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In the summer of 1997, Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin startled a press conference after meeting with European Commission President Jacques Santer. ‘We’re doing everything for Russia to become a member of the EU,’ he told his audience. ‘For us it’s important. And Russia will be a member of the EU.’ This was no slip of the tongue. With the Cold War well and truly thawed, Boris Yeltsin, the Federation’s President, had repeatedly floated the idea of accession to the Union’s leaders since at least June 1994. But they were not receptive to Yeltsin, despite Brussels agreeing a fresh Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with Moscow. French President François Mitterrand explained that the EU was ‘a long way from even considering such a move’, having ‘barely begun to come to terms with the implications of embracing East European states.’ Still, Commission officials stated that ‘no EU leader [had] categorically ruled [it] out’ (White & Feklyunina 2014, 70–71).

A Fractured Vision: ‘Russia as Europe’?

Amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the dream of Chernomyrdin and Yeltsin appears dead forever. In October 2023, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told EU counterparts in Kyiv that she envisaged a Union that ‘will soon stretch from Lisbon to Luhansk’. The Kremlin’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded facetiously: ‘It’s either [Russia] joining the EU or she forgot about the requirement to turn by 360 degrees’, referring to a past mishap Baerbock made when she urged President Vladimir Putin to ‘change his course [on Ukraine] by 360 degrees’.

This is not to suggest that Russian accession (or that of Russian-claimed territories) to the EU was ever a likelihood. Confirming Brussels’ initial coolness, the European Council’s ‘Common Strategy of the European Union on Russia’ (1999) clarified that the Federation, as a resurgent power unto itself, would not pursue EU membership under any circumstances. Although Putin reaffirmed this stance in January 2001, seven months later he called for a ‘radical improvement’ in Moscow’s relations with Brussels during a speech to the German Bundestag. In it, Putin argued for a European integration that would increasingly combine its potential with that of a fully sovereign Russia (White & Feklyunina 2014, 129).

Throughout the 2000s, it became clear that Russian leaders dismissed the normative supremacy of the EU and thus continued to snub the notion of joining it. Their rhetoric was broadly pro-European, but stressed economic over political cooperation. Accordingly, Putin emphasised that Russia would only ever accept bilateral equality with the bloc. As he queried in relation to the EU’s Energy Charter in 2006: ‘if they want us to give them access to the very heart of our economy ... what will we get in return?’ (White & Feklyunina 2014, 130). Conversely, the EU concentrated increasingly on the contentious politics shaping the relationship, often criticising Russia’s domestic decisions, and especially its wars in Chechnya (1999–2009) and Georgia (2008). These criticisms were perceived by Moscow as a rejection of its calls for level diplomacy (White & Feklyunina 2014, 131–32, 266).

As the Kremlin struggled for what it saw as an equal partnership with Brussels, its friendly overtures nonetheless encouraged Western observers to carry on contemplating full EU membership for Russia. US President Bill Clinton, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi were all among the prominent figures who expressed their hopes that the Federation might join. Other commentators deliberated whether Russia would, could or want to meet Brussels’ accession criteria (e.g. Protsyk 2003; Kux 2005; Lynch 2005). The Russian people, for their part, were less enthusiastic. In one survey conducted between 2000 and 2014, support for EU membership peaked at 55% in 2005. However, perceptions that Russia’s culture, politics and economy were incompatible with the Union remained widespread, and those in favour consistently dipped to just 19% in under a decade (White & Feklyunina 2014, 198–99, 207).

While the prospect of EU accession is probably even more unpopular in Russia today, it can still be interpreted as the endpoint of a more conventional liberal discourse in the country that sees ‘Russia as Europe’. Implied here are narratives that frame the Federation as part of European civilisation, viewing its historical traits as complementary rather than divergent. Proponents argue that this harmony was particularly evident when the Soviet Union reconciled with the West to end the Cold War. Furthermore, while recognising Russia’s uniqueness, the ‘Russia as Europe’ position asserts that states can possess distinct identities without needing to follow separate developmental paths (White & Feklyunina 2014, 101–103).

The proposed shape of fuller integration under this concept has never been universally accepted. The socially liberal Yabloko party’s 1998 manifesto opined that Russia would never join the EU, but by 2003 it favoured complete membership. In its manifesto for the 2007 State Duma elections, Yabloko less committedly stood for broad consolidation with Brussels while accepting that the nature of this process would organically evolve over time (White & Feklyunina 2014, 121). Despite such general uncertainty, by the........

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