The West’s belief is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is more upset by the former Soviet republics joining NATO than by joining the European Union, although he sometimes joins both. It has certainly made that impression, often describing the military alliance as an existential threat to Russia. But this belief may be wrong. It must abhor and fear the very principles that the EU upholds: freedom, democracy and the right of sovereign states to determine their own destiny. They are alien concepts in his country. And another feature that obviously comes with joining the EU – increasing wealth – should scare him as well. Will Putin use nuclear weapons in his war with Ukraine? Putin Rarely Appears at Moscow Gathering to Praise Russian Troops Mr Putin has made clear his hatred for NATO enlargement. It did so at the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, when the alliance indicated that Ukraine and Georgia would be invited to join, although no timetable was set. He told delegates that Ukraine’s accession “would be a hostile act to Russia.” Four months later, Russia invaded Georgia and occupied parts of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which account for 20 percent of the country’s land area. Six years later, Russia annexed Crimea. Last month, Mr Putin launched a full-scale invasion of the rest of Ukraine. Georgia and Moldova believe they are next in line to deal with the Kremlin’s “special military operation”. For Mr Putin, the EU seemed a different matter – not so much a threat as an opportunity. In 2003, in an interview with the Italian media shortly before the Russia-EU summit (yes, they organized such events a while ago), Mr Putin said: “For us, Europe is an important trading and economic partner. and our natural, most important, partner, including the political sphere. “Russia is not on the American continent, but in Europe.” We now know that his comments were designed to reassure Europe of complacency. With the help of flexible European leaders, especially German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his successor Angela Merkel, Russia has managed to turn Germany and the rest of Europe into the biggest oil and gas customer, earning huge fortunes for the Russian fund. Kremlin. -controlled energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft and the usual carcass of kleptomaniac oligarchs. Over time, 40 percent of Europe’s gas imports and a quarter of its oil would come from Russia. Germany, the EU’s largest economy, has become a virtual slave to Russian oil and gas and has approved a Gazprom pipeline spree to ensure that Russian supplies continue to grow. Germany was so confident of cheap, plentiful, reliable Russian energy that it announced in 2011 that it would shut down its entire nuclear production fleet within a decade. For Russia, the European Energy Partnership worked perfectly – until it invaded Ukraine. Today, every EU country is trying to wean itself off Russian oil and gas. The process will take years but it will be done. But Mr Putin’s affection for the EU as a paying customer did not mean he had a love for its political and economic success – anything more. There was a time when post-Soviet Russia was looking for closer ties, even integration, into the European venture. This vision began to end with Putin’s rise to power in 1999. At the time, many former Soviet countries were eager to join the EU and their economic and political systems were reorienting to it – far removed from the Russian model. They were attracted by the EU’s civil liberties, the rule of law and the new wealth that would come from joining the world’s largest trading bloc and exploiting Brussels’s wealth transfer machine. This machine worked as another Marshall Plan, providing billions of euros in structural funds from rich to not-so-rich EU members. Mr Putin must have been concerned that the EU’s broadcast would spread to Russia, challenging its increasingly authoritarian system of government. The Polish example must have particularly worried him. Before joining the EU in 2004, Poland was relatively poor, struggling with terrible infrastructure and poor technology, and had an island perspective. Most Poles did not travel. The transformation of the country after its accession was amazing. EU Structural Funds began to flow in, roads, schools, sewage treatment plants and other infrastructure were rebuilt, trade flourished and the wealth curve went almost vertically. By 2018, Poland’s per capita GDP was more than 80 percent higher than in 2003 and its economy had expanded even during the years of financial crisis. To a lesser extent but strikingly, the other former Soviet republics that joined the EU that same year – the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia – have also undergone almost miraculous economic transformations. At the same time, they all distanced themselves from Russia, no more than Poland, which would emerge among the top supporters of Russia’s hard-hitting sanctions after its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, and did not shy away from telling Germany that its dependence by Russian gas was a dangerous security threat (Germany actually heard and, shortly before the invasion, suspended the certification process for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia). Not surprisingly, Putin was rather terrified of Ukraine’s desire to join the EU for the first time in 1993. He felt the same way about Georgia’s goal (and NATO) which is actually written in the constitution of the country. While it has become fashionable to argue that Mr Putin fears the former Soviet states more about joining NATO than joining the EU, both represent threats to his increasingly repressive doctrine. He could hardly hide his joy when Brexit happened. Of course, Putin’s contempt for NATO and the EU has failed en masse – it has revived both. The EU feels more united and confident about the European venture than ever before. Even Germany, which has forged strong economic ties with Russia and has always maintained cordial relations with Putin, has turned to Moscow, where it supplies deadly weapons to Ukraine, increases its spending on NATO and cuts off trade. ties with Russia. Yes, the EU’s transmission has spread, and will continue to spread, leaving Russia isolated and equipped with an economic and political model that is admired by only a few totalitarian regimes. 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