The Integration Policies of Belarus and Ukraine vis-à-vis the EU and Russia

Leukavets applies here Putnam's two-level game-theoretical approach in combination with findings from Europeanization literature and democracy promotion studies.

After the break-up of the Soviet Union, the escalating rivalry between the EU and Russia in their shared neighbourhood created major economic, political and security challenges for the two states that border them: Belarus and Ukraine. Both countries were made integration offers by the EU and Russia. Their responses, and the consequences of these choices, were driven by a complex range of domestic and foreign policy factors. Drawing widely on extensive empirical research, Dr Leukavets shows how the EU's and Russia's rival integration projects challenged the leaders of Belarus and Ukraine to make major strategic choices while aiming to ensure the independence and sovereignty of their countries. The study sheds important light on the genesis of the 2020 Belarus crisis and the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war.

"A rich and thorough empirical analysis."Frank Schimmelfennig, Professor of European Politics, ETH Zürich

Autorentext
Victoria Leukavets is a post-doctoral research fellow and a policy analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies. She has an interdisciplinary background and holds several postgraduate degrees, including an MA in human rights from the University of Manchester, an MA in EU international relations from the College of Europe, and a PhD in political science from the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences. In addition, Dr Leukavets has held fellowships at the European Parliament in Brussels, the UK Parliament, Harvard Davis Center and Wilson International Center for Scholars. She has published in, among other outlets, Europe-Asia Studies, Belarus-Analysen, Russian Analytical Digest, Caucasus Survey and New Perspectives.