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25 years of Putin: From friend of Europe to warlord

2024-12-25 13:03:00Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA BERND RIEGERT
25 years of Putin: From friend of Europe to warlord
Vladimir Putin

Putin began  1999 as a reformer, but he eventually developed into a warlord. How have the EU and NATO's relations with Putin's Russia developed?

In August 1999, Vladimir Putin was appointed Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. In late 1999/2000, he succeeded the ailing President Boris Yeltsin. Upon taking office, Putin declared that Russia was and would remain a great power. In Europe, he was seen more as a reformer who was expected to reorganize the chaotic Russia of the 1990s.

In June 2001, US President George W. Bush called Putin "trustworthy and straightforward" after their high-level meeting. Bush, the head of state of NATO's leading power, says he also looked into his soul.

In September 2001, Vladimir Putin offered Europe a security partnership with Russia during a speech in the Bundestag. He questioned the role of the leading Western power, the United States. The Kremlin leader did not rule out Russia's future membership in NATO and the EU.

The EU and Russia agreed on various funding programs and cooperation. A "strategic partnership" was called for. NATO opened an office in Moscow. Russia opened a representation to NATO in Brussels. A special NATO-Russia Council discussed strategic issues as well as the future voluntary admission of Central and Eastern European states to the Alliance.

As one of the EU's main suppliers of oil and gas, Russia does good business with Europe. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder called Putin a "flawless democrat," despite the well-known suppression of the opposition and press freedom in Russia. After his term as chancellor, Schröder took lucrative positions in Russian state-owned energy companies.

Putin's Turn

In 2006 at the Munich Security Conference, Vladimir Putin initiated a change. He complained that the West was not accepting Russia as a great power. He described NATO expansion as a breach of its word. NATO states’ promises not to move towards Russia’s border were being ignored, he said. However, in 1997, Russia agreed to enlargement in a deal with NATO.

Disarmament agreements were broken. Russia was sharply critical of the planned US missile defense. Vladimir Putin was furious when Ukraine and Georgia were promised to join the Western alliance at the NATO summit in April 2008.

In August 2008, Putin demonstrated his military might to Europeans. He intervened in a conflict in Georgia and brought parts of South Ossetia and Abkhazia under Russian control after a short war.

In 2013, the EU Commission was still talking about creating a common "economic and human space" from Lisbon to Vladivostok with Putin's Russia - as a long-term vision.

Putin's wars

Following the ouster of Russia's pro-Russian president from Ukraine in the spring of 2014 and the democratic Maidan revolution, Russian President Putin attacked Ukraine. He annexed the Crimean Peninsula in violation of international law and brought parts of eastern Ukraine under his control with pro-Russian separatists. The West reacted with initial sanctions and attempted to mediate. Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande brokered the Minsk agreement, which aimed for peace. This never happened, but "served to give Ukraine time to become stronger," as Chancellor Merkel later put it.

Relations deteriorated rapidly, but Russian energy imports continued. In European perception, Putin was increasingly turning into an autocratic ruler. In 2021, the EU spoke of a "negative spiral" in relations between them.

In March 2022, immediately after the large-scale attack on Ukraine by Russian troops, US President Joe Biden saw Putin as a ruthless “dictator, a war criminal, a murderer”. Since then, NATO has viewed Putin’s Russia as “the greatest threat to peace in Europe”, the new old enemy in the East. The EU is imposing comprehensive sanctions on Russia and is trying to cut off oil and gas supplies as soon as possible. Even two years after the start of the war, this has not yet been fully achieved. Russian gas continues to flow to Europe. Trade with Russia is shrinking, but many European companies still do business in Russia. The food, pharmaceutical and chemical industries are not affected by the sanctions.

25 years after Putin took office, NATO is preparing for a new arms race. Countering Russian aggression is now the alliance's main task./ DW


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