Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The project examined attitudes to new forms of co-operation and integration between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and the rest of Europe. All three countries are the immediate neighbours of the expanding Euro-Atlantic community, which, as a result of the first wave of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) enlargement in 1999, has already reached their western borders. Despite considerable disparities in their international influence, these countries find themselves 'outsiders' in the advancing process of European Union (EU) and NATO enlargement. A better understanding of the issues of co-operation and integration of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and the rest of 'Europe' is essential in its turn if enlargement is not to lead to 'new dividing lines' across a continent that has only recently been reunited after the Cold War. These and related issues are examined through a series of elite interviews, focus groups, mass surveys and printed sources (only the survey data are held at the UK Data Archive). Aims of the project included: studying perceptions of the present state of relations between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and the EU and NATO; asking what material factors and perceptions have underlain the drive of the leaderships to improve their relations with both organisations; examining the forms of 'integration short of membership' that Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian policy communities envisage for their countries in the medium term; and whether current complications in bilateral relations (such as Chechnya or media freedom) are a function of short-term divergences in policy priorities or evidence of a more fundamental difference in normative principles. Finally, the project aimed to discover whether the policy instruments currently used by the EU and NATO to promote Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian convergence with European norms and practices are those that are best calculated to...