The EU foreign policy-makers' forged public statements regarding the Eastern Partnership countries

Abstract

The so called „captured states” are the countries with oligarchic control of political power. This term is used frequently to describe the Eastern Partnership countries – Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. That inevitably puts pressure on the resilience of these three countries, in addition to Russia’s aggressive campaigns, carried out with or without the use of conventional weaponry. We underline several aspects of the „hybrid war” waged by Russia against Eastern Partnership countries, which includes instruments of pressure in bilateral trade, media and security sectors (through the refusal to pull out the Russian troops from the illegally occupied regions). This paper looks at the EU’s messages that are being forged by different actors internally and by Russian propaganda externally. It provides a range of arguments supporting the idea that the Eastern Partnership countries receive forged messages and the consequences are quite big – mainly for the European prospective of these countries. JEL: D83, D72, D 73