Russian gov has quietly informed US embassy in Moscow it will remove the ban on employing Russian staff it announced with a lot of media coverage as a "reprisal" for expulsions of Russian diplomats in response to GRU activity on the ground and the Internet.
When US embassy said it will then only offer services to US citizens and suspends issuing visas to Russians, Kremlin quietly stepped back. Which kind of shows that Russian bargain is quite weak in such international sabre rattling.
Does the current Kremlin policy have any future?
Clearly not. The view that Russia has some kind of invisible "zones of influence" that must be respected is only present in Kremlin, and in some European capitals and I guess it's mostly out of kindness. I haven't met anyone in Russian province who would actually care if Ukraine or Georgia joins EU - if anything, they'd welcome it as EU would be then closer to them.
And now, as result of Russian intervention, Ukraine wants to join NATO.
@angdraug 100% agree there's outright corruption through Malofeev funds or FSB, but I don't think leaders like Merkel or Macron are corrupt. More likely they're just don't care much about Eastern Europe (why would they, their voters don't live there) and maybe they're just waiting for Putin to die in peace.
@kravietz Good point, I did not mean to imply that Merkel and Macron are themselves corrupt.
Still, it is in their constituents' best interest to have stable democracies in Eastern Europe, not regimes that constantly threaten to either invade their neighbors, or collapse into a failed state, or both. Syria is much further from Germany than Belarus, and look how much impact the civil war there had on European politics.
Germany's inaction comes from more than indifference.
@kravietz Merkel is a democratic leader, not a queen. She does what Germans want her to do. And Putin's friends in Germany have way too much influence over what Germans do or do not want.
@kravietz I am less charitable or EU politicians willing to respect Russia's "sphere of influence". Look close enough and what you'll find won't be kindness, it's gonna be corruption.