EU-Russia relations and the Ukraine conflict

The years 2014 and 2022 marked a watershed in relations between Russia and the European Union (EU). Although tensions between Brussels and Moscow had been mounting since the late 2000s, Russia's annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and its subsequent support of the insurgency in Eastern Ukraine turned disagreements with the EU into an overt political crisis (Haukkala, 2016). The EU took a diametrically opposed stance to Russia in the conflict: it supported the Euromaidan protests, the ensuing new Ukrainian government, and continued to pursue its policy of partnerships and economic agreements with other post-Soviet countries (most notably Georgia and Moldova). In response to Russia's actions in Ukraine, in the spring and summer of 2014, the EU imposed a set of targeted, diplomatic and – most significantly – economic sanctions against Moscow. Russia reciprocated with sanctions that affected the EU's food exports in particular (Portela et al., 2021). EU sanctions and Russian countersanctions hit one of the main components of the EU–Russia relationship – trade (Crozet & Hinz, 2020). The combined effect of sanctions and the drop in the oil price, which had significant repercussions for the Russian economy, considerably diminished the EU–Russia economic partnership. In the field of security, debates about potential cooperation were swiftly replaced by mutual threat perceptions and overt confrontation.