EU Eastern partnership: fine, but what about Russia?

Despite its undeniable "birth pangs," the Eastern Partnership symbolizes a change of paradigms in the foreign policy of the EU, which, after the inception of the Union for the Mediterranean in the summer of 2008, is now venturing on a new and qualitatively different approach to its eastern neighbourhood. Furthermore, five years after the enlargement of the EU this strategy creates a new situation in eastern Europe, and places its own approach to Russia on a firmer footing.