Boisterous Russia in emerging Europe

Russia is permanently at a crossroads in its history, or standing in exasperation at a fork in the road but failing to resolve a geographical, historical and metaphysical dilemma: is Russia part of Europe or not? Russia holds a key but vulnerable strategic position in the heartland of Eurasia. Its geographical existence within a larger zone of Eurasian civilization meant that Russian culture had been shaped to a not insignificant extent by influences coming from Asia, that Russia was Eurasian and not European not only by virtue of its cultural patterns but also in terms of anthropological–racial considerations as well. The Eurasian Customs Union is clearly seen by Russia as a vehicle for reintegrating the post‐Soviet space, including the countries that fall within the sphere of the European Union's (EU)'s eastern neighbourhood. The Eurasian Customs Union is the vehicle through which Russia increasingly engages in ‘normative rivalry’ with the EU in the so‐called ‘shared neighbourhood’. These geopolitical and economic contraptions underpin the strategic calculations that have influenced largely the crisis of Russian Lebensraum escapade in Ukraine and EU's reaction. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.