manner, thereby highlighting its own strategic thinking that shuns zero-sum conceptions of international relations, and seeking to defuse tensions with Russia, which has been a much more ‘traditional’ actor in this respect. Despite all the rhetoric of partnership—now largely silent—the underlying reality has been that the EU’s policies have flown in the face of Russia’s insistence on framing the EU’s role in the Eastern neighbourhood in largely negative and competitive terms. As a consequence, the EU has been locked into an integration competition with Russia, despite being unwilling and ill-equipped to play that game (Forsberg & Haukkala 2016, ch. 8).

Internal dynamics have dominated the EU’s policy towards its neighbourhood

This was true at the inception of the policy, as was already mentioned, but the consequent development of the policy has been at the mercy of internal cleavages in the EU as well. The competition between the Eastern and Southern groupings has been real and enduring. The majority of member states have treated one direction as dominant while the other has been treated with indifference and/or suspicion. A good illustration of these dynamics is French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to propose the formation of a ‘Union for the Mediterranean’ to complement the Southern dimension of the ENP during the French EU Presidency in 2008. French unilateralism was one, although not the only, factor behind the adoption of the ill-fated Eastern Partnership a year later, as the Northern and Eastern caucuses in the EU tried to rectify the perceived imbalance between the East and the South. As a consequence, the EU has not at any time had a shared understanding concerning the stakes and prospects when it comes to the Eastern neighbourhood, or the Southern neighbourhood for that matter. This still applies.

Unforeseen events have been crucial in affecting both the parameters within which the EU’s policy would unfold and in the policy itself

Four issues are worth briefly flagging up. Firstly, the Orange revolution—which took both the EU and Russia by surprise—changed Moscow’s tack concerning the role the EU played in the region. Moscow’s previous indifference ended and it began to view the EU’s growing role and the Western orientation of CIS countries with increasing suspicion (Gretskiy et al. 2014). Although it was not appreciated at the time, the Orange revolution was the starting gun for the preparation of operations and practices witnessed first in Georgia in 2008 and then in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine since 2014 (Franke 2015).

Second, the war in Georgia in August 2008 was a dress rehearsal for the kind of hybrid—or full spectrum—conflict waged by Russia (Jonsson & Seely 2015). It effectively killed off the other leg of perceived Western encroachment on Russia’s sphere of influence, namely the enlargement of NATO. It also spurred the EU to launch the Eastern Partnership (although as mentioned internal EU dynamics played a role as well), interpreted by Russia as an ‘upping the ante’ in terms of geopolitical competition over the neighbourhood countries. The subsequent US reset and the lessening of overall US interest towards Eastern Europe during Obama’s first term sent to Russia the signal that it could act almost with impunity in its neighbourhood (Lo 2015, p. 172). These dangerous perceptions directly contributed to Russia’s subsequent actions in Ukraine.

Third, domestic events in Russia were crucial in a turn for the worse in Moscow’s perception of the EU’s role in the East. The so-called White Revolution in Moscow, where the rigged Duma elections of December 2011 resulted in hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets, was decisive in effectively halting Russia’s modernisation drive and making Putin in particular more worried about perceived Western attempts at destabilising the country by effecting ‘regime change’ there. Thus the events in Ukraine in 2013–2014 were viewed in very sinister terms by Moscow (Hill & Gaddy 2015).

Fourth, the tenacity and effectiveness of the so-called Euromaidan in Ukraine took all the key actors by surprise. Yanukovych assumed that the decision to back down from signing the Association Agreement was solely his to make and would cement his position in Ukraine. Russia expected nothing short of a full change of direction in Ukraine’s foreign policy while the EU, too, essentially capitulated and did not engage in bidding to win Ukraine over. Without the grassroots political movement in Ukraine Russia would have acquired at least a temporary victory in November 2013. The fact that this did not transpire was due to the dogged opposition on the Euromaidan which, while undoing the power of Yanukovych, also acted as the backdrop for the wider conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

The EU has been unable to examine both its own role and the role of Russia in the region through a strategic lens

The need for strategy in international politics is an overrated good and by no means a silver bullet. At the same time, the EU’s utter inability to appreciate the strategic ramifications of its own policies and ongoing changes in its environment over the past decade is nothing short of astonishing. The reason for this partly resides at a profound discursive level. According to Kowaƚ (2015, p. 13) the reason why policy analysts’ manifold warnings over the years about the problems in the EU’s approach in the East fell on deaf ears were the politicians ‘who were ready to listen only to the melodies that they themselves had created’ (Kowaƚ 2015, p. 13). Indeed, the habits of thinking and speaking about ‘Europe’ had become so entrenched that any notion of a sphere of influence was beyond the pale for the West, the EU included. Russia, too, seemed to be aware of this as by and large its protestations against the EU policies were in fact disingenuous, making claims that did not withstand serious scrutiny and giving grounds for EU representatives to dismiss these concerns as unfounded.

One should note an interesting precedent which probably goes some way towards explaining why the EU had a hard time deciphering Russia’s messages correctly. On the eve of the Big Bang enlargement in February 2004 Russia threatened to refuse to extend the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) to the ten new EU member states, unless its specific concerns over the negative impact of the Union’s enlargement on the Russian economy and society were taken into consideration. For its part, the Union refused to accept a linkage between the extension of the PCA and its enlargement, while stressing its willingness to discuss Russia’s concerns in a separate context. The crisis was resolved in April with the adoption of a joint declaration that essentially dispelled most Russian concerns, especially in the realm of the economy, by showing that they had been largely erroneous to begin with, and soothed Moscow by promising that the outstanding issues would be resolved in a mutually acceptable way in the future (Van Elsuwege 2008, pp. 336–9). With the ENP the EU has continued this tradition, seeking to allay fears that the Union is somehow seeking to displace Russia in the post-Soviet space or is trying to undermine regional cooperation Russia has been developing with its neighbours, by simply insisting that the developments are, in fact, not directed against Russia and that they are compatible with Russia’s own long-term interests (Haukkala 2010, p. 149).

Having established this, one should note that at the same time Russia repeatedly voiced its increasing displeasure at EU policies, so that the EU should have at least entertained the possibility that Moscow would not remain indifferent to a radical shake-up of the political setting in the region. The ENP and the Eastern Partnership drew Russia’s repeated ire (Stewart 2009). For example, during the post-EU–Russia Summit press conference in Khabarovsk in May 2009 President Dmitry Medvedev commented on the EU’s Eastern Partnership initiative, adopted earlier in the month: ‘I’ll put it succinctly. We tried to convince ourselves [that the EU project is harmless] but in the end we couldn’t. … What worries us is that in some countries attempts are being made to exploit this structure as a partnership against Russia’ (Rettman 2009). Although there is some evidence that many member states were aware of this tendency, the EU machinery clearly was not.

It is striking to note how little strategic foresight and reflection there has been when it comes to the making of EU foreign policy in general and perhaps its policies towards the East in particular. For example, the Commission’s report concerning foresight activities in the EU fails to mention the External Action Service entirely, as if the institution or foresight activities there did not exist (European Commission 2015); one commentator admits that at least at the time they did not (Missiroli 2013). Although there might be bureaucratic reasons for this oversight, as the relations between these two institutions have not been the best, this impression that foreign policy has indeed been a blind spot in the Union’s foresight activities is strengthened by the fact that the main tool for producing future-related insights for the EU—the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS), a loose network of actors from EU institutions and member states dealing with strategic foresight—has devoted its energies to the medium and long time frames while concentrating mainly on economic and societal trends and the future of governance and power globally (ESPAS 2016). Even in cases where issues pertaining to the Eastern neighbourhood were mentioned, such as in the Empowering Europe’s Future report (Grevi et al. 2013), and although the discussion concerning the essential and dangerous dynamics is apt, the right conclusions were not drawn and dangerous scenarios were not pondered. Instead, the report merely stated that ‘Russia is likely to remain essentially a status quo power, chiefly interested in preserving its status at all of the top tables of international politics’ (Grevi et al. 2013, p. 55), in effect intellectually foreclosing the possibility of a course of events that nevertheless became a reality soon after the launch of the report. To make matters worse, to my knowledge no policy planning papers pondering the effects of the EU’s policies were prepared or debated even internally, no scenarios seriously pondered. None of this is meant to say that the EU should have seen the violent conflict with Russia coming. Not a lot of people did at the time. But the point is that the EU should have at least entertained that possibility or thought about different negative scenarios in advance to be better prepared for that eventuality. Instead, the EU was in the business of achieving strategic effects with no strategic reflection, as it still is.

In lieu of a conclusion: did the EU get anything right?

The discussion above suggests a set of rather gloomy conclusions. Not only has the EU failed to tie Russia into its preferred order but it has failed in its attempts at stabilising its immediate neighbourhood in the East as well. To be fair the EU has been forced to operate in an exceptionally and even increasingly challenging environment while grappling with a host of other pressing issues both internally and externally. The main shortcoming in the EU’s policies has been their non-strategic character. Essentially the EU has unwillingly, and in a rather haphazard manner, been sleepwalking into ever deeper strategic commitments with scant strategic thought. Although the intentions have been good, the outcome is anything but. Russia’s repeated protestations against the EU’s approach have fallen on deaf ears. For the EU, the response has been to argue the problem away, explaining time and time again to Russia why its approach should be in the interest of Russia as well. In essence, Russia’s readings of the evolving situation have been incompatible with the policy discourses in the West and the EU. As a consequence, they have simply failed to register and have not been taken seriously. Hence the acute surprise when Putin finally put his foot down in February 2014.

Since the outbreak of the conflict, the EU has nevertheless fared better than expected in handling the conflict in Ukraine and the crisis with Russia. Tough sanctions have been adopted and the political line and internal EU solidarity have both held. Ukraine has received a good deal of political and economic support. The role of Germany in consolidating the EU line has been indispensable. Yet all this success has come with a bitter twist: none of this has prevented Russia from achieving its objectives in a piecemeal way or by proxy. Crimea is effectively ‘done and dusted’. Sanctions have now been linked with the implementation of the Minsk II Agreement, which are much more favourable to Russian interests than the preceding one. Russia has in an unprecedented way been given consultation rights when it comes to the implementation of the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement, potentially compromising the integrity of both the Agreement and the underlying EU policy (Dragneva & Wolczuk 2014). Ukraine and Russia are also locked in a ‘chicken and egg’ dynamic when it comes to the implementation of the Minsk Agreements: Kyiv will only implement domestic reforms once the military parts of the Agreement have been implemented, while Russia and the separatist forces, fearing the loss of military leverage, will implement those parts only once the political reforms are securely in place.

Even in the best scenario we are looking at a long-lasting division of Ukraine, a permanently dysfunctional state and society unable to realise its European orientation and meet the strategic objectives negotiated with the EU. Although at the time of writing the fighting in Ukraine has largely subsided, the conflict is far from resolved, as is the case with the wider contestation concerning the shared neighbourhood and indeed wider European security. The ‘new normal’ in relations between the EU and Russia is far from stable. The continued sanctions are far from optimal for Russia, and the situation remains precarious. We have not seen the end of the conflict in Ukraine nor of Europe’s wider conflict with Russia. Indeed, the danger this essay is trying to highlight is that Russia is most likely not simply going through a phase that will soon subside. On the contrary, there are plenty of indications that we are dealing with a more profound and long-lasting change in Russia. Yet the EU continues to insist on upholding principles without thinking strategically about the situation.

That said, rectifying the shortcomings discussed above would probably have gone against the grain of EU values and its nature as an international actor. None of this should be taken as an attempt to exonerate Russia either, whose actions in Ukraine have been destructive. Nor should it be construed as a call for the EU and the West simply to cave in under Russian pressure and let Putin have his way with the countries of Eastern neighbourhood. On the contrary, the EU has the right—perhaps even the obligation—to remain engaged in the region and to continue to promote its values and vision for the future of Europe.

But the path towards that destination is fraught with difficulties, even dangers for the EU. Two trends seem to be emerging in the EU’s policy towards the East. On the one hand, the EU has assumed what could be called a ‘more of the same’ approach where it has simply sought to speed up and enhance the implementation of the policies contested by Russia. On the other hand, these attempts are at the same time increasingly marked by a certain degree of timidity, as exemplified by the EU’s lacklustre performance at the Eastern Partnership Summit in Riga in May 2015 (Walker 2015). This continued mixture of ambition and timidity is not a happy one, as it sends mixed signals that may encourage further challenges and even aggression on the part of Russia.

If the EU is to play its game more successfully it must acknowledge that the challenge is strategic and that it will require some head-on collisions with Russia in certain issues while avoiding conflict in others. It also means strategic patience and the ability to assess and decide when the stakes are too high for overall European security. A ‘game of chicken’, which now seems to be in the offing in the East, is not a particularly safe sport, especially if in the vehicle there are 28 pairs of hands at the wheel. Indeed, the underlying concern is that the auto-pilot mode of EU and Western responses to the current crisis may result in further sleepwalking, into another and potentially much bigger clash with Russia. It is high time for the EU to acknowledge the radically altered nature of the game in the East and start to act accordingly, carefully weighing possibilities and risks, options and dangers. This is admittedly a tall order for an amorphous international actor such as the EU: too tall, perhaps?

Notes

¹ This essay brings together over 15 years of research concerning the topic and insights gained while acting as a policy planner at the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs between 2009 and 2010 and again in 2014–2015. It goes without saying that none of what follows necessarily represents the official Finnish position.