From Cooperative to Contested Europe? The Conflict in Ukraine as a Culmination of a Long-Term Crisis in EU-Russia Relations

The article looks at the European Union's (EU) attempts at ordering the Pan-European space and how Russia has sought to position itself in the EU-centric unipolar order and how that has affected the development of EU-Russia relations during the post-Cold War era. The analysis will move in four successive steps: (i) the development of the EU's attempts at hegemonic, post-sovereign ordering is reconstructed; (ii) the development of EU-Russia relations in light of these processes is analysed; (iii) then, the crisis in Ukraine as a certain culmination point is discussed; (iv) the article ends with conclusions concerning the development of EU-Russia relations in light of the problematic as well as an assessment of the significance of this particular facet in the wider processes of ordering discussed in the Special Issue together with a prognosis concerning the future.