Contested space: Eastern Europe between Russia and the EU

A quarter of a century after the Soviet Union collapsed, the states that emerged from it are dogged by its legacy. Their relations with Russia, the EU and in some cases each other are unstable and sometimes hostile. The six states participating in the EU’s Eastern Partnership (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) find themselves between a wary EU that would like to see them prosper but is not prepared to embrace them as fully European, and an assertive Russia that wants to keep them within its sphere of influence at all costs.