EU-Russian ”Strategic Partnership”: How It All Ended

Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs

Center for European Studies

present 

EU-Russian ”Strategic Partnership”: How It All Ended

A Talk by Arkady Moshes, Program Director for the EU Eastern Neighborhood and Russia Research Program at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (Helsinki)

For a long time the EU-Russian relationship was officially referred to as a “strategic partnership”. However, starting from mid-2000s the definition was misleading. It simply masked parties’ inability to bridge the value gap, to manage disagreements in economic and energy spheres and to mitigate an open rivalry in the common neighbourhood. A crisis in and over Ukraine, which broke out in 2014, was thus not a break, but a culmination of the trend towards mutual alienation. Reciprocal sanctions were introduced and have been regularly extended since then. The talk will offer an explanation of why the vision of bilateral “strategic partnership” was never achieved and why EU’s failure to engage with today’s Russia is systemic. 

Sponsored by Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, and Center for European Studies

Contact Havva Karakas-Keles for more information: hkarakas@syr.edu