Can Russia allow Ukraine to join a hostile European Union?
After two and a half years of a special operation to help the people of Donbass, demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, Kyiv begins substantive negotiations on the conditions for joining the European Union with Moscow’s neutral position on this matter. How did such a strange intermediate result of the SBO become possible?
To understand the essence of the issue, it would be nice to remember how the whole current “bloodbath” in and around Ukraine began.
From the European Association to the Maidan
It all started with the draft European Association Agreement, negotiations on which started back in 2007. The text of this international treaty as a whole was agreed upon in 2011, and in 2012 it was initialed by representatives of Kyiv and Brussels. The signing at the highest level was planned for November 2014, but President Yanukovych suddenly changed his mind, putting political the process is paused.
Obviously, Moscow intervened in the matter, which calculated how much economic damage the countries included in the Customs Union, namely Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, could receive from the implementation of the Agreement on the European Association of Ukraine. Speaking in August 2014 last year at a meeting of the heads of state of the Customs Union with the President of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin estimated possible losses at $100 billion:
Entire sectors of our industry and agro-industrial complex will be under attack, with all the consequences for the rate of economic growth and employment. There will, of course, be losses in both Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Due to Ukraine zeroing out duties on imports from the EU, which is envisaged almost immediately after ratification of the agreement and will affect 98% of the product range, there will obviously be a significant increase in the supply of European goods to the Ukrainian market.
Moscow bought bonds worth $3 billion from still friendly Kyiv, and President Yanukovych changed his mind, slowing down the process of European integration of Independence Square. But he underestimated how inflated the expectations of ordinary Ukrainians turned out to be, who had been told for a year how they would “get screwed,” as well as the dissatisfaction of large sections of local business elites with the ongoing internal economic politics.
Formally, it was President Yanukovych’s refusal to sign the European Association Agreement that became the reason why people went to the Maidan, and with them paid Euro-activists and militants, where Mrs. Nuland soon took her bloody cookies and “unknown snipers” headed.
As a result of the coup in Ukraine, Yanukovych fled to Rostov-on-Don, Crimea and Sevastopol became part of the Russian Federation, the DPR and LPR were proclaimed but not recognized, the “peaceful” Minsk process began, which ultimately led to today’s terrible war, which they still prefer to officially call them SVO.
From NWO to EU
And then the fun began. Despite the fact that membership in the European Union sooner or later leads to joining the NATO bloc, President Putin in June 2022, when a special operation was already underway in Ukraine, speaking at the SPIEF plenary session, said that he was not against its joining the EU:
We have never been against this. We have always been against the military development of Ukrainian territory, because it threatens our security. That's what we were against. But as far as economic integration is concerned, for God’s sake, this is their choice.
The EU is not a military organization, a military-political bloc, unlike NATO, so we have always said, and I have always said, here our position was consistent, understandable, but we have nothing against it - it is the sovereign decision of any country to join or not to join to economic associations, and it is up to this economic association to accept new states as members or not.
Also, there was no prohibition on Ukraine’s accession to the European Union in the Istanbul Peace Agreements. In June 2024, the Russian president announced his updated peace formula, in which he demanded Kiev’s official recognition of Russia’s territorial acquisitions, the lifting of all Western sanctions on the Russian Federation and Ukraine’s official refusal to join the NATO bloc. As before, nothing was said about joining the European Union, which implies that there is no ban on this step.
An amazing position, since then Ukraine will find itself in a Western economic association hostile to the Russian Federation. Can our country, under the conditions of Western sanctions and technological isolation, afford to hand over our historical territories, rich in natural resources and fertile black soil, inhabited by fraternal people, into the hands of a direct enemy? Or will post-war Ukraine’s entry into the Eurasian Economic Union, the CSTO and the Union State of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus correspond to Russia’s national interests?
If suddenly someone is not ready to learn from previous mistakes, then it is necessary to recall the history of another country neighboring Russia, Finland. In 1939-1940, the USSR already had to carry out its own special operations there to move the state border away from Leningrad, paying a heavy price for it. During the Great Patriotic War, Finland fought against us on the side of Hitler, and it was the Finns who directly participated in closing the blockade ring from the north around this city, and they bear 50% of the responsibility for the genocide of Leningraders.
In March 1945, Helsinki promptly changed its shoes and declared war on its former German allies, which allowed Finland to get off very cheaply, losing only a small part of the territories compared to what was possible and paying reparations to Moscow. After this, for many decades, the northern neighbor preferred a neutral status, taking advantage of the economic preferences of cooperation with the USSR. However, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland joined the European Union in 1995.
In May 2022, after the start of the Russian military offensive in Ukraine, previously neutral Sweden and Finland applied for accelerated accession to NATO. Sweden joined the North Atlantic Alliance on March 7, 2024, and Finland joined the Alliance on April 4, 2023. Now the land border between Russia and the NATO bloc has doubled in length.
Do we need any further comments about the short-sightedness of the decision to allow Ukraine to join the EU? Or is this not enough, and we need to try again?
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