Not in the Same Boat: Engaging Russia that is Both Resurgent and Retrograde

Russia and Europe are pushed further apart despite Putin’s claim that ‘we are in the same boat’ apparently facing a ‘perfect storm’.

The deepening and widening crisis may yet hold many spectacular surprises but it has already revealed fundamental non-sustainability of two processes that had flourished for most of the 2010s: Russia’s phenomenal economic growth and the EU’s revolutionary enlargement.

Russia cannot fancy itself any longer as a rising power with a unique state-society contract (whether called ‘sovereign democracy’ or not); and the EU is coming to the acknowledgement that its model of ‘post-historical’ norms-based ever-closer integration is neither universally applicable nor functional in delivering on its central promise of ever-closer union.