ANALYSIS OF THE DETERMINING FACTORS OF THE EU - RUSSIA RELATIONS
The paper deals with analysis of the interrelations between principal factors that determine the EU-Russia relations (political-normative factor, economic interdependence, EU-Russia`s interactions within their common neighborhoods). It argues that the EU and Russia`s competitive polices towards its shared neighborhood (western part of the post-Soviet space) is the main reason of the current crisis of the mutual relations including establishment of the mutual restrictive measures. The same time the stagnations of the both political-normative factor and economic interdependence since midst of the 2000s have contributed significantly to the current deep deterioration of the EU-Russia`s relations. Nevertheless the research reveals that factor of the EU-Russia common neighborhood had been rather marginal for the EU-Russia s relations till the midst of the 2000s. As well the paper pays attention to the fact that one of the main reasons of all previous deep crises in the Russian - Western relations (such as Kosovo crisis, 1999 and Russo-Georgian war, 2008) were the tensions between Russia and NATO; the current crisis between Russia and the Western institutions initially had been produced with the Russia - EU tensions over the area of its shared neighborhood.