Geostrategies of the Russian Federation Clashing imperatives of expansion and integration in the Post-Soviet Space

Autor principal:
Eric Pardo Sauvageot (Universidad de Deusto)
Programa:
Sesión 2, Sesión 2
Día: miércoles, 7 de julio de 2021
Hora: 11:00 a 12:45
Lugar: Online

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, relations between the European Union (EU) and Russia have progressively worsened after a short-lived Westernist prelude. The nadir that was reached in 2014 found its origin in the clash of regional aspirations between Moscow and Brussels concerning the inclusion of Ukraine within the former´s Eastern Partnership (EaP) or the latter´s Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). This paper proposes a critical review of the existing literature dealing with Russia´s response towards Ukraine leading to Crimea´s annexation and intervention in the Donbass. The goal is to offer an alternative reading to monodimensial assessments of Moscow´s expansionist revisionism. We propose to use the three “geopolitical models” of  Christopher S. Browning and Pertti Joenniemi (Westphalian, imperial and neomedieval) as analytical tools: Whereas Crimea was simply annexed within standard Westphalian borders and large swathes of the Ukrainian region of Donbass turned into a blurred march responding to the classical model of frozen conflict, the creation of the EEU responded to an imperial modelling of part of the post-Soviet Russian neighbourhood. Thus, while violation of Ukraine´s sovereignty led to a Westphalian territorial expansion of the Russian Federation, it also led to diminished “imperial” ambitions of the EEU, once that Ukraine opted out of the EEU in favor of the EU´s Ea. Therefore, a balanced analysis of both territorial vectors qualifies many of the simplistic readings of Russian expansionism and yields a richer interpretative picture.

Palabras clave: Russia, Ukraine, Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), geostrategic perspectives