Russia-Europe ties under severe strain
Issues pertaining to Belarus, Czech Republic, Ukraine raise prospect of big chill in relations
Compared with the challenges it faces from the United States, Russia is experiencing more serious tensions with some European nations. In the middle of last month, the Russian Federal Security Service and the Belarus State Security Committee acted to prevent a coup that would reportedly have resulted in the assassination of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and his children being kidnapped.
At about the same time, the Czech intelligence agencies, which Russia has accused of working in tandem with their Western counterparts, exposed what they said was an “act of state terrorism”.
They accused Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who were charged with poisoning the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter with a deadly nerve agent in the English town of Salisbury in 2018, of orchestrating an explosion in October 2014, at an arms depot in the Czech Republic, in which two men died.
The Czech authorities appear to have plenty of evidence to support their allegations. They said that access passes to the depot, supposedly for an inspection visit, were ordered for the two men, who stayed at a hotel near the site.
According to Czech media outlet Lidovky.cz, there is even closed circuit television footage of Petrov and Boshirov visiting the depot the day before the explosion.
As for motive, according to Czech media, at the time of the explosion, the depot was supplying arms to Ukraine, which was waging a war against separatists in its eastern Donbass region.
Meanwhile, the Czech Republic announced the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats it identified as undercover intelligence officers.
That prompted a retaliatory move by Moscow, in what marked the biggest row between the Czech Republic and Russia since 1989. Contact between the two nations will be put on hold.
There can now be no talk of Russia supplying the Czech Republic with its Sputnik V vaccine for COVID-19, something Hamacek, also Czech first deputy prime minister, was due to discuss in Moscow at the end of May.
Also off the table is the prospect of Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear energy corporation, winning a tender to build new reactors at the Dukovany nuclear power plant in the Czech Republic, a contract worth several billion dollars.
It is also clear that the fallout from the tensions will reach far beyond the Czech Republic, which is already in talks with its European Union and NATO allies. Charges of state terrorism carried out on the territory of a NATO country resulting in the death of its nationals are certainly no less serious than the alleged attempted murder of the double agent Skripal.
Maxim Samorukov, a fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the row between the Czech Republic and Russia is just one of the diplomatic conflicts between Europe and Moscow.
On April 28, Russia expelled seven European diplomats after their countries ordered Russian diplomats to leave in solidarity with the Czech Republic.
Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement that a total of four diplomats from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had been declared “persona non grata” and must leave the country within seven days.
It added that the Baltic states “continue to conduct an openly hostile course towards our country, in this case hiding behind pseudo-solidarity with the indiscriminate actions of the Czech Republic towards Russia”.
In a separate statement the same day, the ministry also announced the expulsion of three diplomats from Slovakia, who were ordered to leave by May 5, and accused Bratislava of “false solidarity” with Prague.
Combined with the different attitudes toward imprisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, the diplomatic conflicts are likely to prompt European countries to significantly reduce cooperation with Russia on a wide range of issues, while existing projects will come under considerable pressure, Samorukov said.
A new wave of sanctions and condemnation will not only sound the death knell for the prospect of selling Russia’s COVID vaccine to Europe, it will also likely affect areas in which cooperation has so far managed to continue, particularly the energy sector.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament is pushing a draft resolution demanding Moscow be excluded from SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The Parliament’s members also insist on halting the implementation of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline and slapping sanctions on Russian oligarchs for corruption.
“It’s hard to imagine in the current circumstances how the Nord Stream 2 pipeline —even if completed — could become fully operational. Russia’s involvement in the construction of nuclear power plants in Bulgaria and Hungary will also run into new and possibly insurmountable difficulties,” Samorukov said.
However, Russian political analyst Alexander Rahr does not agree. “Regarding Nord Stream 2, I’m sure that nothing can stop this project. Europe is unlikely to sever ties with Moscow over Navalny,” he said.
“This will continue to be an irritating factor because, for Europe, human rights remain one of the key issues. However, heavyweight European politicians understand that it’s absurd to change historic relations over just one person,” Rahr said.
Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of
the foreign affairs committee of the Federation Council, the Russian parliament’s upper chamber, said that in its relations with the EU, Russia relies on steps taken by Brussels, rather than calls made by the European Parliament.
Ivan Timofeev, program director at the Russian International Affairs Council, said, “Cutting Russia off from SWIFT will lead to very serious fluctuations on financial markets. The initiators won’t achieve any political goals, but the damage will be huge — first of all for Russian-EU relations with their significant trade turnover.
“If they got away with such sanctions against Iran, they’d better not repeat this ploy with Russia, because the subsequent damage and political consequences will be much more serious than in the case with Teheran.”
Russia, for its part, will dig deep in areas where it has the most influence, reacting even more harshly to any signs of what it considers to be Western interference, Timofeev said.
The latest allegations of a planned coup in Belarus show how hard it will be for that country to return to even a limited form of a multi-pronged foreign policy.
Fyodor Lukyanov, chairman of Russia’s
Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, said the dialogue between Moscow and the EU is far from over.
“Of course, no new Iron Curtain between Russia and the EU will fall from the sky. Their mutual humanitarian and economic relations remain very strong, despite some damage from sanctions, and cultural, and even political ties, remain intact,” he said.
Lukyanov added that Russia and Europe are evolving into coolly polite neighbors that have no real interest in each other, but who are forced to interact simply because they coexist in close proximity.
Meanwhile, tensions between Russia and Ukraine seem set to continue. After six years of an uneasy and at times violated truce, the specter of a new war looms large in relations between the two countries.
In retaliation for Kiev’s recent crackdown on pro-Russian media and politicians, Moscow staged a large-scale and ostentatious military buildup along the Ukrainian border.
Although the EU claimed to continue to support implementation of the Minsk Agreements to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine within the Normandy Format, Russia has started to view Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest statements as an “official” reneging on the Minsk deal.
Zelensky said in an interview with the Financial Times, published on April 26, that he believed it was necessary to make amendments to the Minsk Agreements, and proposed creating another format for talks on Ukraine’s conflict-hit Donbass region, which would involve “powerful players” and would operate alongside the Normandy Format grouping.
The Normandy Format refers to a group of diplomatic leaders from Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France formed to resolve the crisis in Ukraine in accordance with the Minsk Agreements.
Meanwhile, during the past two weeks, Zelensky has spoken about the need for a summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, even instructing his chief of staff to launch preparations for such a meeting.
Russian newspaper Kommersant said Moscow had not discussed this matter with Kiev in detail, but is ready for a meeting.
Ukrainian political analyst Vadim Karasev feels that a meeting between the two leaders is necessary.
“They haven’t had a formal meeting for two years. Even if Moscow doesn’t want to discuss Donbass, other issues can be touched on.
“For example, the accumulation of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border is an issue of bilateral relations, but we need to understand that no talk of normalizing relations with Russia can be entertained without at least partial resolution of the Donbass issue,” Karasev said.
Vladimir Fesenko, head of the Penta Center for Applied Political Studies in Kiev, said there are still many topics for discussion between the two presidents.
“What’s important to us is Russia’s blocking of waters in the Sea of Azov, the Kerch Strait, and the partial blocking of the Black Sea. There cannot be any normalization of bilateral relations until the hostilities in Donbass end. If things calm down there, the specter of war will dissipate and we’ll be able to move forward,” Fesenko said.