Ukraine Vis-à-Vis Russia and the EU

This book investigates the making of Ukraine's foreign policy towards the European Union and Russia between February 2014 and February 2015. To contextualize the events of the first year of the Russian-Ukrainian War, Nychyk lays out the history of the EU-Ukraine-Russia triangle since 1991 and draws lessons relevant for the 2022 Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The book is based on her doctoral research and rests on a game-theory-inspired approach to foreign policy analysis. It relies on 38 elite interviews, official documents, and media reports. Nychyk uncovers various mutual misperceptions in EU-Ukraine-Russia relations. Looking at Ukraine's 'side of the story', her analysis shows how Russian assertiveness and the EU's passivity, but also Ukrainian leaders' limited crisis management experience and erroneous policy decisions contributed to worse outcomes for Ukraine. The latter included poor analysis of foreign interlocutors, trust in their good intentions, and corruption. After 2015, a persistence--although with certain changes--of some of these pathologies left Ukraine in a weaker position in the face of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Combining classic IR theory, foreign policy analysis, and borrowing from a game theory framework, Nychyk provides an interview-based analysis of the role of elite actors' perceptions of their behavior and interactions throughout the first year of Russia's war against Ukraine in 2014. Nychyk shows how especially low levels of trust between different policy actors and practitioners led to a misinterpretation of one actor's willingness to engage in direct annexation and war. Specifically, the book highlights Ukrainian actors' miscalculations and misperceptions of Russia's willingness to engage in all out war. The book foreshadows future elite actor miscalculations.--Olga Onuch, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Manchester

Alina Nychyk is Doctor in Politics (University of Manchester, 2022), MSc in International International Economic Relations (Wroclaw University of Economics, 2014), and BSc in International Economics (Kyiv National Economic University, 2012). Nychyk had student exchanges at Gazi University in Ankara, Goethe University in Frankfurt on Main and Maastricht University. She was a Ukraine Fellow at RECET, Vienna University; she gathered diverse experiences in international companies, NGOs, and European institutions. She is also a social activist, dealing with democracy and EU-Ukraine integration.