Russia after the Euromaidan Foreign Policy Limitations amid Clashing Geostrategies of Territorial Expansion and Eurasian Integration

Abstract

Following the Euromaidan, Russia responded with military intervention in Ukrainian territory. This revision of the status quo took a more brutal turn in February 2022. The reasons for Russia’s revisionism fit into the debate on the increasing estrangement between the Russian Federation and the West, along with a renewal of the classical characterization of Russia as an “imperialist” state bent on restoring the Moscow-centered power of the former Soviet Union (FSU). Although the broad characterization of Russia as “imperialist” adeptly captures its brutal denial of Ukraine’s sovereignty, it still conflates different geographic vectors and historical periods. This article contributes to the ongoing debates by employing William Walters’s concepts of “geostrategic perspectives” (i.e., march, colonial frontier, and limes) and the Westphalian and Imperial geopolitical models of Christopher S. Browning and Pertti Joenniemi. This framework encapsulates, on the one hand, the complex compatibility of the processes of territorial revisionism and, on the other hand, Russia-centric regional integration of the FSU. Ultimately, the goal is to analyze Russia’s post-Euromaidan border politics, addressing both the revision of Ukraine’s borders and regional integration through the Eurasian Economic Union during the status quo that lasted until 2022. The resulting picture shows that the Russian Federation’s Westphalian geopolitical model of limes expansion contradicts the imperial geopolitical model based on the creation of colonial frontiers. The incremental reinforcement of the Westphalian model since February 2022 raises the interesting question of how this will affect imperial geopolitics regarding other FSU countries.