The EU and Russia seek to improve relations

Editorialist Jacques Hubert-Rodier finds that Russia "is past its prime and is striving at present to overcome the loss of global influence it suffered under Boris Yeltsin. At the very least, it is swinging like a pendulum between its fascination for and repulsion of the West. Which makes any reading of its foreign policy decisions difficult. Fundamentally, Vladimir Putin has managed to recover some significant manoeuvering room on the international stage. This achievement has not merely been a political one vis-a-vis an America whose superpower status, in the expression of the former French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, has been chipped at the edges by the adventure in Iraq, or vis-a-vis an EU in the throes of institutional crisis. There is also the financial factor : Russia has reduced its dependence on the outside world, thus marking a very clean break with the Yeltsin years."

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