If I were talking about the deterioration of relations between the EU and Russia to a Russian audience, I would be talking about our, Western, perspective. I would probably be talking about what is important to us: democracy, human rights, social freedoms, and all of that in an attempt to make Russians understand our values and probably in the hope that they would appreciate our perspective. But this essay is directed at a Western audience. We, Westerners, know what values are important to us. We know our common stance on Russia. We surely know all too well how grim life in Russia must be. We read about it, we see it on television, and most of us have likely developed some strong opinions about it. Thus, in this essay, I am going to attempt to present the other side of the coin, and aim to address what I believe is important to Russia, and how Russians perceive our mutual relationship.
The present crisis in relations between the West and Russia did not come about out of the blue. It grew out of the actions and opposing perceptions of the two parties since the end of the Cold War. The differing interpretations of what happened and how since then, are both a symptom and a cause of the crisis. In order to understand the Russian perspective on the current situation and find a plausible explanation for why our relations have deteriorated so alarmingly over the past few years, it is important that we reflect on the post-Cold War arrangements.
In the months that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the Soviet Union and the Western Allies that had occupied Germany since the end of World War II engaged in talks on German reunification. The Soviet Union agreed to a united and democratic Germany, as it did to a withdrawal of Soviet troops and armaments from East Germany, Central and Eastern Europe, and it later implemented the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which reduced the numbers of weapons on both sides of the falling Iron Curtain and effectively ended the arms race in Europe. From a military standpoint, Moscow did its bit to eliminate the material legacy of the post-war era of confrontation. However, there was one important caveat in all of that. The Allies assured Moscow that NATO would not deploy its troops beyond the former Iron Curtain, and that NATO would not extend in that direction either.
This promise to Moscow has been broken three times. Three rounds of enlargement to the East, in 1999, 2004 and 2009, saw NATO incorporate twelve Eastern European states. NATO expanded under the slogan of promoting sovereignty of nations in questions of geopolitical orientation. Given the promise pledged to Moscow, however, and Moscow’s good will to terminate the Cold War peacefully, NATO enlargement happened at the perceived expense of Russian security arrangements. If NATO served as a counterbalance to the Warsaw Pact that was also disbanded at the beginning of the 1990s, why is NATO still there, and most importantly, why does it keep expanding, particularly in the direction that it pledged it would not? There is in Russia a perception that the US seized the opportunity of a receding Russia to dominate and monopolise questions of security in Europe under the disguise of NATO, at a time when there were not supposed to be any more divisions or competition for dominance in Europe. The first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, was extraordinarily pro-Western, and at one point he even said to the Americans, that if they wanted to extend to Central European states, they would have to take Russia on board as well, so that all of Europe would be in the same camp. Apparently, the Americans were not keen.
As compensation for NATO enlargement, Russia was offered a junior partnership: the NATO-Russia Founding Act in 1997 and then the NATO-Russia Council in 2002. Russia never interpreted these developments as benignly as NATO hoped. What was offered to Moscow, was not regarded by them as a partnership, but as “damage limitation”, a mechanism for Russia to learn the rules and practices of the West, where Russian officials were subjected to scholarly debates and lectures, rather than to more practical engagement in shaping European security and cooperation. These are the reasons why NATO is bound to be perceived by Russia as a permanent assault on its security and its status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a nuclear power and, most importantly, a rightful member of the European family.
Russia does not only feel insecure and encircled by NATO but it perceives NATO as a hegemonic and arbitrary power that acts against principles of international law, and has a destabilising effect on the world order. Before the ongoing war in the East of Ukraine, Russia and NATO had been at loggerheads on a number of occasions. First was NATO’s intervention in Serbia in 1999, in the wake of escalating ethnic conflict in the province of Kosovo. NATO initially involved Russia in the negotiations with Belgrade, but when there was no agreement, NATO proceeded to act unilaterally. The intervention in Serbia was an open breach of international law and the Helsinki Accords of 1975 that were a milestone for stability in Europe in the midst of the Cold War. The accords set 10 simple rules for how Europe should be run. Amongst others, there was a rule of inviolability of frontiers in Europe, a rule of territorial integrity of states, a rule of non-intervention in internal affairs and one on peaceful settlement of disputes. NATO, however, acted to the contrary, describing the circumstances as a special case. It bombed Serbia, a historical ally of Moscow, for duration of 78 days, causing several hundred civilian deaths, including the bombing of a passenger train and the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and inflicted extensive damage to the country’s infrastructure. Subsequently, the West led Kosovo to a unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia, without a popular referendum and despite Serbia’s strong opposition to the move. It may have been a way of preventing an ethnic conflict from further escalation, but it also was a subversion of international law. NATO and the EU moved ahead with the forced rupture of Kosovo from Serbia in spite of significant opposition from around the world, including from some of EU member states. Thus, the case of Kosovo set a dangerous precedent that might result in a backlash in the Balkans or elsewhere, sooner or later.
Then, in the aftermath of September 11, Russia aligned itself strongly with the US-led war on terror, and assumed that Russian relations with the West would substantially improve. However, in 2002 the US responded with the termination of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that had been in operation between Washington and Moscow since 1972, and announced that it would seek to station components of an anti-ballistic missile system in the Czech Republic and Poland. From then on, Russia’s unease about NATO’s decisions became more apparent. Then there was the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was another violation of international law, an overinterpretation of UN Security Council resolution on Iraq, and Russia strongly opposed it. Over time, the Russians proved to be right in claiming that a forced regime change in Iraq would only destabilise the country and the region. Meanwhile, the West continued to participate in regime change across the Middle East, with consequences that affect us to this day. From Russia’s perspective, while Moscow was being lectured on democracy, human rights and the rule of law, the US was running secret prisons and torturing detainees without a proper judicial procedure. Russians interpreted that as anti-Russian propaganda, and levels of trust towards the West further deteriorated. Russians became increasingly suspicious of the intentions behind the anti-missile system to be stationed on their doorstep. If the system was to be set up to counter a potential threat from Iran, the Russians proposed at a G8 summit in 2007 an alternative base in Azerbaijan, with the right installations already in place, which they had been using since Soviet times. The proposed base would have been much closer to where the presumed aggressor was. The Americans rejected the proposal.
Now put yourself in Moscow’s shoes and consider the dynamic of 2008. NATO, the international actor you are most suspicious of, is ignoring your anxieties and pressing ahead with an anti-ballistic missile system to be set up 200 km from your border. In February Kosovo eventually secedes unilaterally from Serbia, to the applause of Washington and Brussels. Then at a summit in April, NATO agrees to a third enlargement to Croatia and Albania. At this tumultuous time, Russia feels that all that is happening around it, is happening at the West’s whim and without Russia’s or the rest of the world’s opinions being taken into account in the slightest. So, Russians decided to try out different tactic, that is, to replicate actions of NATO. Then in August, the government forces of Georgia launched an offensive against the de-facto self-governing South Ossetia in order to regain control of the republic. Russians stepped in with all of their military might and pushed out Georgian forces from South Ossetia and also Abkhazia. The two republics shortly thereafter declared independence from Georgia, which was recognised by the Kremlin. The five-day war in Georgia is widely perceived as a symptom of an aggressive Russia that wants to subdue its neighbours and recreate its Soviet sphere of influence. But very few come to realise that what Russia did was to replicate what NATO had done earlier in Serbia. Russia did that to make a point to NATO and the EU that they can no longer act unilaterally, as they had been in the Balkans and the Middle East, as this might only entitle anybody to take justice in their hands and further destabilise the world. It is a shame that so few read into this clear-cut lesson that Russia wanted to teach us, and instead only dismissed Russia’s actions in Georgia as an act of aggression in pursuit of re-establishing its former Soviet empire. The last president of the Soviet Union and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Mikhail Gorbachev, commented in 2008: “Russia has long been told to simply accept the facts. Here’s the independence of Kosovo for you. Here’s the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the American decision to place missile defences in neighbouring countries. Here’s the unending expansion of NATO. All of these moves have been set against a backdrop of sweet talk about partnership. Why would anyone put up with such a charade?”
In March 2009, the Obama administration took the initiative to “reset” the US relations with Russia, which led to a number of positive interactions in bilateral and multilateral relations, such as, for instance, cooperation to stem Iran’s nuclear ambitions, facilitation of Russian airspace for US operations in Afghanistan and Russia’s accession to the WTO. President Medvedev also took the initiative in December 2009 and proposed a new European Security Treaty, similar to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which would revamp the security architecture on the continent. However, the treaty draft and the whole initiative were rejected. As a result, there is anger in Moscow at what is seen as the West’s rejection of a real partnership with Russia, which reflects Russia’s unhappiness with what it views as the existing Western-centric order, as well as its opposition to US dominance of the international system. The Russians have repeatedly said that they want to be an ‘equal’, not a ‘junior’ partner, and there is a sense that the existing security architecture in Europe excludes Russia, and thus it needs to be overhauled.
In 2010, Vladimir Putin made a new proposal for the creation of a common economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok, which soon was dismissed by the EU, too. Had the EU picked up Russia’s proposal, taken the idea seriously, dedicated time and resources to work it out, there would have been no controversy around the signing of an EU association agreement by Ukraine. The current crisis in and around Ukraine began because of a scuffle over whether Ukraine would effectively trade with the EU and embark on a path of EU integration or join the Eurasian Economic Union with Russia at its core. The former would have hit the Russian economy quite significantly in the long term. Ukraine is one of Russia’s key trade partners, and Russia would lose over time this key market for its products to the EU, given gradual introduction of EU regulations and external tariffs to the Ukrainian market. So, had the idea of a common economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok got more traction in Brussels, there would have not been a controversy around who you can or cannot trade with in Eastern Europe, and the war in Ukraine could probably have been avoided.
For Russia, the unrest in Ukraine is not about maintaining a sphere of influence per se. It is about keeping Ukraine on your shrinking list of friends and trading partners, as opposed to adding it to a list of foes. The isolation of Russia and EU’s neighbourhood polices have created a situation in which several of Russia’s closest neighbours are faced with an artificial choice: either they are with the EU or they are with Russia. This polarisation is contrary to the fundamental idea of a united and peaceful Europe, and is unnecessarily dividing Europe. It may not have been its intention but the EU’s current policy towards Eastern Europe is divisive and is tearing societies apart, as it has done in Ukraine. If Russians were no longer free to trade with Ukraine or travel there as they are used to, or if, in future, there might be NATO troops stationed on the territory of Ukraine, right under Russia’s nose, and next to the strategic Russian naval fleet base in the Crimea, the Russians thought that they might as well simply take from Ukraine what they perceive as historically theirs, before the Americans lay their hands on it. Moscow came to the conclusion that the West was starting a new containment policy against it and Russia had to pre-empt this and had to remind the EU and the Americans yet again to respect its vital interests. It is true that in order to be peaceful and prosperous Europe needs to be democratic, and every European country should be able to make independent choices. However, integration with the EU should not lead to or presuppose estrangement from Russia, not only in political terms of the so-called Russian sphere of influence, as we tend to portray it, but more importantly, in more pragmatic terms of trade, growth, jobs, travel and cultural exchange.
We have pushed Russia to the periphery. Perhaps we did not intend to, but we did it. Russia’s understanding is that the EU does not want to engage with it as an equal partner and wants to discredit it and isolate it. Russians saw the rise in negative media coverage of Russia in the West in the run-up to the Sochi Olympics of 2014, which resulted in a number of Western leaders boycotting the official ceremonies during the games. Nevertheless, Russia sees value in the EU and is trying to replicate the EU model by establishing the Eurasian Economic Union. It has a vision of an even greater economic area spreading from Europe to China, with Russia as a vital link in between. However, the EU does not have the will to engage with the Eurasian Economic Union on a more serious footing. We, too, have a tendency to dismiss Russia’s initiatives and undertakings as attempts to recreate the former Russian empire and to subdue its neighbours. This is a very one-sided and subjective attitude that we tend to adopt when discussing Russia. This is parallel to and as unfair as talking of EU nationals living in the UK as immigrants, while regarding UK nationals living in the rest of the EU as expats. Russia has tried on a number of occasions to offer positive alternatives to Europe but these were ignored. Europe has failed to capitalise on the chance offered by the end of the Cold War to bring Russia closer to the European core and build a robust security and co-operation system in Europe. Western interventions in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, poor performance in Afghanistan, and support for forced regime changes in the Middle East have damaged the most important principles of international security and stability. So, Russia has not only lost trust in NATO words but also respect for NATO’s competence.
It is true that any country has the sovereign right to apply for membership of NATO. At the same time, that country and NATO have a collective responsibility to work together to strengthen the security in Europe as a whole, where security interests of everyone are protected. Russia’s right to feel secure is as legitimate as that of NATO’s or the EU’s. Instead of building one Europe for all, we are building a Europe only for the selected, and do not care much about those whom we are leaving behind. We are on a slippery slope. If both sides consider the other side the aggressor, misreading each other’s intentions can lead to violence. The most alarming thing is that Russia made its views known on all of these divisive subjects all along but hardly anybody in the EU wanted to listen and find solutions to the problems. Instead, we deliberately avoided discussing geopolitics and security with Moscow, while trying to deflect the conversation onto human rights violations in Russia.
Power in Russia is concentrated in the hands of a narrow group of people. If only the West had better supported Russia in its particularly painful economic transition in 1990s, there might have not been a necessity in Russia for a leader as tough-handed as Vladimir Putin. We are unhappy with how Russia is run, but we cannot and would not succeed in changing the leadership or the power structure there. A change can only happen from within. Perhaps we do not realise this at all, but by alienating Putin and the Russian establishment, we are alienating a whole nation, and that may have terrible consequences for the whole world one day.
In the Brexit referendum debate it was widely speculated that Vladimir Putin was the only world leader that wanted the UK to leave the EU. The political and economic circumstances suggest that the question of Brexit and a presumed policy of the Kremlin to break up the EU was nowhere near the top of Moscow’s working agenda. Because of Western sanctions and artificially low global oil prices, Russia has entered the worst economic crisis since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the leadership is making every effort to prevent the economy and social order from completely imploding. It may be true Putin does not hold the EU in high esteem, but that stems from resentment that Russians feel that they have been shunned by and excluded from Europe, rather than some sort of a sinister, Hitler-like agenda to destroy the EU, that we often like to tell ourselves.
The argument of a resurgent Russia is weak. Russia does not have an ambitious global agenda. It is not trying to impose an ideology on the rest of the world like the Soviet Union did in the past, or like America is doing in terms of its promotion of democracy. Russia calls for a multipolar world and a balance of power based on respect for principles of the international law. Russia has good bilateral relations with most non-Western countries. A number of important global actors in Asia, Middle East and Latin America, shyly, if not overtly, support Moscow more than they support Washington or Brussels.
Russia is reported to be threatening its neighbours, some of which are members of the EU and NATO. There are defying statements by some Russian politicians directed even at my country, Poland, saying that, for instance, Russia could wipe Warsaw off the Earth’s surface faster than the Poles would get up from their chairs to react. This rhetoric is appalling and unacceptable. Yet, I do not take it too seriously, and I can understand the anger and frustration that may lead some Russian to say that. That is not because Poles are no longer in Russia’s sphere of influence, but because Poles have been accepted in the European family. They are privileged compared to the Russians. They can trade, develop, live and travel across Europe, and the Russians cannot. They have been excluded and stigmatised.
The immediate problem that we must tackle is that we do not currently even have a desire to have a positive conversation with Russia. The NATO-Russia Council has been suspended by NATO, and economic sanctions have been imposed by the EU. We have to realise that it is not that Russia is unpredictable, acts irrationally and we just do not know what the whole problem is about. Russia has signalled to us what her problems are many times, yet we are unwilling to take them on board and find solutions that would truly work for all of us. We complain that Russia is uncooperative but keep failing to realise that we have rejected all attempts by Russia to address the root causes of our problems.
The EU and Russia occupy a common space and need to find ways of living together in it. It is urgent to set in motion a robust political, diplomatic and social process to overcome the present crisis. We need to put ourselves in each other’s shoes and come to understand each other’s perceptions. We need to talk openly about our problems, listen to each other’s concerns, motives and ideas, and seek mutually acceptable solutions until we have found them. There is a middle ground for us; away from it there is only an abyss that might swallow Europe again. Peace and stability in Europe will never be achieved without all European nations, including Russia. Europe is set to be insecure and unstable unless we realise that European integration must not stop on the Eastern border of Poland or the Baltic States. The first step in this enormous undertaking is to understand each other’s perceptio
