Russian Vision of the EU in its Interactions with the Neighbourhood

This article analyses images of the European Union (EU) existing in the discourse of the Russian news media, the general public and the Russian elites. The EU’s actions in the countries of Russia’s “near neighbourhood” and “far neighbourhood” were among the leading topics, showing high interest in the intensive Russia-EU political relations. The data of this paper comes from a year of monitoring of three daily newspapers, face-to-face interviews with political, business, media and civil society representatives and a public opinion survey. This analysis observed that both partnership and competition exist in Russia-EU political relations.