Carnegie Moscow Center
As the focus is all on Putin's effort to reshape his neighborhood this week, a Kazakh and a Belarusian silence is an awkward reminder that the Eurasian Union was supposed to be a collaborative project and that the more Putin grabs the headlines, the less that is the case.
Whatever happens at today’s Vilnius summit, EU Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle believes that the prospect of membership is the most transformative instrument the EU has.
Georgia has been ready for any and every subsequent step that paves the way toward anchorage with the project of European Integration.
After its success with Ukraine, Russia will try to blackmail Georgia and Moldova into refusing EU association agreements. Europe needs to think about how to counter Putin.
The Eastern Partnership states and the EU have to acknowledge their own failures instead of playing a “blame game” and work together to make the partnership a success.
Now Tbilisi should concentrate on the main issue that preoccupies most Georgians: how to get the economy back on track.
Now that Saakashvili is finally history, the chances that Russia will soon take an active interest in Georgia are going up. This would concern the settlement of the main issue in Georgian-Russian relations—the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
In the run-up to the EU’s Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius, Europeans have been surprisingly united in the defense of their values, but also their interests.
Ilham Aliyev is attempting modernization without wholesale political reform. Most of the veterans of the Azerbaijani elite remain in their jobs, including the elderly prime minister and presidential chief of staff. The skyline is changing in Baku, but so far the street-plan remains the same.
Russia-EU relations are of a technical rather than strategic character nowadays. A parallel functioning of the EU and the Eurasian Union would lead to more debate about strategic vision of Europe and the Eurasian continent.