Policies towards the Post-Soviet Space: The Eurasian Economic Union as an Attempt to Develop Russia’s Structural Power?

The post-Soviet space has been both a crucial ground for Russia’s foreign policy and a good thermometer of its main orientations. Moscow’s much-commented-on ‘new assertiveness’ in international affairs from the second half of the 2000s was, for instance, both prompted by developments within the region (e.g., colour revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine) and translated into actions towards it (e.g., Russo-Georgian conflict of 2008). More recently, the post-Soviet space has been the area where Russia is deploying its most ambitious diplomatic initiative of the last two decades, the Eurasian Economic Union. Finally, the crisis in Ukraine in 2014 stands out as the most acute stand-off between Moscow and the West since the end of the Cold War and as an event likely to mark a crucial juncture in Russia’s foreign policy.