Putin Offers European Union Visa-Free Treatment

Admitting Russia to the Schengen zone is the gist of Moscow’s new integration initiative outlined by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his message to the heads of European Union member states. The Kremlin’s continuing attempts to make the EU promise to preserve a visa-free treatment of the Russians who travel between Kaliningrad oblast and the rest of Russia have not yet been crowned with success. The year 2004 is approaching, when the European Union will incorporate Poland and Lithuania, territories through which one must pass to reach the Kaliningrad enclave. Those traveling from Kaliningrad to greater Russia and vice versa will soon have to apply for visas. As in the case of Ukraine, Brussels has promised all kinds of assistance in getting them but keeps insisting that the rules should be the same for all, i.e., visas are unavoidable. Lengthy negotiations and visits to Kaliningrad and Brussels by high-placed Russian officials have not turned the European Union leadership round.

Now Moscow has made a new move. In his message, President Putin himself admits the “ambitiousness of the goal” to switch over — in the future — to visa-free reciprocal travel of Russian and European Union citizens. “This most important political question determines not only the actual conditions for the viability of Kaliningrad oblast as an integral part of the Russian Federation but also, to a large extent, the further vector of our relations with the enlarging European Union,” the Russian president’s message notes.

The EU is worried over economic instability, AIDS, and crime in Kaliningrad oblast. The European Union is reeling at the prospect of the oblast’s over 1500 kilometers becoming, if visa requirements are lifted, a transit corridor for illegal migrants, drugs, and weapons from Russia. Still more impossible is visa-free treatment for Russia proper: its shaky borders are unable even today to stem the flow of illegal migrants to Western Europe. To somewhat simplify matters, Mr. Putin’s message looks like a suggestion that the West choose the lesser evil. This tactical move requires of European Union leaders to find a new strategy to solve the Kaliningrad problem. According to Mr. Putin’s press service, he hopes that mutually acceptable deals on the Kaliningrad issue can be struck as early as by the November Russia-EU summit in Copenhagen.

COMMENT

Serhiy TOLSTOV, director, Institute of Political Analysis and International Research:

President Putin’s message is quite an expectable and successful PR ploy, an intermediate action which can, however, have very serious consequences in terms of image-building and propaganda. The situation in which Russia has found itself — being in fact told to break ties with Kaliningrad oblast and accept traveling by air and sea as the only possible visa-free contact between the enclave and the rest of Russia — has prompted the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make a move which put the European Union as a whole over a barrel. The current Western policy shows that the Cold War era slogans of free movement were sheer propaganda aimed at criticizing the Soviet system which refused to accept these ideas. Conversely, it is the European Union and, in part, the US that mainly oppose today the freedom of migration. Moreover, they retain the old legal provisions such as the Jackson-Vanik amendment from which they can still profit. The Russian initiative has spotlighted the weakest links in the EU political spin control, which Russia will make maximum use of, forcing the West to make concessions on the Kaliningrad problem.

Mr. Putin’s message also shows that, on the one hand, Russia has no serious arguments to pressure the West to allow free movement between Kaliningrad oblast and the rest of Russia, and, on the other hand, the Putin administration will lose a great deal if it surrenders without a long battle. For this will in fact mean breaking all ties between Russia and the Kaliningrad enclave and could indirectly bring about the idea of revising other borders, including those in the Far East.