RUSSIAN 8
missile defense system and joining of NATO positively impacted the relationship amidst
Russia and the EU through enhancing the partnership between them as security actors
because they could now work together with the aim of enhancing security through the missile
defense system thus boosting their level of relationship.
Application of conditionality of normative convergence
Moreover, after the crisis, the principled relationship the European Union aimed for
proved to be difficult to attain in association with Russia. Conversely, the application of
conditionality and the insistence of the normative convergence have progressively produced
an adverse impact on the EU because of the negative behavior of Russia which involved
illegal conquest of Crimean peninsula hence resultantly making the relationship amidst the
Union and Russia to reach its paradoxical stage (Cierco, 2016, p.70). Therefore, Russian
negative behavior of illegitimate conquest of Crimean peninsula caused inconsistency in the
strong level of relationship with the EU and this resultantly made their relationship to reach
the paradoxical stage. Also, the Ukrainian crisis exhibited the geopolitical contest and power
play, therefore, enabling high interest and foreign policy activism of Russia to surface across
other regions which threatened Russian interest, economic presence, and political influence
(Van Elsuwege, 2013, p.30). Notwithstanding the geopolitical competition and expansion on
high interest and foreign policy activism by Russia, there was also the steady growth of the
impact on the EU (Vinokurov, 2017, p.95). Moscow effectively ignored the growing effect of
the EU in the Baltic nations, Georgia and Maldova, and it also exhibited outstanding
disregard to the fate of its fellow citizens, and it did not technically demonstrate against the
completion of the association agreement amidst the EU, Moldova, and Georgia after the end
of the Crimean crisis. The association agreement undermined the position of Russia as well
as demonstrating the limitation of the neo-imperialist strategy in describing the complication
of the association of Russia with the EU across the shared neighborhood (Vinokurov, 2017,