Pipelines and Problems: Explaining the Changing Dynamics of the Energy Relationship between Russia and the EU since the 1990s

This research begins with a decade-by-decade historical context of the EU and Russia’s relationship from just before the fall of the USSR to spring 2024, outlining the events and documents that shaped the relationship of the two actors. The most general yet significant are discussed, since those impact the additional, deeper readings into energy policy specifically. These include the policies of the EU and Russia themselves, as well as the work of Gazprom and European energy companies on the natural gas pipelines that connect the two. Their relationship shifted over time (punctuated both by the events discussed and the review of quantified data) into what it is today. In the second half of the work, the events are examined through the theoretical lenses of marxism, realism, liberalism and constructivism, with the attempted application of concepts from those disciplines. This is done in order to see which approach works best, with the initial hypothesis being constructivism as it was primarily ideational factors that changed the dynamics of the EU-Russia energy relationship. Lastly, it will speculate on the future of Russian-EU energy relations.