> President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sounded uncharacteristically subdued last week when asked about the prospect of Ukraine achieving candidate status for the European Union: “We have no objections.”
>
> But since then, Russian officials and analysts have said that Mr. Putin didn’t really mean it.
>
> “We consider the E.U. enlargement process to be negative — hostile, in fact — in relation to Russian national interests,” Russia’s ambassador to the bloc, Vladimir A. Chizhov, told a state-run newspaper this week.
>
> It was another example of mixed messaging by the Kremlin, which started before the war with inscrutable positions on whether diplomacy could avert a conflict and continued after the invasion with ambiguous stances on a potential peace deal.
>
> But one thing seems clear: The attainment of candidate status by Ukraine marks a milestone in Mr. Putin’s charged and vexing relationship with the E.U. — and the desire of growing numbers of Ukrainians to join it.
>
> For Russians and Ukrainians alike, the question of whether Ukraine will someday in fact join the European Union is secondary to the question of how the country survives the current Russian invasion. That may be one reason the country’s E.U. application has not been a top story on the news in Russia.
>
> “There’s a point of view that Ukraine either won’t exist, or won’t exist in its current geographic boundaries,” said Andrei Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research organization close to the Russian government, describing the mood in Moscow. “This sense even further reduces the significance of the decision on candidate status. Because everything can change.”
>
> But it is also clear that Ukraine’s desire to align itself with neighbors to its West represents the latest reminder of Mr. Putin’s failure to keep Ukrainians’ hearts and minds in his orbit.
>
> In the Kremlin’s narrative, it is the anti-Russian axis of Washington and London that is pushing Brussels to accept Ukraine as a member, against the European Union’s best interests.
>
> “What will Europe get? Ukraine or its remnants?” an essay published by RIA Novosti, the Russian state news agency, asked on Thursday. “No, Russia will not allow this, because it understands perfectly well that the E.U. is becoming a screen for the Anglo-Saxon games against Moscow.”
>
> The explosiveness of Ukraine’s relationship with the European Union became apparent in 2013, when the country’s Russia-friendly president at the time, Viktor F. Yanukovych, was in the last stages of negotiating a trade agreement with the bloc. Mr. Putin wanted Ukraine to be part of a Russia-led customs union instead that already included Belarus and Kazakhstan.
>
> When Ukraine backed out of the European deal under pressure from Mr. Putin, protests erupted in Kyiv, leading to the country’s pro-Western revolution and Mr. Yanukovych’s ouster, and prompting Russia to annex Crimea and foment the Russian-backed separatist war in the east.
>
> So when Mr. Putin said at an economic conference in St. Petersburg last week that he did not mind Ukraine joining the European Union, his words rang hollow to many analysts. He claimed that it would be costly for the European Union’s members to accept Ukraine as one of their own, and that European companies would want to stunt the development of the Ukrainian economy to avoid new competition.
>
> “If Ukraine fails to protect its domestic market it will completely turn into a semi-colony, in my opinion,” Mr. Putin said. “But again, that is none of our business.”
>
> In fact, Russian officials have argued that the expansion of the European Union is part of a twin threat alongside the expansion of the NATO alliance. Mr. Chizhov, the Russian ambassador, told the Izvestiya newspaper that the union “lately has degraded to the level of an auxiliary military bloc, auxiliary to NATO.”
>
> Ukraine’s E.U. candidate status is a “symbolic gesture of support,” said Kadri Liik, an analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, given that it would take years for the country to join the bloc. And despite Russia’s comparison of the E.U. with NATO, European Union membership would not automatically provide Ukraine with security guarantees in the face of future threats from Moscow.
Russia calls everything hostile, sooo…
Russia thinks existence of any country is hostile towards them.
Whilst their special operations are peaceful
Who cares. To a demented, old psycho like putin everything is hostile (that comes with dementia). But as russia has proven, that beyond nukes they are a military joke let him talk. Its not as if anybody has to listen
If Russia doesn’t like it, it is probably good.
OFC: in soviet russia if you want new land you make a special operation.
And yet they haven’t flattened a single Russian city.
10 comments
> President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sounded uncharacteristically subdued last week when asked about the prospect of Ukraine achieving candidate status for the European Union: “We have no objections.”
>
> But since then, Russian officials and analysts have said that Mr. Putin didn’t really mean it.
>
> “We consider the E.U. enlargement process to be negative — hostile, in fact — in relation to Russian national interests,” Russia’s ambassador to the bloc, Vladimir A. Chizhov, told a state-run newspaper this week.
>
> It was another example of mixed messaging by the Kremlin, which started before the war with inscrutable positions on whether diplomacy could avert a conflict and continued after the invasion with ambiguous stances on a potential peace deal.
>
> But one thing seems clear: The attainment of candidate status by Ukraine marks a milestone in Mr. Putin’s charged and vexing relationship with the E.U. — and the desire of growing numbers of Ukrainians to join it.
>
> For Russians and Ukrainians alike, the question of whether Ukraine will someday in fact join the European Union is secondary to the question of how the country survives the current Russian invasion. That may be one reason the country’s E.U. application has not been a top story on the news in Russia.
>
> “There’s a point of view that Ukraine either won’t exist, or won’t exist in its current geographic boundaries,” said Andrei Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a research organization close to the Russian government, describing the mood in Moscow. “This sense even further reduces the significance of the decision on candidate status. Because everything can change.”
>
> But it is also clear that Ukraine’s desire to align itself with neighbors to its West represents the latest reminder of Mr. Putin’s failure to keep Ukrainians’ hearts and minds in his orbit.
>
> In the Kremlin’s narrative, it is the anti-Russian axis of Washington and London that is pushing Brussels to accept Ukraine as a member, against the European Union’s best interests.
>
> “What will Europe get? Ukraine or its remnants?” an essay published by RIA Novosti, the Russian state news agency, asked on Thursday. “No, Russia will not allow this, because it understands perfectly well that the E.U. is becoming a screen for the Anglo-Saxon games against Moscow.”
>
> The explosiveness of Ukraine’s relationship with the European Union became apparent in 2013, when the country’s Russia-friendly president at the time, Viktor F. Yanukovych, was in the last stages of negotiating a trade agreement with the bloc. Mr. Putin wanted Ukraine to be part of a Russia-led customs union instead that already included Belarus and Kazakhstan.
>
> When Ukraine backed out of the European deal under pressure from Mr. Putin, protests erupted in Kyiv, leading to the country’s pro-Western revolution and Mr. Yanukovych’s ouster, and prompting Russia to annex Crimea and foment the Russian-backed separatist war in the east.
>
> So when Mr. Putin said at an economic conference in St. Petersburg last week that he did not mind Ukraine joining the European Union, his words rang hollow to many analysts. He claimed that it would be costly for the European Union’s members to accept Ukraine as one of their own, and that European companies would want to stunt the development of the Ukrainian economy to avoid new competition.
>
> “If Ukraine fails to protect its domestic market it will completely turn into a semi-colony, in my opinion,” Mr. Putin said. “But again, that is none of our business.”
>
> In fact, Russian officials have argued that the expansion of the European Union is part of a twin threat alongside the expansion of the NATO alliance. Mr. Chizhov, the Russian ambassador, told the Izvestiya newspaper that the union “lately has degraded to the level of an auxiliary military bloc, auxiliary to NATO.”
>
> Ukraine’s E.U. candidate status is a “symbolic gesture of support,” said Kadri Liik, an analyst with the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, given that it would take years for the country to join the bloc. And despite Russia’s comparison of the E.U. with NATO, European Union membership would not automatically provide Ukraine with security guarantees in the face of future threats from Moscow.
Russia calls everything hostile, sooo…
Russia thinks existence of any country is hostile towards them.
Whilst their special operations are peaceful
Who cares. To a demented, old psycho like putin everything is hostile (that comes with dementia). But as russia has proven, that beyond nukes they are a military joke let him talk. Its not as if anybody has to listen
If Russia doesn’t like it, it is probably good.
OFC: in soviet russia if you want new land you make a special operation.
And yet they haven’t flattened a single Russian city.
Who cares what these Neanderthals think.
Putin. Dude, make up your mind. https://www.euronews.com/2022/06/18/uk-ukraine-crisis-eu-russia