Posts tagged as:

EU-Russia relations

The EU’s Lumbering Elephant versus the Nimble Russian Bear

December 8, 2008

Note: The following article also appears in issue 7 of SHIFT magazine.
This September, the heads of each of the EU’s 27 member states met in Brussels for what was only the Union’s 2nd ever emergency summit.  Russia had just crushed its neighbour Georgia in a short, sharp war, and only one item was on [...]

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How the nimble Russian bear pushes around the EU’s lumbering herd of elephants

November 9, 2007

Russia is brilliantly playing divide and conquer with European Union nations, argues a new paper from the European Council on Foreign Relations.
In “A Power Audit of EU – Russia Relations“, authors Mark Leonard and Nicu Popescu provide a sharp analysis of exactly how the nimble Russian bear – which on almost every objective measure [...]

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Russia, the EU, pipelines and Central Asia

October 30, 2007

Two blogs about Central Asia, writing about Russia’s energy relations with the European Union. Yes, there is a reason behind their madness.
First up is Josh over at Registan, quickly followed by Ben at NewEurasia.

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Russia to set up democracy think tank in Brussels

October 29, 2007

Another EU-Russia summit has come and gone. Late last week I outlined a few of the issues that were on the agenda, and noted that officials seemed “cautiously optimistic“.
If, by “cautiously optimistic” these officials meant that nothing exciting, either positive or negative, would happen – well, they were right. No real agreements were [...]

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EU-Russia summit begins amidst tensions

October 26, 2007

Hooray – it’s EU summit time again – this year we’re off to Portugal!
As usual, the summit begins amongst tensions between the two European powerhouses (but, then again, if there were no tensions, there would be no point in holding a summit, I suppose…).
Top of the agenda for the Europeans from the West [...]

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Russia to cut off gas to Belarus – again

August 2, 2007

Russia’s Gazprom are to cut off gas to Belarus, in a row over unpaid bills.  According to Gazprom, Belarus are more than $450 million behind in payments, and so they are left with no choice but to cut supplies by 45% from Friday (August 3rd).
As this cutoff seems to be related to Belarus’ reluctance, or [...]

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Putin orders increase in spying and military budgets

July 26, 2007

Russia is to increase its military and intelligence spending again:
“The situation in the world and internal political interests require the Foreign Intelligence Service to permanently increase its capabilities, primarily in the field of information and analytical support for the country’s leadership,” said Putin.
Or, to put it another way: ‘we need more spies’.
Which is probably a [...]

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A map of the Russia-US anti-missile dispute

June 10, 2007

This beautiful map from Kommersant graphically demonstrates why Russia is concerned about the proposed US anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech republic.
If the US plan goes ahead as expected, high powered radars from Poland will be able to cover all of European Russia, and a good chunk of Siberia as well:

At the same time, [...]

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Putin offers to work on joint missile shield

June 8, 2007

So, after spending the past few weeks ratcheting up the pressure, Putin has made an about turn and offered to work on a ‘joint’ missile shield with the United States.
Details of exactly how such a scheme would work are a little sketchy at the moment, to say the least, but it seems as though the [...]

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Guess which country is the largest investor in Russia?

June 6, 2007

Would you believe that the largest single investor in Russia so far this year is Holland?
Direct investment to Russia from the Netherlands in the first quarter of this year hit $7.76 billion, the Russian agriculture minister said Wednesday.
The majority of this investment is, as you’d imagine, in the energy sector, (Royal Dutch Shell are investing heavily [...]

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Russia tests new missile

May 30, 2007

Russia test fired a new ICBM yesterday.  
As you would expect, the western press – particularly in the UK – are muttering darkly about the new Cold War and a renewed arms race (see the Express and Guardian, for examples).
I was more interested by the following comment from First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov though:
“As of today [...]

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EU tells Russia – a problem for one is a problem for all

May 18, 2007

Some tough talking from the EU at this week’s EU-Russian summit in Samara.
Essentially, in the light of Poland and Estonia’s recent problems with Russia, Jose Barroso, the European Commission’s President, has told Russian President Vladimir Putin that if you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us:
“We had an occasion to say [...]

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Will the EU say to Russia: “Three strikes and you’re out”?

May 3, 2007

By my count, this is the third time in the past five years that Russia has cut off oil supplies to a European Union member state to make a political point.

Russia cut off Latvia’s oil supply in 2003. Purely co-incidentally, this happened at the same time as a Russian takeover bid for the oil port [...]

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Euroblog roundup – 3

April 22, 2007

The Euroblog roundup will be hosted at Siberian Light this week, as Nosemonkey’s computer has packed in. Clearly, he should have bought the latest Russian model.
Anyway, without further ado, I bring you the best of this week’s Euro-blogging, with an Eastern twist (plus a bit from France, because they’ve got an election this weekend).
France
The [...]

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Euroblog roundup

April 11, 2007

The second Euroblog roundup came out last weekend.
One post in particular caught my eye – 1948 Blog’s article about how Russia is “hijacking” the European Court of Human Rights. 
Apparently, there are about 90,000 cases currently meandering their way through the ECHR (Russia is the defendant in 19,300 of them) that the court is about to [...]

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