European Student Think Tank

Putin­ism is an expres­sion widely used to describe the rul­ing style of Russia’s cur­rent pres­id­ent Vladi­mir Putin. But is it really more than a media buzzword? Our part­ners at Cross­ingtheBaltic took a closer look at what Putin­ism really means.

The euro crisis has taken the form of a suc­ces­sion of national crises threat­en­ing the integ­rity of the mon­et­ary union. The response, each time, involves heads of European states meet­ing in Brus­sels or Ber­lin to agree on a res­cue plan and hes­it­antly approv­ing the neces­sary improve­ments in European gov­ernance. After Ire­land, Por­tugal, Spain and Greece, does it even mat­ter who’s next on the cliff’s edge?

2012 has not been a good year for Putin. Demon­stra­tions across the coun­try and grow­ing sup­port for the oppos­i­tion are dam­aging his image as Russia’s “saviour” and “Restorer of former glor­ies”. More import­antly though, his most potent for­eign policy tool, Gazprom, is facing increas­ingly tough times due to lower gas demands, more com­pet­i­tion and the devel­op­ment of a European shale gas industry. To make mat­ters even worse, the EU has opened an anti­trust probe into Gazprom’s deals in Cent­ral East­ern Europe.

It seemed that Nabucco might actu­ally win the pipeline race in the Caspian basin, but the group of con­test­ants has grown even big­ger with the addi­tion of BP’s South East European Pipeline. Could this mean the end of Nabucco and is it a reason for concern?

The Hun­garian gov­ern­ment of Viktor Orbán has been repeatedly cri­ti­cised for tak­ing the coun­try down the road of author­it­ari­an­ism. After its grab on the Hun­garian National Bank, the EU and the IMF have finally decided to pre­vent a fur­ther deteri­or­a­tion of demo­cratic stand­ards. The decision comes late, but is right, because Hun­gary is start­ing to resemble Rus­sia more than any coun­try in the EU.

“Belarus rep­res­ents an extreme case of an author­it­arian regime appar­ently little enticed by the EU’s car­rots and little dis­turbed by the EU’s sticks”, Pro­fessor Karen E. Smith poin­ted out while reflect­ing on the EU-Belarus rela­tions within the con­text of the European Neigh­bor­hood Policy (ENP) in 2005. Although six years have already passed, things have not [...]