🇷🇺🇪🇺 What if Europe had said yes to Putin’s “Lisbon to Vladivostok” vision?
In 2011. Putin offered Europe a free-trade zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok...
As he prepared to return to the presidency, he publicly floated the idea of a vast economic space linking the EU and Russia, with free movement of goods, capital and eventually people, plus coordinated industrial and energy policy.
He framed the Eurasian Union (then being built with Belarus and Kazakhstan) as a partner for Europe, not a rival, and argued that countries like Ukraine would integrate with the West faster from a stronger position inside that bloc.
Europe largely ignored or dismissed the offer. Brussels preferred bilateral association agreements and deeper ties with individual post-Soviet states.
Ukraine’s choice between the EU path and Moscow’s project became the flashpoint that eventually led to Euromaidan, the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas, and the full-scale invasion of 2022.
Had the Lisbon-to-Vladivostok vision gained real traction, the geopolitical map of Europe could look radically different today...
Less confrontation, denser economic interdependence, and possibly NO full-scale war in Ukraine.
Instead, the rejection of that proposal helped lock in the zero-sum logic that still defines relations between Russia and the West.
Source: El País, Politico / Writer: Samuel
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In 2011. Putin offered Europe a free-trade zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok...
As he prepared to return to the presidency, he publicly floated the idea of a vast economic space linking the EU and Russia, with free movement of goods, capital and eventually people, plus coordinated industrial and energy policy.
He framed the Eurasian Union (then being built with Belarus and Kazakhstan) as a partner for Europe, not a rival, and argued that countries like Ukraine would integrate with the West faster from a stronger position inside that bloc.
Europe largely ignored or dismissed the offer. Brussels preferred bilateral association agreements and deeper ties with individual post-Soviet states.
Ukraine’s choice between the EU path and Moscow’s project became the flashpoint that eventually led to Euromaidan, the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas, and the full-scale invasion of 2022.
Had the Lisbon-to-Vladivostok vision gained real traction, the geopolitical map of Europe could look radically different today...
Less confrontation, denser economic interdependence, and possibly NO full-scale war in Ukraine.
Instead, the rejection of that proposal helped lock in the zero-sum logic that still defines relations between Russia and the West.
Source: El País, Politico / Writer: Samuel
$ZEC
$CELR
$CL
