Russia hopes to revive relations with EU with Josep Borrell's visit

Russia hopes that relations with the European Union could become warmer following the upcoming visit of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s permanent representative to the EU, said on February 1. Speaking to state-controlled news agency Sputnik, the Russian diplomat stated that Borell’s visit, which is scheduled for Feb 4-6, could pave way for similar meetings in the future. Asked if it could also “unfreeze” the relations between the two, Chizhov clarified Russia’s mutual relation with EU wasn’t “deeply frozen” in the first place.  

While both the European Union and Russian Federation share several contracts on trade, politics, personal data protection and implementation of JCPOA, their ties have been severed since 2014. Primary causes include Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, support for rebel groups in eastern Ukraine, policies in the neighbourhood, disinformation campaigns and negative internal developments. Putin administration’s intervention in Syria, Libya and sub-Saharan Africa have also irked the bloc promoting it renew several sanctions against Moscow.

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Federica Mogherini, who served as EU’s High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy from 2014 till 2019, previously visited Russia in 2017. Since then, there have been several telephonic discussions and virtual conferences, but no in-person meeting has been conducted. "The latest visit to Russia was paid by Federica Mogherini, Josep Borrell's predecessor in the post, back in April 2017. Of course, there have been both phone conversations and meetings on the sidelines of different events, but no full-scale visits have been paid since," Chizhov recalled speaking to Sputnik.

Russian crisis

Meanwhile, Russia is gripped with both a civil crisis owing to Alexei Navalny's arrest and health crisis pertaining to an increasing caseload of COVID-19. Last week, the country’s statistics agency revealed that population of Russia has shrunk for the first time in the past 15 years, With the pandemic pushing the country into crisis, experts attributed the decline primarily to COVID-19 induced deaths, low birth rate and increased migration. President Vladimir Putin has long called for measures to increase the population and opined that low income was one of the main cause for the country’s diminishing population.

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