Navigating in-between the EU and Russia

Abstract

This Special Issue examines the ways states, regions, de facto states and local actors situated in-between the EU and Russia cope with the competitive external pressure coming from the two regional powers. States, diverse groups and actors in this overlapping neighborhood navigate between varied economic and political integration projects and between different values, ideas and visions of society. This introductory article, first, contextualizes this "inside-out" perspective by presenting the nature of the current EU and Russian projects vis-à-vis the region, how they clash and how this puts regional actors in a state of "in-betweenness". Then, it unpacks the concept of "navigation" by outlining the ways local actors at different levels of domestic governance studied in the contributions to this Special Issue respond to and manage areas of contestation relating to issues such as citizenship politics, minority rights, and political and trade strategies. The role of elite agency serves as a central thread running across the contributions. Caught "in-between" Russia and the EU, domestic actors, be it at national or sub-national level, navigate while adjusting to the external pressures, negotiating and appropriating external discourses. In the process, constraints are often turned into opportunities for the local actors to exploit.

The geopolitical orientations of ordinary Belarusians: survey evidence from early 2020

“…Fourth, Belarus is part of a group of "in-between states" --Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine --that are locations of competition and rivalry between Russia and Euro-Atlantic institutions (White, Biletskaya and McAllister 2016;Charap et al 2018;Dembinska and Smith 2021). All six states are nominally part of the European Union's Eastern Partnership program which aspires to deepen and strengthen relations between the European Union EU, its member states and these eastern neighboring states.…”

The impact of Russian militaryaggression on the establishment of a newUkrainian political nation

“…The unity of the political and cultural space of Ukraine has been strengthening after the Euromaidan and the Russian military aggression. This is stated by Kuzyk (2019) and Dembińska and Smith (2021) who studied the issue of national integration of Ukraine before and after 2014. The political and cultural identity of Ukrainian citizens is not fixed, it currently has an ever-growing convergence of Ukrainian society with Russia's military aggression (Sydorova et al, 2022).…”

Strategic Triangles, Actors and Agency: Georgia and Abkhazia in a Changing Regional Context

“…Despite substantial scholarly attention and important advances in explaining Georgia's foreign policy (see, for example, Jones 2003, Jones and Kakhishvili 2013, Kakachia and Minesashvili 2015, Coene 2016, Minesashvili 2021, German, Jones and Kakachia 2022, such analyses are often framed through the prism of Russian or European Union (EU) policies -or in terms of the accelerating conflict between Russia and the EU/the collective West. In academic works as well as public debate, Georgia is frequently referred to as one of the states "in-between" Russia and the EU (Charap and Colton 2017, Toal 2017, Dembińska and Smith 2021, as part of a "contested neighbourhood" between these two geopolitical heavyweights (Delcour 2018). Ever since Russia's annexation of Crimea in March 2014, and not least, its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, there have been growing concerns that Georgia might become the next battlefield in Russia-West rivalry.…”