Seen From the Outside: Russian Perspectives on the European Union’s External Democratisation Policy in the East

The European Union’s democratization efforts in third countries can be seen as an attempt at strengthening the target countries’ institutional structures, rule of law, and – interestingly – its civil societies. It is particularly this last aspect of the EU’s close cooperation with civil society that has been placed centrally in the EU’s Eastern Partnership policy and has as such been scrutinized to a considerable extent. However, while most research assessing the Eastern Partnership (or its separate dimensions) focuses on the interplay between the EU on the one and the partner countries on the other hand, it omits the position of the third party concerned, namely the Russian Federation. There is no denying that Russia perceives its national interests in what it regards to be its natural sphere of influence as being threatened by the EU’s involvement, yet just how much relevance does it ascribe to the EU’s democratization efforts in the East? Does Russia regard the EU’s democratization policy initiatives as credible and effective, potentially leading to the partner countries’ self-distancing from Russia, or does it brush these off as yet another example of rhetoric without any significant substance? The proposed paper sets out to answer these questions by analyzing the politics of perception in the Russian Federation, with the European Union’s democratization efforts in the shared neighbourhood as a case study. Methodologically, the paper will draw heavily on interviews with Russian officials conducted during the author’s extensive field work in Moscow. The overarching goal of the proposed paper, then, is to complement the predominantly EU-centric scholarly canon on the Eastern Partnership with an account of Russia’s perception of the very same.