The EU Must Respond to Russia’s Aggressive Behaviour

The past weeks have shown an unprecedented level of Russian aggression inside and outside of its borders. However, the West, especially the European Union, has shown little to no response towards the malign behaviour of the Kremlin leadership against its own citizens as well as Russia’s neighbours and the West, including Czechia during the last week. Instead, the EU institutions and the member states should show a more decisive and robust foreign policy response to violations of democracy and human rights, increasing aggression in the world as well as continuous isolation and withdrawal from the pan-European institutions and common normative architecture created since 1989.

The last couple of weeks has been particularly rich in the number of events concerning Russia and with direct ramifications to the EU.

First, the world has observed an enormous Russian build-up and escalation in and around the borders of Ukraine, which created an atmosphere of fear and pressure of the potential full-fledged invasion on the Ukrainian territory.

Second, the Russian leadership has tried to break and torture to death the most prominent critic of Vladimir Putin, Alexey Navalny, and label his organisation as extremist. This was accompanied by the crushing of the Russian domestic demonstrations in support of Navalny and against the Kremlin’s cruel policy against the opposition, which left close to two thousand people detained.