Panelists:
MATTHIAS DEMBINSKI, Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt
SERGEI MEDVEDEV, political scientist, author of The Return of the Russian Leviathan (2018)
YULIA NIKITINA, Associate Professor of World Politics and Senior Research Fellow, Center for Euro-Asian Studies at the Moscow State University of International Relations (MGIMO)
HANNES SWOBODA, president of the IIP, former MEP
Moderation:
MARYLIA HUSHCHA, Research Assistant at the IIP
Content:
With the end of the Soviet Union, its main successor, the Russian Federation has experienced a period of brief democratization but also economic and social turbulence. Since Vladimir Putin came into power in 1999 Russia moderately stabilized. It has however gradually turned into an authoritarian state. On the global stage, the old rivalry between East and West re-emerged, with NATO enlargement to Eastern Europe perceived as aggression in Moscow, and the war in Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea shocking the Western public. Recently, EU-Russia relations have hit a new low, with the EU-Russia dialogue assessed by some observers as obsolete and belonging to the past era.
Russia’s domestic situation has factored into the recent deterioration of relations with the EU. Russia’s prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny was arrested directly after his return to Moscow from Germany where he was recovering from an assassination attempt with chemical agent Novichok. This led to the biggest protests in years and many western politicians called for the release of Navalny. The request fell on deaf ears of Russian authorities. Yet, the arrest of the opposition leader contains an irrational element in it considering his quite low popularity among the Russian public. Does Navalny really pose a threat to Putin’s rule? Will the Russian protest continue and can it pose a challenge to the current political regime?
In this context the pipeline project Nord Stream II became an additional center of criticism of the EU. Human rights violations in Russia on the one hand and continuing work on the joint economic project on the other hand puts the EU and especially Germany into a difficult situation. German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that cooperation with Russia on Nord Stream II continues ‘for the time being’ despite detentions of protesters in Russia and expulsion of the European diplomats from the country. The EU seems to keep the door open for dialogue, but is it still possible? Or is it a time for the EU to show a more confrontational stance to Moscow? How could a European policy towards Russia look like in the years to come and what role does the US play with the new administration in the White House?
Finally, common European and Russian neighborhood is mired in a series of crises. While ceasefire in Nagorno Karabakh still holds, the conflict is far from over. The political crisis in Belarus is not resolved either. War in the Donbas continues. Russia’s military buildup on the Crimean Peninsula is worrisome for the neighboring NATO and EU countries. Frozen conflicts in Transnistria and Abkhazia at times seem to be forgotten by the international community. Can the EU and Russia agree on a common approach to their neighborhood?
By covering these and other issues, the panelists will aim to address a bigger dilemma that becomes increasingly prominent in the relations between Russia and the EU: Is cooperation between Brussels and Moscow possible under the current regime in Russia? Can the EU be taken seriously in Russia as a geopolitical actor?
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