To understand the gradual worsening of EU-Russia relations in the decade preceding the Ukraine crisis, it is essential to understand the dynamics of their interaction. This article divides EU-Russia relations into three stages on the basis of changing intergroup dynamics: asymmetrical cooperation (1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003), pragmatic but increasing competition (2004-2013) and conflict (2013-present). It draws on the concept of 'attributional bias' to explain the escalating logic of competition during the second stage. The EU and Russia started to attribute each other negative geopolitical intentions up to the point where these images became so dominant that they interpreted each other's behaviour almost exclusively in terms of these images, rather than on the basis of their actual behaviour. With the Ukraine crisis, EU-Russia relations changed from competition over institutional arrangements in the neighbourhood and over normative hegemony to conflict over direct control.
KEYWORDSRussia; EU; perception; process; attributional bias When the EU and Russia entered into a Strategic Partnership and agreed on cooperation in four Common Spaces in 2003, they did so with fairly good intentions and strong ambitions on both sides. A good decade later, EU-Russia relations are in the deepest crisis since the end of the Cold War. This did not happen abruptly. The Ukraine conflict is the 'culmination of a long-term crisis of EU-Russia relations' (Haukkala, 2015,p .2 5 ) .M o s ta n a l y s t sh a v ee x p l a i n e dt h e'gradual deterioration' (Sakwa, 2014, p. 31) of relations as the result of exogenous factors: shifts in international power relations, elite changes, security concerns, disagreement about the post-Cold War order, domestic power concentration, etc. All of these explanations have contributed significantly to our understanding of the conflict. But there is more to it. To understand how we evolved from cooperation to competition and ultimately to conflict, we additionally need to understand the endogenous dynamics of EU-Russia interaction. In other words, to understand how relations derailed, we also need to understand how the interaction evolved, how mutual negative images developed, how distrust came to dominate the relationship. The word also is important in this sentence. The analysis