Russia and the Black Sea Region: Governance, Geopolitics, Securitisation

This chapter distinguishes between three logics constitutive for Russian policies in the Black Sea region: (a) governance that prevailed in the 1990s and was a core component in Russia’s search for much-needed international socialisation, (b) an alternative logic of practical geopolitics that approached the BSR as one of the spaces where Russia asserts itself as a regional hegemon and as a great power and (c) the security logic with the ensuing securitisation of other states’ policies in the BSR as an alleged challenge and threat to Russian interests, followed by Russia’s force projection in the region. The author argues that Russia’s policies were vacillating between governance with its emphasis on managerial and administrative technicalities, geopolitics of “big spaces” and military force-based security. Russia has ultimately moved away from the governance paradigm that implied Russia’s readiness to play by the established and mutually beneficial normative rules toward Russia’s self-assertion of its exceptional role and status in the BSR, ultimately conducive to the military intervention against Ukraine.