EU’s geopolitical awakening and implications for the "contested neighbourhood"

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been widely described as a turning point for European security and political order. It has been treated as the end of the post-1945 order. The war has profoundly reshaped Russia’s relations with Ukraine and the West as well as the Union’s approach to the neighbourhood and the foundations of EU relations with the so-called "contested neighborhood". Yet, there is a gap in systematic analysis of the effects of the war on the EU’s neighbourhood policy, on the one hand, and of the response by the countries of the region on the other. This paper specifically asks how the Russian invasion has reshaped the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood policy and, subsequently, how the new policy has affected the foreign policy strategies of the countries in the EU-Russia neighbourhood. We put forward several arguments. First, the crisis and new risks in the region led to the reassessment of security challenges that Europe is facing and required to open a geopolitical dimension in the EU neighbourhood policy. To tackle the crisis, the EU had to fill a hard security vacuum in its policy in the neighbourhood, which invoked an application of new instruments to deter Moscow and support EU’s partners in the east. Second, EU’s pivot to geopolitics and the confrontation with Russia are actively remaking the region. The crisis accelerates an erosion of the post-Soviet space and contributes to a new regional fragmentation along geopolitical faultlines. Finally, the question of sustainability of these changes and their effect on the EU as an actor remains unclear.