Triangular Geopolitics in Europe’s Eastern Neighbourhood. CEPS Commentary, 2 December 2014

Over the last few months, Russia has employed a number of economic and security measures to derail the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) between the EU and Ukraine. Russia’s opposition to the Agreement was based on the argument that it would damage its economy and weaken its trade ties with Ukraine. Russia’s actions ultimately led to war in Ukraine, but did not succeed in reversing Ukraine’s EU integration policies; instead there are now trilateral negotiations between the EU, Ukraine and Russia on mere technical trade aspects of the DCFTA. The Kremlin is using similar rhetoric and, to some extent, similar coercive measures against the DCFTAs with Moldova and Georgia. But the small scale of Moldovan and Georgian trade with Russia is not a legitimate reason for the EU to replicate the Ukraine ‘trialogue’ on the DCFTAs in these countries. Instead, Moldova’s heavy dependence on Russia’s energy and the former’s transit role for the EU offers a greater possibility to set up trilateral negotiations, similar to the recently finalised gas trialogue between the EU, Ukraine and Russia.

Trade and geopolitics: should the EU engage with the Eurasian Economic Union? EPC Policy Brief, 2 April 2015

In an effort to find a solution to the deteriorating relationship between the EU and Russia, various commentators, policy-makers and experts have suggested that the EU should seriously consider engaging with the Eurasian Economic Union, as part of a new ‘grand bargain’ between Russia and the EU. If Ukraine will no longer be forced to choose between two integrating regimes, so the argument goes, Russian sensibilities can be pacified, which will in turn, hopefully, lead to peace in eastern Ukraine. However, according to Rilka Dragneva and Kataryna Wolczuk, these arguments are based on a number of problematic assumptions about integration dynamics in the eastern neighbourhood. In this Policy Brief, they recommend the EU better think twice before further engaging with the EEU.

Geopolitics with European characteristics: An essay on pragmatic idealism, equality, and strategy. Egmont Paper 82, March 2016

‘A bizarre phenomenon,’ Der Spiegel concluded, after trying to figure out why young people left Germany to become foreign fighters in Syria. The magazine painted a portrait of two thirty-somethings with similar backgrounds and the same hobby – martial arts. One became director of a martial arts school in Hamburg, the other became a terrorist poster boy in Syria.2

What role for migration policy in the Ukraine crisis? CEPS Commentaries, 27 March 2014

While the geopolitics of the Ukraine crisis have dominated headlines, little attention has been paid to the potential challenges arising from the movement of people from the region to the EU. Yet recent history should tell us this could be a grave oversight. As we witnessed during the Arab Spring in 2011, political upheaval can result in people fleeing their state in fear of persecution or seeking to leave their state in search of new horizons and economic opportunities. The EU would do well to learn from that experience and the policy failures that resulted from the Union’s response of closing its borders and returning people to Africa. This Commentary argues that it is critical that – independently of the still uncertain outcome of the Ukraine crisis – the EU formulates and implements a credible policy strategy addressing the potential impact and benefits of mobility between Ukraine and the EU.

The anatomy of Russian information warfare. The Crimean operation, a case study. OSW Point of View Number 42, May 2014

The Crimean operation has served as an occasion for Russia to demonstrate to the entire world the capabilities and the potential of information warfare. Its goal is to use difficult to detect methods to subordinate the elites and societies in other countries by making use of various kinds of secret and overt channels (secret services, diplomacy and the media), psychological impact, and ideological and political sabotage. Russian politicians and journalists have argued that information battles are necessary for “the Russian/Eurasian civilisation” to counteract “informational aggression from the Atlantic civilisation led by the USA”. This argument from the arsenal of applied geopolitics has been used for years. This text is an attempt to provide an interpretation of information warfare with the background of Russian geopolitical theory and practice.

Hostages to Moscow, clients of Beijing. Security in Central Asia as the role of the West diminishes. OSW Study 10/2014

The goal of this publication is to attempt to assess the thirteen years (2001- -2014) of the West’s military presence in the countries of post-Soviet Central Asia, closely associated with the ISAF and OEF-A (Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan) missions in Afghanistan. There will also be an analysis of the actual challenges for the region’s stability after 2014. The current and future security architecture in Central Asia will also be looked at closely, as will the actual capabilities to counteract the most serious threats within its framework. The need to separately handle the security system in Central Asia and security as such is dictated by the particularities of political situation in the region, the key mechanism of which is geopolitics understood as global superpower rivalry for influence with a secondary or even instrumental role of the five regional states, while ignoring their internal problems. Such an approach is especially present in Russia’s perception of Central Asia, as it views security issues in geopolitical categories. Because of this, security analysis in the Central Asian region requires a broader geopolitical context, which was taken into account in this publication. The first part investigates the impact of the Western (primarily US) military and political presence on the region’s geopolitical architecture between 2001 and 2014. The second chapter is an attempt to take an objective look at the real challenges to regional security after the withdrawal of the coalition forces from Afghanistan, while the third chapter is dedicated to analysing the probable course of events in the security dimension following 2014. The accuracy of predictions time-wise included in the below publication does not exceed three to five years due to the dynamic developments in Central Asia and its immediate vicinity (the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran), and because of the large degree of unpredictability of policies of one of the key regional actors – Russia (both in the terms of its activity on the international arena, and its internal developments).

First steps towards into the unknown. The possibilities prospects of unconventional gas extraction in Ukraine. OSW Commentary No. 106, 2013-04-24

Ukraine’s deposits of unconventional gas (shale gas, tight gas trapped in non-porous sandstone formations, and coal bed methane) may form a significant part of Europe’s gas reserves. Initial exploration and test drilling will be carried out in two major deposits: Yuzivska (Kharkiv and Donetsk Oblasts) and Oleska (Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblasts), to confirm the volume of the reserves. Shell and Chevron, respectively, won the tenders for the development of these fields in mid 2012. Gas extraction on an industrial scale is expected to commence in late 2018/ early 2019 at the earliest. According to estimates presented in the draft Energy Strategy of Ukraine 2030, annual gas production levels may range between 30 billion m3 and 47 billion m3 towards the end of the next decade. According to optimistic forecasts from IHS CERA, total gas production (from both conventional and unconventional reserves) could reach as much as 73 billion m3. However, this will require multi-billion dollar investments, a significant improvement in the investment climate, and political stability. It is clear at the present initial stage of the unconventional gas extraction project that the private interests of the Ukrainian government elite have played a positive role in initiating unconventional gas extraction projects. Ukraine has had to wait nearly four decades for this opportunity to regain its status of a major gas producer. Gas from unconventional sources may lead not only to Ukraine becoming self-sufficient in terms of energy supplies, but may also result in it beginning to export gas. Furthermore, shale gas deposits in Poland and Ukraine, including on the Black Sea shelf (both traditional natural gas and gas hydrates) form a specific ‘European methane belt’, which could bring about a cardinal change in the geopolitics and geo-economics of Eastern and Central Europe over the next thirty years.

Exporting the Internal Market – Panacea or Nemesis for the European Neighbourhood Policy? Lessons from the Energy Community. EU Diplomacy Paper No. 2, 2014

Over the last decades, a constant feature of the relations between the European Union (EU) and the countries in its neighbourhood has been the export of European law. Achieved through bilateral or multilateral agreements, the export of law has led to the ‘juridification’ of external policy. The energy sector is in the vanguard of this development. European energy law has been made applicable to third countries through the European Economic Area (EEA) and, most important for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), the Energy Community. Bilateral agreements of relevance for energy include the (draft) Association Agreement with Ukraine which was rejected in November 2013 and came on the agenda again following a revolution in the country. Geopolitics has played and continues to play an eminent role in this respect. What does that mean for the export of European law to neighbouring countries? This paper argues that the export of European (energy) law does not only remain possible but is preferable to purely diplomatic relations between the EU and its neighbours if certain conditions are fulfilled. Based on the experience in the EEA and the Energy Community, multilateral integration agreements can be successful if they offer a well-designed institutional and procedural architecture based on mutual commitments, extend the benefits of the internal market to the participating third countries and create ‘win-win’ situations in satisfying also the participating third countries' vital interests in return for undergoing the hardship of economic reforms.

The Eastern Partnership after Riga: Review and Reconfirm. CEPS Commentary, 29 May 2015

The Riga Summit of 21-22 May reaffirmed the EU’s commitment to the Eastern Partnership, underlined further differentiation between the neighbours and reiterated the importance of people-to-people contacts, finds Hrant Kostanyan in this CEPS Commentary. All in all, however, the Summit was more of a stocktaking exercise than a momentous redefinition of relations with the EU at a time of precarious geopolitics in the east. Politically, it is important now for the EU to defend what it already offered to the eastern neighbours and reconfirm the Eastern Partnership as a defining feature of its foreign policy and fundamental to the EU’s larger Security Strategy review.