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Putin dictating agenda to EU: report

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at a ceremony in the Kremlin in Moscow on Wednesday. Russia's lower house of parliament voted unanimously on Wednesday to suspend Moscow's participation in a key European arms control treaty, approving Putin's initiative in a widely expected show of defiance to the West. PHOTO: AP

Europe has lost the plot in trying to cope with a resurgent Russia under President Vladimir Putin, who is dictating the agenda in his dealings with European capitals, according to a study published on Wednesday.

The West's post-Cold War policy of promoting democracy and Westernization in Russia has failed.

"That strategy is now in tatters," said the 65-page report from the European Council on Foreign Relations. "Today it is Moscow that sets the pace for EU-Russia relations. Russia [is] more powerful, less cooperative, and more intransigent. Russia's growing confidence has transformed the EU-Russia relationship."

As Moscow turns its back on the West and wields its UN security council veto to stymie Western policy while holding Europe as its energy hostage, Brussels is flailing incoherently, the report found.

"Today it is the Kremlin that sets the agenda for EU-Russia relations," said Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister, who jointly chairs the council, an independent thinktank.

The EU's economy is 15 times the size of Russia's and its population three times that of its neighbor, but Brussels finds itself consistently outwitted, the report said.

The challenge posed by Putin has come into sharp focus this year. He is blocking a European plan to take control of the southern Balkan province of Kosovo and steer it to independence. Every time he has come to Western Europe recently, Putin has stolen the show with belligerent performances. In February in Munich he accused US President George W. Bush of trying to take over the world. Two weeks ago in Lisbon, he used an EU-Russia summit to warn of a replay of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 if the US sited parts of its missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Putin has gained the upper hand by a policy of divide and rule with the Europeans, bypassing Brussels, dealing with individual countries, and exploiting rifts between EU states.
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