A member of “European Dialogue” Expert Group Nickolay Petrov interviewed Mathieu Boulègue, a research fellow at Chatham House and an expert in Eurasian security and defence issues as well as in Russia’s domestic and foreign policy. They discussed the EU-Russia relations, the situation in Ukraine and how the international order will look like after Brexit
Emmanuel Macron is a man with a lot of big ideas about how Europeans should step up their game on foreign policy. Perhaps his biggest so far is for Europe to engage in negotiations with Russia on a new European security order, reflecting his belief, expressed last month, that “the European continent will never be stable, will never be secure,…
Russia and Europe are not in confrontation—unlike Russia and the United States. They are, however, experiencing estrangement and, in some cases, alienation. There are several reasons for this. The erstwhile platform for Russia-EU relations—the 1990s assumption that as Russia “modernizes” and becomes a “normal country,” it will be “more like the rest of Europe”—is gone. A companion assumption that Russia…
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Russian President Vladimir Putin in late August, a key item on their agenda was the proposed construction of a new gas pipeline from Russia to Germany across the Baltic Sea. Both leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the project, known as Nord Stream 2. This was despite many articles in the international media urging Merkel to pull back. She…
Michael Emerson was the first EU Ambassador to the USSR and then Russia from 1991 to 1995. He joined CEPS as an Associate Senior Research Fellow in 1998, and has worked on projects in the European neighborhood, including Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. Gadir Mamedov from the University of Tartu spoke with Michael Emerson for our expert group. How did he…
This summer the Finnish Embassy in Moscow and the Finnish Consulate General in St Petersburg conducted a survey on Russians’ perceptions of Finland. They found out that 71% of Russians have a positive towards Finland, and the proportion of those who have a positive attitude towards Finland has increased since the last survey. More about the results read in the…
Richard Giragosian, the founding director of the Regional Studies Center, analyzed the geopolitical situation in Armenia for ECFR. Armenia’s 2018 Velvet Revolution had no broad effect on relations between Russia and the West. So the country now faces two main challenges: 1) to meet the ambitions that the European Union avows for countries in its neighbourhood; 2) to manage its…
The Russian International Affairs Council published an article of Andrey Kortunov, Director General of the RIAC. He explained why interest in the G8 format from the Russian leadership declined, how mutual grievances and frustrations had been accumulating for many years and that there will be no return The history of relations between Russia and the G7 can be compared to…
Ruslan Moldovanov on the LDPR leader’s recent meeting with foreign nationalists in Moscow in the context of Russian cooperation with far-right politicians in Europe for Riddle On July 2, Vladimir Zhirinovsky opened the second “International Congress of Peace-Loving Forces” in the State Duma. The grandiose name did not suit the scale of the event as representatives of little-known radical parties…
