Much resting on outcome in Ukraine

The attention of the world political community is focused on Ukraine. Much in the future fate of Eastern Europe is being decided there now. How the “cold confrontation” between Europe and Russia will develop is being determined presently in Ukraine. In some respects, Georgia’s future also depends on the developments in Ukraine.

The events unfolding in Ukraine have vividly showed the essence of the confrontation between Russia and the European Union (EU). Europe wants to rescue the former Soviet states and does its best to assist these states as much as possible.

Six former Soviet states: Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have been included on the list of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries. The EU has done its best to assist these countries to finally get rid of Russian dominance over them.

The EU announced the project of granting these countries association membership after presenting certain formalities according to which those countries should comply with the EU requirements. Meanwhile, Russia has started taking measures to prevent such developments.

The EU member states– largely due to their naive trust towards Russia’s “fairness”, personal interests, and their own inability to calculate Russia’s hypocritical position towards its former Soviet allies, could not have predicted all the steps Russia could take.

Meanwhile, Moscow did its best to become almost entirely monopolistic in supplying the EU countries with natural gas. As such, Russia has indirectly managed to exercise control over the economy of the EU member states.

Eventually, Moscow managed to undermine the relations of the EU and EaP countries, in particular, in terms of association membership. So, one-by-one, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and finally Ukraine, withdrew from the EU association membership project.

And now there is a decisive battle for Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin used various methods to force Ukraine to withdraw from the EU association membership program. So far, only Moldova and Georgia have proceeded within the frames of the EU Eastern Partnership project and the fate of this project, as well as the fate of those countries themselves depends on the current situation in Ukraine.

There is hope that at last Europe will wake up. There are already some signs of such development and it should start putting more pressure on the Kremlin. One could hope that these developments might accelerate the process of Georgia’s accession– first as an associated member, and later as a full member of the EU.