Eastern Partnership in the context of EU-Russian relations

After two waves of the eastern enlargement of the European Union in 2004 and 2007, its territory reached borders of the former Soviet republics. The EU started immediately building up the business ties with these countries. To be able to cover its business activities with the common approach, the EU formulated the European neighbourhood policy. Within ENP structure was separated an eastern dimension based on the Polish-Swedish initiative called Eastern Partnership. The initiative includes both bilateral and multilateral dimension of the EU's cooperation with partner countries - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The objective of the thesis is to investigate the development of relations between the European Union and Russia as a background of the emerging and developing EU's Eastern Partnership initiative. The aim is to analyze how the process of implementation of the Eastern Partnership developed, to what extent did the project stakeholders promoted their objectives and identify factors limiting the smooth implementation progress of the initiative objectives. Finally, the paper also focuses on the definition of Russian attitudes to the Eastern Partnership, reveals the factors and circumstances that view Russia in the context of the shapers, and explores how this view changed over time.