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The EU and Russia: The War that Changed Everything

2023; Wiley; Volume: 61; Issue: S1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/jcms.13549

1468-5965

Tom Casier,

Economic Sanctions and International Relations

The significance of Russia's war against Ukraine can hardly be overestimated. This is the biggest interstate war in Europe since the Second World War. On the 24th of February 2022, the largest country in Europe, Russia, attacked the second largest, Ukraine, on three different fronts, with massive military force, with the clear purpose of territorial control and at an immense human cost. In doing so, the Kremlin broke one of the most important taboos in European security, that on territorial expansion through military force. Confronted with a massive war along its borders and no normative framework for security negotiations left, the EU operates in an entirely new strategic environment, one that is based on pure confrontation and determined by an imminent threat. This generated a sense of urgency and unity in the EU unseen before. It created a window of opportunity for the reinforcement of European Security and Defence Policy. Even more, the EU took up a new role as security actor that would have been unthinkable without the context of a massive war so close by. This article will briefly discuss Russia's motives for the invasion. A good understanding of the reasons for this war is crucial to comprehend the strategic context the EU is operating in and the policy options it has. The next section will outline four ways in which the war has affected the EU's foreign policy role and relations with Russia. This will be followed by some reflections on the impact and significance of these changes. For many years, and very assertively since 2007, Russia has voiced its security concerns, in particular over NATO enlargement. Many analysts have concluded that Russia's motives to invade Ukraine on 24 February 2022 were the result of these security concerns and the gradual deterioration of relations with the West.1 Yet, as Kimberly Marten argues, 'to disentangle the relationship between NATO's geographic enlargement and Russia's relations with the West is not as easy as it first appears. The causal chains that may seem to link the two are complex, subject to interference by many other variables, and mediated by the evolving subjective interpretations of a diverse cast of Russian actors.' (Marten 2023, p. 210) The question whether antagonist relations over security that preceded the war also caused the war is one that deserves more attention, in particular in a context where debates are mostly driven by theoretical assumptions. This is not to deny the reality of tensions over security that have existed for many years before the war but to explore whether they are the reason why the Kremlin went for war and whether opposition to NATO enlargement was driven mainly by concerns over security or over loss of status (Sarotte 2021). It is beyond the scope of this article to analyse the Kremlin's motivations for the war in 2022 in detail (see Casier 2023 for a more extended analysis). Yet, a couple of lines need to be set, as they are essential for understanding the political context in which EU-Russia relations operate. Undeniably, president Putin carefully built up and escalated a rhetoric about Russia's security concerns over 2021, the year preceding the war. In his state of the nation address of 21 April 2021, Putin used the term 'red lines' as a clear warning to the West. 'Those behind provocations that threaten the core interests of our security will regret what they have done in a way they have not regretted anything for a long time. … I hope that no one will think about crossing the "red line" with regard to Russia. We ourselves will determine in each specific case where it will be drawn.' (Putin 2021a). Only by the end of the year, Putin specified where the red line would be drawn, formulating three 'unconditional demands' (Trenin 2022b)2: no further expansion of NATO to post-Soviet states, no deployment of offensive weapons in the proximity of Russia and the withdrawal of NATO military infrastructure from member states that joined after 1997. In spite of these statements, the likelihood of NATO expansion being the main motive for Russia's invasion deserves a closer look. First of all, it should be noted that the idea that the fear of Ukraine joining NATO led Russia to a pre-emptive invasion is also dismissed by some close to the Kremlin. Dmitri Trenin, one of Russia's leading foreign policy analysts, stated just before the invasion: 'No degree of NATO expansion, including to incorporate Ukraine, will threaten the military balance and deterrence stability. … Therefore, in terms of military security, it's correct to say I don't see NATO expansion as such a terrible threat.' (Trenin 2022a). From an unexpected corner, leader of the Wagner group Prigozhin stated at the start of the mutiny on 23 June 2023: 'The Ministry of Defence is trying to deceive the public and the president and spin the story that there were insane levels of aggression from the Ukrainian side and that they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO block. The special operation was started for a completely different reason.' (Prigozhin quoted in Van Brugen 2023). Turning to actual arguments, there are different reasons to assume why fear of NATO expansion to Ukraine was unlikely one of Russia's main motives for the war (Ferraro 2023; Marten 2023). First, it should be noted that NATO accession for Ukraine was all but imminent when Russia waged war on Ukraine. A vague prospect had been given to Ukraine at the NATO Bucharest summit of 2008, but that was fourteen years before the invasion of February 2022. The vague formulation then was largely a compromise resulting from a sharp disagreement between the US administration and European member states. While rhetorical references to the prospect were made occasionally after 2008, most importantly at the NATO Brussels summit in June 2021,3 little significant progress had been made towards Ukraine's accession (Ferraro 2023, p. 14), nor was membership expected any time soon. It is interesting to note that military co-operation between Ukraine and NATO only increased substantially after Russia's annexation of Crimea (Ferraro 2023, p. 13). Increased co-operation was thus a reaction to Russia's offensive, in a context where the annexation of Crimea was not followed by a Ukrainian counter-offensive, let alone one supported by NATO. Moreover, before 2022 US weapon deliveries were fairly limited and 'Ukraine had absolutely no capacity to attack Russia' (Marten 2023, p. 238-239). It was also in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine that the Ukrainian parliament on 23 December 2014 renounced the 'non-bloc status' of the country, that former president Yanukovych had introduced (Pifer 2014). At a more general level, there are indications that NATO enlargement was not perceived by Moscow as such a profound threat as often assumed. Between 2000 and 2010, for example, when most of NATO's eastern expansion took place, the numbers of troops and weaponry that Russia deployed along its borders closest to the enlarged NATO (its Western and Southern military districts) 'fell steeply' (Marten 2023, p. 220). Nor did Putin express serious concern in 2022 about the effective accession of Finland to the alliance, despite its great military importance, with a capacity of mobilising an army of 280,000 and adding 1340 km to the NATO-Russia border.4 These and other arguments lead Kimberly Marten to conclude that there is 'evidence that the whole NATO enlargement issue has been more a symbolic red herring than a real security problem for Russian leaders, used strategically abroad to try to manipulate the West into taking Russian security interests seriously, and at home as a way of manipulating nationalist support' (Marten 2023, p. 234). When it comes to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the question needs to be asked how the Kremlin expected the latter would improve its security situation, in particular in a context whereby the security demands of December 2021, mentioned above, were 'far beyond Kyiv's reach' and no ultimatum was posed to Ukraine (Ferraro 2023, p. 13). Inevitably, there is a degree of speculation in answering this question, but it is striking that with a full-scale war against Ukraine, the Kremlin opted for one of the most risky and costly scenarios, without trying alternative options (Ferraro 2023). Russia may have miscalculated the chances of success of its military invasion and the reaction of the Euro-Atlantic community, but if it genuinely believed the US wanted to make Ukraine a bridgehead, it would for sure have expected the US to help Ukraine significantly after the 24 February 2022 invasion. It is improbable that Moscow would have expected the West to take limited retaliation measures against a war on that scale, against a country of the size and strategic importance of Ukraine, and while breaching the vital principle of non-violation of borders, and threatening European security on a scale unseen since World War II. What can be said with certainty, is that Russia's security situation has all but improved since 24 February 2022. Finland and Sweden have given up their traditional neutrality status to join NATO. German Chancellor Scholz announced a Zeitenwende or historical shift, sealing the end of the classic axis of reconciliation between Russia and the West, dating back to the Ostpolitik of Brandt. All NATO countries increased their defence budgets. Furthermore, there is little doubt that Russia has suffered a loss of prestige due to its heavy military losses (Dalsjö et al. 2022) and has lost regional and global influence. If NATO expansion is unlikely to be the main reason for this war, what then was the Kremlin's motive? There was a second line in Russia's official discourse prior to the war that drew much less attention than the one on Russia's security. It was one of undeniable irridentist claims on Ukraine. In Summer 2021, for example, Putin wrote an article in which he claimed that Russia, Ukraine and Belarus formed one 'triune' nation and Ukrainians and Russians 'one people' (Putin 2021b). On many other occasions, he referred to Ukraine as 'Russian lands' and Ukraine as a Bolshevik creation (Putin 2022a), suggesting its dissolution. During the war, in what seemed a comparison to tsar Peter the Great, he suggested that Russia was just taking back what was theirs (Putin 2022b). Against this background, Russia's war against Ukraine appears as 'an epitome of its struggle to reconnect with its past imperial self' (Mälksoo 2022, p. 7). Beyond the scope of this article, this reconnection can be seen as part of a bigger social transformation in three decades of post-Soviet Russia.5 In terms of foreign policy doctrine, there was a clear shift over time in how Russia regards itself as a great power and how the latter is connected to territory. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has aspired to be a great power. The ambition is at the heart of its strategic culture (Götz and Staun 2022) and is embedded in the old state tradition of 'derzhavnost', whereby Russia can imagine itself only as a great power (Legvold 2007). The concept suggests that Russia is not just seeking recognition as great power but also feels entitled to this status. Back in 2003, Putin referred to great power status as a condition for Russia to flourish within the borders of the Russian Federation: 'such a country as Russia can only survive and develop within the existing borders if it stays as a great power.' (Putin quoted in Tsygankov 2005, p. 132). By the time of the 2022 invasion, the reasoning had been reversed: the point was no longer that great power status enabled Russia to operate within the post-Soviet borders, but the Kremlin came to believe that territorial expansion had become the condition for great power status. The idea of Russia's identity as great power had blended with a geopolitical idea of irridentism, whereby Russia is seen as 'naturally' bigger than the borders of the Russian Federation. This blending can be called a geopolitics-identity nexus, the belief that only a territorially greater Russia could be a great power. It is indeed reconnecting to old imperialist interpretations of derzhavnost, as this quote by Vladislav Surkov (until February 2020 personal advisor to Putin on Ukraine and often dubbed the Kremlin's ideologist until then) illustrates: 'For Russia, constant expansion is not just one of the ideas, but the true existential reality of our historical being. Imperial technology is still effective today, with empires renamed superpowers.' (Surkov 2021). This, however, does not explain why the invasion happened in 2022 and why not earlier, for example in 2014, when the Ukrainian army was much weaker and taken by surprise. The Russian reading of the developments in the Ukraine crisis in early 2014 – experienced as an 'existential crisis' (Youngs 2017, p. 14) – have no doubt accelerated and radicalised the transformation of hegemonic discourses about Russian 'greatpowerness' and how it is linked to territory. As Torbakov argues: 'The Ukraine conflict [of 2014] has undoubtedly been pivotal. It threw into question Russia's self-understanding as a great European power and smashed to smithereens the two main pillars of the Kremlin's long-term strategy: maintaining good working relations with Europe, especially with Germany and France, and promoting the 'Eurasian integration' of former Soviet lands.' (Torbakov 2021). It radicalised Moscow's policy towards Ukraine but was not driven by a coherent policy. Arguably, a sequence of policy failures between 2014 and the February 2022 invasion radicalised the Russian policy choices (Watling and Reynolds 2022). Initially, Moscow's strategy was one of keeping a foot in the door in Ukraine through the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The provision for far-reaching autonomy for the Donbas under the Minsk II agreement would have facilitated this but ended up in a stalemate. Apart from fuelling the war in Eastern Ukraine, Moscow tried a variety of policies to destabilise Ukraine and to gain control. They included economic coercion, exploiting energy dependence, the distribution of Russian passports in the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, the naval blockade of the Kerch strait, intelligence operations, support for pro-Russian politicians, operations to topple the regime and troop mobilisation along the border in 2021 (Hurak and D'Anieri 2022; Watling and Reynolds 2022). All delivered few results and Ukraine was only alienated more from Russia. Frustration over these failures may have pushed the Kremlin towards the use of massive military force, hoping for a permanent solution for the 'Ukraine problem' through the dissolution of Ukraine as sovereign state. The significance for the EU goes without saying. With the large-scale and violent invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the confrontation with Russia, that had started in 2014, was taken to a new level. Russia became nothing but a strategic adversary and major threat for European security. With the crumbling of the post-Cold War security order, there was no normative framework left to dialogue with Russia on security issues. In contrast to 2014, this time the developments pushed the EU to a radical revision of its policy. Less than two decades before the 2022 invasion, relations between the EU and Russia were still characterised by optimism. The EU and Russia entered into a Strategic Partnership and had high ambitions to develop their collaboration. It was the most institutionalised partnership the EU had. Yet, it was a marriage of convenience, rather than a love affair. Despite the steady increase of trade volumes, the marriage started to decay quickly, resulting in an escalating logic of competition and dwindling trust. The breakup came with the Ukraine crisis of 2014. When Russia annexed Crimea, the EU suspended the Strategic Partnership and imposed sanctions. From a logic of competition, we entered into an era of confrontation. However, this confrontation was characterised by a high degree of ambiguity. Sanctions largely excluded the energy sector, revealing a pragmatic understanding that energy trade was too important for both sides to be targeted. To a certain extent, business continued as usual. The EU remained the first trading partner for Russia and Russia the third trading partner for the EU. Despite sanctions, the EU saw a record import of Russian natural gas in 2019, representing 41% of all imported gas (European Commission 2021). Also, the construction of Nord Stream 2 continued. The paradox between confrontation and business as usual came to an end with Russia's large-scale offensive against Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The war ended the ambiguity in the EU's policy. I will argue that radical changes happened along four lines. First, whereas the EU had traditionally been highly divided over Russia, it now took a strong, united stance as soon as the invasion started. Positions were also co-ordinated between the EU and the US. The EU held the same line ever since its condemnation on the first day of the war: 'We condemn in the strongest possible terms Russia's unprecedented military aggression against Ukraine. By its unprovoked and unjustified military actions, Russia is grossly violating international law and undermining European and global security and stability.' (European Council 2022a). On both sides of the Atlantic, within NATO, and within the EU, the war was defined as a regional conflict to which the US, NATO or the EU were not a party. As NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg put it: 'We are not part of this conflict. And we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine.' (Stoltenberg 2022). At the same time, it was clear that Ukraine required large-scale support to defend itself against Russia. The EU promised 'unwavering support' from the beginning, but the degree of support de facto evolved over time. While at early stages of the war, the aim seemed to be to support Ukraine enough to limit losses, this changed gradually over time. As Ukrainian defence seemed much stronger than expected and as it even regained control of large chunks of territory in Autumn 2022, optimism grew over Kyiv's war chances. Weapon deliveries started to reflect the hope that Ukraine would eventually win the war and push back Russia. It should also be noted that the EU was much better prepared than in 2014. Differently from the annexation of Crimea, it was not taken by surprise when Russia invaded in 2022. US President Biden had announced for months that Putin was planning to invade, leaving the EU ample time to prepare its position, to agree on sanctions against Russia and to build international support for Ukraine. Also in its support for the millions of Ukrainian refugees, the EU showed unity in an otherwise divisive policy area. On 4 March 2022, the Temporary Protection Directive was activated, giving Ukrainian refugees residence permits and access to social security, healthcare and education. A second fundamental change was the return of enlargement policy. When Juncker took office as Commission President in 2014, he announced to shelve enlargement for the next five years (CEPS 2014). His successor, Ursula von der Leyen, took office with a promise to lead a geopolitical Commission. However vague this pledge may have been at the time, the return of enlargement was framed exactly in geopolitical terms, as a foreign policy tool to counter Russian influence. The European Council of 23-24 June 2022 confirmed its commitment to enlargement in the Western Balkans, it granted candidate status to Bosnia Herzegovina, Ukraine and Moldova and a conditional prospect to Georgia (European Council 2022b). The symbolic significance of granting Ukraine EU candidate status can hardly be overestimated. Exactly at a time when the Kremlin denied Ukraine's sovereign right to exist and waged a brutal war aiming at territorial control, the EU stepped in to recognise Ukraine's sovereign statehood and its right to choose its own partnerships. The decision may have a far-reaching impact on the Eastern Partnership (EaP), that may disappear all but in name. Created initially as a policy aiming at privileged relations, but not membership, the Eastern Partnership will likely lose its main rationale. Of the six EaP states, three have now the (conditional) prospect of membership: Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. One, Belarus, is under EU sanctions. Another country, Azerbaijan, has no interest in close, structured co-operation with the EU, certainly not if it involves compromising with Brussels' normative agenda. Armenia has always been in a difficult balancing exercise, eager to grow closer to the EU, but being tied to Russia for reasons of dependence. Losing its purpose, the Eastern Partnership may thus erode over time. This is a new step in a process of external 'rebordering' (Freudlsperger and Schimmelfennig 2023), whereby the EU's eastern boundaries are reconfigured. A third set of changes relates to the window of opportunity that the war has created for the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The EU's unified position on the threat posed by Russia's unprovoked war and the sense of urgency gave CSDP unmistakeably a boost. French president Macron used the opportunity to call an informal summit in Versailles on the issue on 10-11 March 2022. It led to the Versailles Declaration (2022), that labelled Russia's 'war of aggression' a 'tectonic shift in European history' (p. 3). EU member states committed to bolster defence capabilities, to reduce energy dependencies and to build a more robust economic base in sensitive areas like critical raw materials. As such, this call to enhance the EU's capacity to act autonomously in the field of security was nothing new. The Versailles declaration drew on earlier engagements for strategic autonomy and resilience, but the war offered an opportunity to give it extra resonance. The EU's 'Strategic Compass for Security and Defence', that was in full preparation when the war broke out, was adapted to reflect a new and much more radical threat assessment, with Russia featuring centrally in the final version of the document (EEAS 2022). The central theme behind the Strategic Compass was clear: 'The more hostile security environment requires us to make a quantum leap forward and increase our capacity and willingness to act, strengthen our resilience and ensure solidarity and mutual assistance' (EEAS 2022, p. 10). More significant than these rhetorical statements are the real changes in the EU's security role in response to the war. They reflected a spectacular shift. The EU became an actual supplier of military assistance to Ukraine. By early May 2023, it had committed 5.6 billion EUR of military assistance to Ukraine under the European Peace Facility (EPF). The EPF had originally been created as an off-budget instrument for defence and military actions with primarily the EU's classic Petersberg tasks like conflict-prevention, peace-keeping or humanitarian tasks in mind. In the context of the war, the EPF was now used to deliver direct military support to one party in a conflict, Ukraine. The Council increased the overall ceiling of the EPF to almost 12 billion EUR. The last shift of 1 billion EUR military assistance for Ukraine provided for the joint procurement of ammunition, a first for the EU. Another first came with the EU Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine (EUMAM), set up with the purpose of training Ukrainian armed forces. All this represents a security role that is fundamentally new for the EU, now a supplier of lethal weapons to a conflict party. Of course, a couple of notes should be added. Looking at the full picture, the support committed by the EU is still predominantly financial, rather than military (in contrast to the US) and a lot of the military support is still provided by individual member states (IFW 2023). Further, the EU's new security role goes hand in hand with a re-legitimisation of NATO. Criticised as 'braindead' by president Macron or as 'obsolete' by Trump during his presidential campaign, NATO is now back in full swing and enlarging. It remains the first organisation states of the Euro-Atlantic Community look to for their security. However spectacular the EU's new security role is compared to where it comes from, it will stay in the shadow of NATO as security actor. The fourth fundamental change has to do with EU sanctions. In contrast to 2014, the sanctions imposed on Russia are radical and 'unprecedented comprehensive' (Meissner and Graziani 2023, p. 390). At the time of writing, the EU had adopted eleven sanctions packages against Russia in response to the war (and imposed sanctions on Belarus for its involvement in the war) (European Council/Council of the EU 2023a). Combined with the sanctions of 2014, over 1800 people and entities (travel bans and asset freezes) have been sanctioned. The EU has imposed import and export restrictions. They were estimated by the European Commission as affecting 49% of exports and 58% of imports in 2022 (as compared to 2021). Export restrictions include top technology, semiconductors, dual-use technology, energy-related equipment, as well as aviation and space related goods and technology. There are import restrictions on oil, coal, steel and gold. Sanctions in the transport sector include the closing of the EU airspace for Russian carriers. A SWIFT ban was imposed on ten Russian (and four Belarusian) banks and access to the capital market was restricted. Finally, the EU has banned several Kremlin-backed media outlets. The import ban on crude oil, decided in December 2022, excluded oil by pipeline (as demanded by Hungary) but is still expected to affect around 90% of EU oil imports from Russia. The EU also imposed price caps on Russian oil and petroleum products. While the reduction of the import of natural gas is not strictly part of the sanctions, there has been a U-turn in this field. Natural gas imports from Russia by the EU-27 had dropped by the end of 2022 to roughly one fifth of the imports one year earlier (Bruegel 2023). Given the often voiced concerns that EU dependence on Russian natural gas created a huge source of power for Moscow, this is a spectacular change. The EU and its member states managed to seize the initiative and cut itself off to a large extent from Russian gas. Moreover, the energy measures taken by the EU in response to Russia's aggression brought the objectives of energy security and climate policy better in line, as the RePowerEU plan underlined (Giuli and Oberthür 2023). These sanctions are not only unprecedented.6 They also have a different purpose than the sanctions in 2014, that mainly had a signalling function (Romanova 2016). The new purpose, in the words of von der Leyen, was 'to cripple Putin's ability to finance his war machine' (Von der Leyen 2022). The economic effect of sanctions is always hard to measure, but it is clear that the EU has not succeeded to achieve this goal. The Russian economy has shrunk in 2022 with a −2.1% (IMF, WB, OECD). The projections for 2023 diverge from a further shrinking with −2.5% (OECD), over status quo (−0.2%, WB) to a growth of the Russian GDP of 0.7% in 2023 (European Council/Council of the EU 2023b; IMF 2023). Speculation over gas prices might be one of the main reasons why the sanctions on Russia did not have the desired effect. Gazprom reported a 40% decrease of its net profit in 2022, due to lower exports and a tax hike (Soldatkin 2023), but it still managed to make a profit because of the excessive gas prices on the European market in Autumn 2022. Ironically, the EU became the victim of its own liberalisation policies in the gas market of the previous decades, that made this speculation possible. This level of speculation is unlikely to be repeated in 2023 and may still have a delayed effect on the Russian economy. Russia's war against Ukraine thus changed the EU's policy in four significant ways: a united stance on Russia, the return of enlargement policy, a new security role and unprecedented sanctions. While they represent a sea change, some reflections are in place. Most crucially, the question should be raised whether the changes are sustainable. The EU has engaged in a new security role, but will it also manage to play this role in case the sense of urgency and threat vanish? For this to be the case, a reform of decision-making procedures for CFSP and CSDP will be vital, away from unanimity procedures. With the Strategic Compass, a blueprint is available to reinforce the defence capabilities and strategic autonomy of the EU, but many steps are required to make the 'quantum leap' Borrell referred to. Russia's war against Ukraine has certainly forced a breakthrough, clearly visible in the use of the EPF or the joint procurement of ammunition, but one that needs to be anchored and further developed if it is to be sustainable. Moreover, the EU may have shown unprecedented actorness, it is also confronted with a rapidly changing international environment. It may have given a firm response to the war, this does not mean it has developed a foreign and security policy that is strong enough in face of the overwhelming and shifting international challenges: the EU's 'suboptimality is not (only) determined by the need to accommodate disparate preferences in a cumbersome decision-making procedure, but by the fact that the goalposts themselves of what is required for the EU to retain its actorness are moving.' (Costa and Barbé 2023, p. 442). The EU's new security and foreign policy role at the regional level does not automatically translate into a stronger role at the global level. No doubt, there is a growing awareness of global challenges elsewhere in the world. In thi