Kosovo’s declaration of independence has transformed European geopolitics. As with the Iraq war in 2003, the European alliance is politically divided. Now, alongside Italy, Britain, the Scandinavian countries, Poland, Belgium, the Baltic States but also the United States and Turkey, France and Germany are opposed to Russia, which has aligned all those countries that historically have large minorities—Spain, Romania, Slovakia, Greece and Cyprus. The Russian camp also embraces members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) like Belarus, Tajikistan, Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

There is every reason to believe that Russia will take advantage of this new split at the heart of the EU, to weaken it through disagreements among the 27. To that end, Vladimir Putin has insisted on direct dialogue with the four ‘heavyweights’ of the Union—France, Britain, Germany and Italy—considered as ‘useful’ in the current agenda. This differential approach hampers the creation of a common policy towards Russia.⁽¹⁾

At the same time the Russia-EU dialogue is periodically blocked on the initiative of Moscow, cunningly using conflicts among the member states to increase tensions between them. These periodic conflicts were priming political divorce in the European Union long before the Kosovo business.