This book focuses on the difficulties facing Russia, Ukraine and Belarus with regard to their integration into both the CIS and the encroaching EU. It analyzes the links between the integration mechanisms of the CIS and EU and the various state policies towards, and the elite interests in, the territory of the former Soviet Union.

This is a collection of essays about Russian law and economics with respect to the Russian federation's relations to the European Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The book confronts the challenges facing a transition economy in its struggle for economic development through market forces, and its efforts to impose the rule of law, not men, on a former dictatorship. The topics addressed range from Russia's relationship to the EU and other CIS states, to a variety of commercial law topics. Key contemporary issues in Russian intellectual property law, tax law, and merger and acquisition law are addressed by Russian jurists writing in English. The problems of corruption or bureaucracy are addressed directly and openly in the hope that increased EU and US cooperation with the Russian Federation will lead to better international relations.

Russia and the West have avoided renewed confrontation despite many post Cold War crises, but illiberal trends in Russia rule out any prospect of developing a mutual agenda for closer integration. Russian engagement with the leading Euro-Atlantic institutions on a special, but still subordinate, nonmember basis remains a clever yet suboptimal substitute. Such relationships, as this monograph about Russia and the European Union explains, tend to produce shallow collaboration, symbolic summitry and costly standoffs. Closer cooperation is blocked by an ongoing dispute over terms, which is rooted in asymmetries in power, ambivalent preferences, uncertainty about the distributional costs and benefits of deeper engagement, and Russia's continued unwillingness or inability to lock-in the liberal domestic structures necessary to make credible commitments. Moscow's renewed self-confidence and geopolitical ambitions, bolstered by sustained economic growth and high energy prices, complicate the bargaining and further strain these special relationships which persist for lack of a realistic, superior alternative.

This book provides an overview of the gas industry and markets in the CIS. This region's strategic importance as one of the largest gas producers has largely been ignored- with the exception of Russia. The book is comprised of 10 country chapters, covering production, decision-making and regulation, domestic market reform, and trade issues.

Relations between the EU and Russia have been traditionally and predominantly studied from a one-sided power perspective, in which interests and capabilities are taken for granted. This book presents a new approach to EU-Russia relations by focusing on the role of images and perceptions, which can be major obstacles to the enhancement of relations between both actors. By looking at how these images feature on both sides (EU and Russia), on different levels (bilateral, regional, multilateral) and in different policy fields (energy, minorities, regional integration, multilateral institutions), the book seeks to reintroduce a degree of sophistication into EU-Russia studies and provide a more complete overview of different dimensions of EU-Russia relations than any book has done to date. Taking social constructivist and transnational approaches, interests and power are not seen as objectively given, but as socially mediated and imbued by identities. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of European Foreign Policy, Eastern Partnership, Russian Foreign Policy and more broadly to European and EU Politics/Studies, Russian studies, and International Relations.

Examining Russia–EU relations in terms of the forms and types of power tools they use, this book argues that the deteriorating relations between Russia and the EU lie in the deep differences in their preferences for the international status quo. These different approaches, combined with economic interdependence and geographic proximity, means both parties experience significant difficulties in shaping strategy and formulating agendas with regards to each other. The Russian leadership is well aware of the EU’s "authority orientation" but fails to reliably predict foreign policy at the EU level, whilst the EU realizes Russia’s "coercive orientation" in general, but cannot predict when and where coercive tools will be used next. Russia is gradually realizing the importance of authority, while the EU sees the necessity of coercion tools for coping with certain challenges. The learning process is ongoing but the basic distinction remains unchanged and so their approaches cannot be reconciled as long as both actors exist in their current form. Using a theoretical framework and case studies including Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine, Busygina examines the possibilities and constraints that arise when the "power of authority" and the "power of coercion" interact with each other, and how this interaction affects third parties.