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EU in search of a Russia policy? Multiple streams framework, decolonization,Baltic entrepreneurs
The start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) created a conceptual vacuum in the European Union’s policy toward Russia. By classifying Moscow as a strategic threat, Brussels curtailed all contacts with it, instead prioritizing sanctions and support for Ukraine. The aim of this article is to examine how decolonization, understood as a socio-political category, has become the ideational foundation of the EU’s Russia policy and to highlight the role of Baltic entrepreneurs in shaping this discourse. Theoretically, the analysis is informed by the multiple streams framework; empirically, it draws on EU policy documents and political speeches delivered between 2022 and the present.
Three distinct interpretations of decolonization are identified. The first highlights the previously limited agency of the Baltic States and Poland in shaping EU—Russia policy, which has now given way to Brussels’ acceptance of the most uncompromising ‘Baltic line’ on Russia. The second emphasizes inter-imperiality, understood as both the liberation of post-Soviet Eurasia from Russian influence and the emancipation of states in this region through deeper and more equitable cooperation with the EU. This interpretation underpins the EU’s revision of its enlargement policy, the additional legitimation of anti-Russian sanctions, and the creation of a new hierarchy of actors in the post-Soviet space. The third, currently marginal, interpretation focuses on restoring subjectivity to Russia’s peoples and regions. While EU policymakers rarely elaborate on this perspective, its very existence reinforces a negative backdrop that constrains the possibility of dialogue between Russia and the EU. The article demonstrates the central role of Baltic entrepreneurs in advancing these interpretations of decolonization and underscores the differences in their technical feasibility. In conclusion, the three interpretations are compared and briefly assessed in terms of their implications for the potential restoration of Russia—EU relations.