The EU should use more soft power towards Russia

The EU’s sanctions on Russia are not having their desired effect. At least in the short term, they even appear to be reinforcing Russia’s position. The EU policy approach to the Ukraine situation needs to factor in the mainstream Russian media narrative. Doing so suggests that the EU should be using more soft power.

Dennis Kredler is a former adviser on EU-Russia economic relations. He writes in his personal capacity.

Travel restrictions. Financing restrictions. More travel restrictions. More financing restrictions. Even more travel and financing restrictions. This has been the EU’s stepwise response to apparently increasing Russian involvement in fostering violent confrontation in Ukraine. Russia, pretending not to be involved despite evidence to the contrary, retaliates with trade restrictions on many EU agricultural products, then continues to step up its military support to what the EU calls separatists in Eastern Ukraine. This week, the EU adopted more of the same. Russia should be expected to follow suit.

Yet, there is little evidence to suggest that the sanctions are effective at appeasing the Russian leadership’s near-term policy actions regarding Ukraine. On the contrary, it appears that they are actually helping the Russian leadership reinforce its position. Vladimir Putin’s popularity rating is at an all-time high – following an impressive surge from an all-time low in November 2013, the beginning of the Ukraine crisis. The crisis is helping the Russian President regain public support.

But do not mistake this as support for a military conflict. According to the Russian authorities as well as the media, Russia has no role in the Ukrainian crisis. A recent Levada Center poll shows that 59% of Russians do not consider that this is a war going on between countries. From this perspective, EU sanctions targeting Russia are naturally perceived as unfair. This fosters a perception of Russia as a victim of a Western plot to weaken it, requiring President Putin to defend the country: according to another Levada poll, 78% of Russians support reciprocal sanctions. A spiral of tit-for-tat sanctions is created, but it is not having the desired effect on the situation in Ukraine.

The flaw of the EU sanctions is that they do not consider this mainstream Russian media narrative. Paradoxically, the EU’s sanctions are being instrumentalised to help strengthen the leadership despite their sophisticated design which aims to put pressure only on those who are alleged to be directly supporting Russian engagement in Ukraine (and not the Russian population at large). But the very purpose of the sophistication is literally ‘lost in translation’: Russians feel collectively and personally affected by the EU sanctions. To a Russian audience, there is no difference between sanctions against the Russian leadership, individual Russian companies and Russian citizens.

This forms a solid basis for continued high levels of popular support for the Russian leadership for the foreseeable future and fertile ground for a continuing crisis in Ukraine. It is likely that the effects of the EU’s and even Russia’s own sanctions will eventually feed through into the wider Russian economy. But by then, it could be too late. The EU must urgently find a way of breaking through the Russian information filter.

Measures need to be found that even the creative Russian media can neither turn into anti-Russia rhetoric nor easily conceal by simply not reporting them. To achieve this, the EU needs to design measures that bring benefits to the wider Russian population. In other words, the EU needs to become better at using its soft power. There are at least two potentially powerful soft power instruments the EU could use here:

Short-stay visa waiver for Russian travellers except the leadership

While numerous Russian officials appear to spend much of their free time in the EU on multi-entry visas (a subject not widely reported in Russian media), obtaining a visa for a trip to the EU is onerous for average Russians. An EU measure to remove short-stay visa requirements for Russian citizens would address a long-standing frustration that has helped to reinforce a feeling of exclusion from the Western world, and that makes it more difficult to gain first-hand impressions of life in the EU, undistorted by any media creativity.

A measure like this could not be concealed by the media; it would be difficult to identify an anti-Russian angle.

Of course, the pressure on the leadership needs to be maintained. The visa liberalisation measure must be accompanied by a ‘black list’ of people for whom the visa requirement is not waived. This black list could be longer than the current list of travel bans.

An undergraduate student grant programme at scale

Many Russians believe that their education systems are inferior to EU education systems and would like to allow their children to study in the EU. Many sons and daughters of Russian officials are benefitting from schools and universities in EU countries, but most average Russians cannot afford this.

The EU should make its undergraduate universities accessible for Russian students who would not otherwise have the means to follow a full undergraduate education at an EU university. The more of them can be supported by grant payments (subject to means testing), the better. A programme that is announced in autumn 2014 should be operational for the next intake of students in 2015.

Studying in the EU will allow them to benefit from the sought-after quality university education and also experience life here first-hand. They will share their experience with their families and friends, helping to spread greater understanding about the realities of life in the West, again free of media creativity.

A programme like this, implemented at sufficient scale and accessibility, will get through to average Russians and demonstrates understanding of their needs. Again, it would be difficult to portray this as an anti-Russian initiative. The leadership could, of course, choose to discourage Russians from sending their children to study abroad, as has recently happened with officials, no doubt risking a drop in popularity.

In addition to these measures, the EU would surely be able to identify further soft power measures that it could apply.

In order to successfully halt further deterioration of the Ukraine crisis, the EU needs to employ a wider array of measures that can make it clear to Russian citizens from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok that the EU does not hold them collectively responsible for the Ukraine crisis. Unless the EU can bring its message to the masses who support the current Russian policy stance on Ukraine, this policy will not – indeed, cannot – change. When the current sanctions bite – as they surely will eventually – it may be too late. Unless it employs its soft power more smartly, Europe is at risk of losing the perspective of peace, stability and prosperity across the European continent, possibly for an entire generation or even longer. Compared to the alternative, the price of activating the soft power options is worth paying.