By Vestnik Kavkaza
On May 21-22, the fourth summit of the Eastern Partnership will take place in Riga. Yesterday the State Secretary of the Foreign Ministry of Latvia, Andrei Pildegovich, sent invitations to the summit to the heads of the diplomatic missions of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. According to him, the summit “will enable them to assess the progress achieved since the time of the third summit and discuss bilateral and multilateral cooperation within the framework of the Eastern Partnership.”
Meanwhile, the deputy director, the head of studies of neighboring countries of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, Tamara Guzenkova, thinks that “it is such a general and a common feature of the EU policy in relation to everything absolutely, including post-Soviet countries, and total disregard and inattention to the fact that one or another countries are participants of other integration projects. The EU just eliminates this reality and considers that of the same Belarus, which joins all conceivable integration associations, organized with the participation of Russia. They consider that only they are concerned with the country, and do not pay attention to the fact that this country has some specific commitments and some specific programs in respect of trade and economic integration projects with other countries.”
The EU is very concerned about the so-called Russian information policy. According to Guzenkova, this is very similar: “As long as Russia is remaining silent and making concessions. But it is enough to ask a question, set up a problem or try to oppose things that absolutely contradict its national interests, then Russia is immediately declared to be undemocratic, aggressive, belligerent, and so on and so forth. We can see absolutely inappropriate reactions. It means that Russia is gradually beginning to form its own position and policy directed towards protection of its national interests. In this case, concepts as labels are still in use. When it is necessary, these labels immediately appear and the mass media begins to disseminate them.”
Moscow believes that the Riga summit of the Eastern Partnership will have an anti-Russian character, due to the position which has been voiced by President of Poland in the Verkhovna Rada, who said that complete fulfillment of the association agreement with the EU will “finally take Ukraine from the post-Soviet space to the space of the Western world.”
