REDEMOS Ideas Paper 1, August 2024
Putin, the Near Abroad, Leverage and Linkage
Sergiu Buscaneanu
What did Putin misunderstand about Russia’s ‘near abroad’? In short, he did not grasp that a higher linkage between Russia and its ‘near abroad’ could in fact lead to increased Russian leverage, rather than the other way around. By applying the concepts of leverage and linkage, the paper offers several important pointers with respect to how reverse sequence effects could have precluded the considerable human and material losses inflicted by Russia’s unjustified full-scale military invasion of Ukraine.
Keywords: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Leverage, Linkage, Democratization, Political transition, European Neighbourhood Policy
REDEMOS Ideas Paper 2, March 2025
The EU and Georgia: Between a rock and a hard place
Ragnar Weilandt
Following Georgia’s 2024 parliamentary elections and the Georgian Dream party’s U-turn on EU membership, the EU finds itself in a position where it is only left with bad choices and little influence. Its past policies did not prevent the country’s democratic backsliding and arguably helped Georgian Dream to maintain and even expand its grip on the state. However, this paper argues that the EU had rather few alternative options in dealing with Georgia, and that none of them were without major disadvantages and risks. The benefit of hindsight might tempt us to overlook the various challenges that EU democracy promotion faces in a country like Georgia. The EU may not have done a “great job”. However, it needs to be acknowledged that doing a “great job” was not exactly easy.
Keywords: EU, EU democracy promotion, Georgia, Georgian Dream, democratic backsliding
