Ukraine Between the EU and Russia: The Integration Challenge

The Integration Challenge

R. Dragneva-Lewers, K. Wolczuk

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137516268
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book addresses the complex origins of the Ukrainian crisis. It places the crisis in a longer-term perspective and shows how the domestic political regime interpreted, balanced and eventually chose between the competing integration offers of Russia and the EU. It also explores the key implications for Ukraine's relations with the EU and Russia.

1

Introduction

Abstract: In late 2013, Ukraine shot to the centre of global attention as a result of the protests triggered by its government’s refusal to sign a new agreement with the European Union. The analysis of the Ukraine crisis, however, has been often reduced to a stand-off between Russia and the West. This chapter explains how this book transcends the often simplified take on events and the fragmented and ad hoc explanations of Ukraine’s integration behaviour vis-à-vis Russia and the EU. We examine Ukraine’s integration choices in three respects. First, we analyse the nature of the integration offers from Russia and the EU, especially the often misunderstood intricacies of, and compatibilities between, association with the EU and participation in Russia-led integration regimes. Second, we focus on domestic dynamics in Ukraine and their impact on the country’s integration choices. Third, we deliberately adopt a long-term perspective in examining the continuity and credibility of the integration choices, given the very different integration choices on offer.

Keywords: area studies, Association Agreement, domestic regime in Ukraine, EU, Eurasian Union, post-Soviet integration, realist theory, Russia, Ukraine

Dragneva, Rilka, and Kataryna Wolczuk. Ukraine Between the EU and Russia: The Integration Challenge. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137516268.0004.

In late 2013, Ukraine shot to the centre of global attention as a result of the protests triggered by its government’s refusal to sign a new agreement with the European Union (EU). The protests ultimately resulted in a change of government, in turn provoking a powerful countervailing reaction from Russia – the annexation of Crimea, support for separatism in eastern Ukraine and an energy stand-off and trade war with Ukraine. On a regional level, the crisis triggered profound challenges to Ukraine’s statehood and led to greater instability in the area; on a global level, it shattered the international order established in the aftermath of the Cold War.

It should therefore not be surprising that strong polarised views about the origins and the nature of the crisis were ignited. For some, the crisis is the result of Russia’s assertiveness in restoring its sphere of influence. This drive was supposedly being realised via the Eurasian integration project. The Eurasian Union signalled a fresh approach to region-building in the post-Soviet space, a building block in a newly emerged multipolar world with Russia as a Great Power at its helm (Putin, 2011b). The Kremlin’s attempts to strong-arm its smaller neighbours to join the Eurasian family only seemed to confirm these geopolitical ambitions, as a means of countervailing the incursion of the EU onto ‘its’ territory. At the same time, Russia’s motives in this crisis have been understood as complex, even if not necessarily coherent (Bennet, 2015). These motives have been infused by established stereotypes as well as misperceptions, such as the identification of EU’s technocratic machinery with American global ambitions (Gretskiyi et al., 2014). Most importantly, there has been a powerful reminder of Ukraine’s critical and multi-faceted importance to Russia, something well grasped in the 1990s but largely forgotten by 2013. Ukraine has been and remains pivotal in Russia’s integration plans and its legitimacy as a European power. Controlling Ukraine (or at least certain parts of it) has proved to be vital for Russia’s perceptions of security. To that there can be added Ukraine’s importance for Russia’s own ‘Kiev creation myth’ (D’Anieri, 2012), which has gone hand in hand with the very rejection – or at least highly conditional acceptance – of Ukraine’s separate statehood. Similarly, in its objections to the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, the Kremlin projected a picture of Ukraine’s primary and seemingly unconditional belonging to the post-Soviet world.

For others, the responsibility for the crisis lies with the West, which encroached on Russia leaving it no option but to legitimately defend itself (Mearsheimer, 2014; Sakwa, 2014). In this view, the EU’s approach to its eastern neighbourhood put Ukraine in a position of being forced to choose between integration regimes. As the German Foreign Minister Steinmeier (2013) put it, ‘[W]e should ask ourselves ... whether we have overlooked the fact that it is too much for this country to have to choose between Europe and Russia’. The underlying logic and presumption here is that Ukraine has been embedded in a web of interdependencies and integration processes, which the EU has disturbed. The EU is accused of developing self-centred, politically ‘autistic’ policies which ignore regional interdependencies and existing regional commitments of countries, such as Ukraine, denying Russia its very right to promote re-integration (Bordachev, 2015). To some extent this view testifies to the strength of the Kremlin’s narrative of precedence and legitimate concerns about the EU’s encroachment. Yet, it also shows a desire within the EU to find ‘win-win’ solutions, to secure peace in Ukraine by appeasing Russia’s sensitivities and striking a new ‘grand bargain’ (EEAS, 2015). The EU’s guilt has also been infused by the West’s own set of awakened stereotypes: both the political left and (far) right have often readily justified, excused or glorified Putin’s actions in their critique of, respectively, Western capitalism and Atlantic dominance, and the decline of traditional values.

While both views tell us something about two of the parties involved, that is, Russia and the EU, both ignore the role of the third and most important party – Ukraine itself. Certainly it is undeniable that the protests and war brought into a sharp relief the growing rivalry between the EU and Russia over the ‘common neighbourhood’, with both of these actors offering alternative regimes for advanced economic integration. These integration ‘offers’ – the EU’s Association Agreement with the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) and the Eurasian integration project, culminating in the launch of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in 2015 – have differed significantly in a way which is rarely fully grasped. Both of them nominally related to economic integration, yet the design, commitment, exclusivity and implications for Ukraine have varied dramatically.

These initiatives have been pursued in parallel rather than in harmony with each other. Yet, Ukraine has not been a mere bystander waiting to see what is being offered. It has been actively and dynamically engaged in both processes – as an aspirant to the one to its West, and as a recalcitrant participant in the other. As will be seen, while Ukraine’s integration choices vis-à-vis these two offers caught international attention only in late 2013, the Ukrainian leaders have been unambiguously articulating their preferences as regards these options for some considerable time. It is equally pertinent to note that these choices have been shaped by the intricate interplay of domestic and external factors.

Thus, it is highly ironic that following Russia’s backlash against Ukraine’s choice, the analysis of the Ukraine crisis has been reduced to a stand-off between Russia and the West. This thinking reflects the realist perspective, which postulates that in an anarchic system states have to resort to self-help to ensure survival, and which further tends to assume that the formation of alliances is a zero-sum game – in this case, Ukraine’s efforts to integrate with the EU represent a threat to Russia’s security. For the theory to hold, Ukraine is treated as a ‘black box’ or a piece on a chessboard on which the Great Powers compete. Devising policy recommendations on this basis, in turn, perpetuates the view that the in-between countries can be acted upon rather than reckoned with, and stops short of finding appropriate and sustainable solutions. This is the key reason why we find the realist perspective unhelpful in explaining the crisis. While highly appealing on the grounds of parsimony and the almost self-evident usefulness of perspectives based on power relations in the international system, it has two key deficiencies. Firstly, it discounts key motivational and strategic differences between the two actors, with the rule-oriented, non-militarised and technocratic EU equated with a Russia intent on once again becoming a Great Power, by whatever means. As this book will demonstrate, the ‘geopoliticisation’ of the EU is, in fact, fallacious. Secondly, the realist approach fails to attribute sufficient weight to the role played by endogenous, domestic factors within Ukraine. These factors not so much left Ukraine vulnerable, thus open to ‘be acted upon’, but also critically shaped the EU’s and Russia’s approaches to Ukraine. For example, while Russia tailored its policies towards President Yanukovych’s regime, the EU confronted dilemmas whether to pursue economic integration with an increasingly authoritarian government.

We argue that the origins and consequences of the crisis can be fully grasped only when taking into account the domestic dynamics in Ukraine and their interface with the regional integration dynamics in the post-Soviet space. Thus, this book focuses on Ukraine’s integration behaviour as the vital, and indeed missing, ingredient in many analyses purporting to understand the ‘Ukraine crisis’.

Choosing such a perspective has its undoubted challenges as it seeks to offer a comprehensive analysis of the interplay of relations and issues hitherto studied as discrete themes. The EU’s policy in the eastern neighbourhood as one of these themes has resulted in a significant body of literature (e.g., Delcour & Tulmets, 2009; Whitman & Wolff, 2010). Alas, this literature ignores developments within Ukraine and Russia’s objections to Ukraine’s integration with the EU. This is because domestic factors in the partner countries, such as Ukraine, tended to be glossed over, with few scholars delving into Ukraine’s domestic dynamics and the factors shaping the receptivity of the partner countries to external influences (Wolczuk, 2009; Langbein & Wolczuk, 2012; Dimitrova & Dragneva, 2013).

In contrast, Russia-led integration projects received much less attention in the past decade. After the considerable interest in the 1990s, a growing fatigue met the stream of ineffective and confusing post-Soviet regional integration initiatives. By the late 2000s, only a minority of scholars in the West paid attention to post-Soviet regional economic integration (Dragneva & de Kort, 2007; Dusseault, 2007, Malfliet et al., 2007). This applied also to Ukraine’s Eastern foreign policy vector in general and behaviour vis-à-vis the CIS in particular (Wolczuk, 2003; Dragneva & Dimitrova, 2007; Hoffman, 2014). The new wave of post-Soviet regionalism, evidenced by the launch of the Eurasian project, was met by much scepticism regarding its salience and viability. Despite its rapid rise, interest in the nature and dimensions of Eurasian integration was limited (Vinokurov & Libman, 2012; Dragneva & Wolczuk, 2013), at least until the eruption of the Ukraine crisis. Even as Ukraine attracted international attention, the focus was placed on broad geopolitical issues rather than on substantive aspects of integration. In particular, studies in specific issues such as trade and energy cooperation lagged behind, reflecting the decline of area studies expertise with a deep knowledge of the post-Soviet region (for exceptions, see Cooper, 2009; Balmaceda, 2013; Hoffman, 2014).

Similarly, as EU-Russia relations developed in the 1990s and then declined in the late 2000s, few authors paid attention to the broader implications of this process. Some notable exceptions were provided by authors linking their analysis of EU-Russia relations to the EU’s respective policies towards the ‘common neighbourhood’ (Averre, 2009; Haukkala, 2009, 2011; Zagorsky, 2011; Moshes, 2012).

The relative neglect of these relations is paralleled by the decline of attention being paid to domestic politics in Ukraine. While Ukraine found itself centre-stage at the time of the 2004 Orange Revolution (D’Anieri, 2006; Aslund, 2009), the disillusionment which followed led to reduced interest in Ukraine beyond the narrow circle of scholars and analysts. More importantly, confined to their disciplinary genre and focus, very few analyses considered the links between the above areas of expertise. This was mostly done in policy-oriented pieces, for example, in relation to Russia’s ‘soft power’ in Ukraine and the growing, even though at the time little acknowledged, contestation with the EU (Bogomolov & Lytvynenko, 2012; Dragneva & Wolczuk, 2012; Moshes, 2012; Kudelia, 2013).

This book seeks to overcome the fragmented and ad hoc explanations of Ukraine’s integration behaviour vis-à-vis Russia and the EU. In doing so, we adopt a broad structural interdependence framework (Nye & Keohane, 2000) to map out Ukraine’s key existing dependencies (in the case of Russia) and efforts to create them (in the case of the EU) as a means of exploring the evolution of Ukraine’s relations with them. We combine this with an in-depth area studies analysis in two main ways.

Firstly, we scrutinise the Ukrainian leadership’s balance of preferences and strategies along the two vectors of relations. We deliberately adopt a long-term perspective in examining the stability and credibility of the integration choices made by Ukraine’s successive leaders.

Secondly, we zoom in on the domestic regime to expose the fundamental differences between, on the one hand, Russia’s and the EU’s approaches to Ukraine, and, on the other, the choices of Ukraine’s leadership. We examine the actual nature of the two integration offers, especially the often misunderstood intricacies of, and compatibilities between, the association with the EU versus participation in the CIS free trade area and membership in the Customs Union. We then highlight the extent to which the two integration offers related to the core features of the domestic regimes. This enables us to show how the Maidan protests against Yanukovych’s regime during the winter of 2013–14 amounted to a rejection of the integration offer from Russia that would have perpetuated the regime at the expense of the widely understood national interest of Ukraine.

Thus, on a general level, we advance the analytical perspective on the predicament of countries in-between integration regimes by providing a framework where their integration behaviour is explained by the interplay of external and domestic factors over time. More specifically, we dispel a range of misperceptions and misunderstandings about the ‘Ukraine crisis’ and provide a nuanced, multi-layered understanding of its causes. We ultimately argue that this understanding is impossible without recognising Ukraine’s longer-term integration choice and its justification. In the unfolding drama, both Russia and the EU play an undeniable role and bear no small amount of responsibility; yet it is important to attribute ‘blame’ to the right extent and for the right reasons as opposed to resorting to simplified stereotypes, often reflecting pre-existing ideological, theoretical or personal preferences.

The book is divided into nine chapters with strong continuities between each other. Following this introduction, Chapter 2 and 3 examine Ukraine’s relations with Russia and the EU, spelling out the evolution of their respective integration offers and the domestic responses to them. Chapter 4 zooms in specifically on Yanukovych’s regime, discussing its salience in structuring relations with the EU amidst its growing authoritarian tendencies. Chapter 5 examines Russia’s renewed integration offer in 2011–13 and Yanukovych regime’s search for ways to balance integration with the EU with functional cooperation with Moscow, a reflection of Ukraine’s asymmetrical interdependence with Russia. Chapter 6 focuses on the ‘integration U-turn’ and examines the complex balancing game behind Yanukovych’s decision to abandon the Association Agreement as well as the roles of Russia and the EU in the process. It also focuses on the popular response to the U-turn and its implications. In the following two chapters we move to dealing with Russia’s responses to the developments in Ukraine. In Chapter 7 we provide an overview of Russia’s military backlash to the political changes in Ukraine and its integration course, stressing the extent to which Russia’s tactics amount to a game-changer with critical implications for any future resolution of the crisis. Chapter 8 examines the economic dimension of the backlash, namely, Russia’s objections to Ukraine’s decision to sign the Association Agreement with the EU as well as the challenges that Russia’s actions vis-à-vis Ukraine pose for the EU’s role in the region. We argue that long-standing interdependencies between Ukraine and Russia have been escalated to the European level, creating a complex matrix of priorities, interdependence and opportunities for issue linkage. The concluding Chapter 9 draws the broad lessons of the crisis and explores its key implications for Ukraine, Russia and Europe. Having shown Ukraine’s integration choice made over two decades, we conclude that Ukraine has to cope with its consequences, namely, Russia’s refusal to let Ukraine ‘go’ and EU’s reluctance to let Ukraine ‘in’.

2

Ukraine and Russia: Managing Interdependence

Abstract: This chapter explores the evolution of Ukraine’s relations with Russia between 1991 and 2011 as a means of understanding the nature and extent of Ukraine’s commitments to Russia’s regional plans and Russia’s approach in pursuing them. We demonstrate that Ukraine adopted and consistently implemented a strategy of highly limited participation in post-Soviet regional integration, perceiving it as Russia’s means of asserting its regional hegemony at the expense of Ukraine’s independence. Yet, at the same time Ukraine remained vulnerable to Russia’s pressure, having done little to reduce its economic and energy dependence on Russia. This interdependence was perpetuated by the rent-seeking strategies of oligarchic interests and the lack of comprehensive economic reform.

Keywords: Common Economic Space, CIS, Eurasian Customs Union, Eurasian Economic Union, Eurasian integration, post-Soviet integration, post-Soviet region, Russia, Ukraine

Dragneva, Rilka, and Kataryna Wolczuk. Ukraine Between the EU and Russia: The Integration Challenge. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137516268.0005.

To state that Ukraine’s relations with Russia were pre-eminent amongst its other bilateral ties is to voice a truism: Russia was a country with which Ukraine had intricate and manifold ties for centuries, a co-founder of the Soviet Union and partner in its demise as well as a vital trade partner and supplier of energy. Correspondingly, Ukraine was not unimportant to Russia, although – as it soon became cle...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  Ukraine and Russia: Managing Interdependence
• 3  Ukraine and Europe: Integration by Demand
• 4  The EU and the Yanukovych Regime: The Widening Gap
• 5  Russias New Integration Offer: Forcing Ukraines Hand
• 6  Yanukovych, the EU and Russia: The End of Balancing
• 7  The Military Backlash
• 8  The Association Agreement: Trilateralisation amidst War
• 9  Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index