23.3 Evolving relations with Russia

Post-Cold War Cooperation

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Europe faced a fundamental question: what role would Russia play in the new order? For about a decade, the answer leaned toward partnership. NATO and the EU both built formal channels for cooperation with Russia, covering everything from security to trade. But that cooperative phase gradually broke down as NATO expanded eastward, energy dependence created leverage, and Russia reasserted itself as a rival power.

NATO-Russia Collaboration and Energy Politics

The NATO-Russia Founding Act (1997) was the first major framework for post-Cold War cooperation. It declared that NATO and Russia were no longer adversaries and committed both sides to consultation on security issues.

This was upgraded in 2002 with the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), which gave Russia a seat at the table for discussions on counterterrorism, arms control, and joint military exercises. For a time, this produced real collaboration, including shared logistics for NATO operations in Afghanistan.

On the economic side, the EU-Russia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (signed 1994, entered into force 1997) established a framework for trade, investment, and political dialogue. Russia was the EU's third-largest trading partner, and the EU was Russia's largest.

Energy sat at the center of this relationship. Europe depended heavily on Russian natural gas, with some countries (Germany, the Baltic states, Finland) relying on Russia for over 30% of their supply. The Nord Stream pipeline, running under the Baltic Sea directly from Russia to Germany, exemplified this entanglement. It deepened economic ties but also gave Russia significant political leverage, since it could bypass traditional transit countries like Ukraine and Poland.

Challenges to Cooperation

Several fault lines undermined the cooperative framework:

• NATO enlargement proved the most persistent source of tension. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999; the Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria, and others followed in 2004. Russia viewed each wave of expansion as a direct threat to its security buffer zone in Eastern Europe.
• Missile defense disputes flared when the US proposed placing interceptor systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia saw this as aimed at neutralizing its nuclear deterrent, despite Western assurances the system targeted Iranian missiles.
• Energy as a weapon became a recurring concern. Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine in 2006 and again in 2009, disrupting flows to EU countries that depended on Ukrainian transit pipelines. These shutoffs demonstrated how energy dependence could be weaponized.
• Diverging foreign policy priorities on issues like the Syrian civil war and the Iran nuclear deal made joint action increasingly difficult.

By the mid-2000s, the cooperative momentum of the 1990s had largely stalled.

Regional Tensions

Frozen Conflicts and Russian Influence

Across the former Soviet space, several territorial disputes from the early 1990s remained unresolved, earning the label "frozen conflicts." These weren't truly frozen; they simmered with periodic violence and kept the affected regions in political limbo.

• Transnistria (Moldova): A Russian-speaking breakaway region that declared independence in 1992. Russian troops remained stationed there as "peacekeepers," giving Moscow a foothold in Moldovan affairs.
• South Ossetia and Abkhazia (Georgia): Both regions broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s with Russian backing. Tensions escalated into the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, a brief but significant conflict in which Russian forces pushed deep into Georgian territory. Afterward, Russia recognized both regions as independent states.
• Nagorno-Karabakh (between Armenia and Azerbaijan): A dispute dating to 1988 that periodically erupted into violence despite multiple ceasefires. Russia played mediator while also maintaining a military alliance with Armenia.

These conflicts served Russia's "near abroad" policy, a strategy of maintaining influence over former Soviet republics. By supporting separatist movements and stationing troops in breakaway regions, Russia ensured that countries like Georgia and Moldova remained too unstable to fully integrate with Western institutions like NATO or the EU.

Crimea Annexation and the Eastern Partnership

The EU launched its Eastern Partnership in 2009 to deepen ties with six post-Soviet states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. The initiative offered association agreements, trade deals, and support for democratic reforms. It stopped short of offering EU membership but clearly aimed to pull these countries closer to Europe.

Russia viewed the Eastern Partnership as a direct challenge to its sphere of influence. The crisis came to a head in late 2013, when Ukrainian President Yanukovych rejected an EU association agreement under Russian pressure, triggering the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv. Yanukovych fled in February 2014.

Russia responded swiftly. In March 2014, Russian forces without insignia ("little green men") seized control of Crimea, and a hastily organized referendum produced a vote to join Russia. The annexation of Crimea was the first forcible change of European borders since World War II, violating Ukraine's territorial integrity and international law.

Conflict then erupted in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region, where Russian-backed separatists declared independent republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. Despite ceasefire agreements (the Minsk Protocols of 2014 and 2015), fighting continued for years, killing over 14,000 people by 2021.

Confrontational Policies

Sanctions Regime and Economic Impacts

Following the Crimea annexation, the EU and US imposed escalating economic sanctions on Russia. Here's how the sanctions regime worked:

1. Targeted sanctions came first: asset freezes and travel bans on specific Russian officials and entities connected to the annexation.
2. Sectoral sanctions followed, restricting access to Western capital markets for major Russian banks, limiting technology transfers to Russia's energy sector, and imposing an arms embargo.
3. Russia retaliated with counter-sanctions, banning agricultural imports from the EU and US. This hurt European farmers but also raised food prices for Russian consumers.

The economic impact was real but uneven. Russia's GDP contracted in 2015, though falling oil prices contributed as much as sanctions. EU-Russia trade dropped significantly, with some EU member states (particularly those with close trade ties to Russia, like Germany and Italy) pushing back against the sanctions' costs.

Whether sanctions actually changed Russian behavior remained a persistent debate. Supporters argued they raised the cost of aggression; critics pointed out that Russia showed no signs of returning Crimea or withdrawing from the Donbas.

Hybrid Warfare and Information Campaigns

Russia developed a toolkit of hybrid warfare tactics that blurred the line between military and non-military aggression. These methods allowed Russia to exert pressure while maintaining plausible deniability.

• Cyber attacks: The 2007 attacks on Estonian government and banking websites were among the first major state-linked cyber offensives in Europe. They came after Estonia relocated a Soviet-era war memorial, and were widely attributed to Russian-linked hackers.
• Disinformation campaigns: Russian state-sponsored media outlets like RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik broadcast content designed to amplify divisions in Western societies, promote pro-Russian narratives, and undermine trust in democratic institutions.
• Election interference: Allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, along with similar concerns in European elections (France, Germany), pushed hybrid threats to the top of the Western security agenda.

NATO and the EU responded by establishing dedicated bodies to counter disinformation (such as the EU's East StratCom Task Force, created in 2015) and by investing in cyber defense capabilities.

Putin's Russia and Assertive Foreign Policy

Understanding Russia's trajectory requires understanding Vladimir Putin's worldview. His presidency (from 2000 onward, with a brief stint as prime minister from 2008 to 2012) marked a decisive shift from the cooperative posture of the Yeltsin era.

Key turning points in Putin's assertive foreign policy:

• 2007 Munich Security Conference speech: Putin publicly challenged the US-led unipolar world order, calling NATO expansion a "serious provocation" and signaling that Russia would no longer accept Western dominance of European security.
• 2008 Russo-Georgian War: Russia's first use of military force beyond its borders since the Soviet era, demonstrating willingness to act against countries pursuing NATO membership.
• Military modernization: Defense spending increased significantly through the 2010s, with investments in nuclear forces, conventional capabilities, and new weapons systems.
• 2015 intervention in Syria: Russia's military support for the Assad regime marked its return as a global military actor, not just a regional one. It also gave Russia leverage in negotiations with Western powers.

A recurring theme across all of these moves was Putin's emphasis on restoring Russia's status as a great power and protecting Russian-speaking populations in neighboring countries. Western governments increasingly saw this as a justification for territorial revisionism, while Russia framed it as a defensive response to NATO encirclement.

By the mid-2010s, the post-Cold War hope for a cooperative European security order that included Russia had effectively collapsed. The relationship had shifted from partnership to confrontation, with sanctions, military buildups, and information warfare defining the new dynamic.