[13] Meanwhile, a Polish industry forum published a piece entitled: "Anatomy of Dependence: How to Eliminate Rosatom from Europe" and noticed that "Any increase in the price of uranium sourced by EU countries would have a negligible impact on the cost of electricity generation.

With a view to contributing to the concrete implementation of the road map, the Justice and Home Affairs PPC met on 13 October 2005 and agreed to organise clusters of conferences and seminars, bringing together experts and practitioners on counter-terrorism, cyber-crime, document security and judicial cooperation.

The parties will strengthen their cooperation on security and crisis management in order to address global and regional challenges and key threats, notably terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

[42] In 2015, Jean-Maurice Ripert, the French Ambassador to Russia, stated that France would be interested in abolishing short-term Schengen visas for Russians; in 2016, the Spanish Minister of Industry José Manuel Soria made a similar statement on behalf of Spain.

[43] The same year, a number of EU officials, including the head of EEAS' Russia Division Fernando Andresen Guimarães, said that they would like to restart negotiations on visa abolishment;[44] the Czech President Milos Zeman also spoke out in favor of visa-free regime for Russians.

[45] Likewise, the chairman of Munich Security Conference Wolfgang Ischinger suggested granting "visa-free entry to countries of the Schengen area for ordinary Russian citizens, who are not to blame for the Ukrainian crisis and have nothing to do with sanctions".

[63] In July 2009, central and eastern European leaders – including former presidents Václav Havel, Valdas Adamkus, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, Lech Wałęsa – signed an open letter stating: "Our hopes that relations with Russia would improve and that Moscow would finally fully accept our complete sovereignty and independence after joining NATO and the EU have not been fulfilled.

It uses overt and covert means of economic warfare, ranging from energy blockades and politically motivated investments to bribery and media manipulation in order to advance its interests and to challenge the transatlantic orientation of Central and Eastern Europe.

[66] In June 2015, a Chatham House report stated that Russia used "a wide range of hostile measures against its neighbours", including energy cut-offs, trade embargoes, subversive use of Russian minorities, malicious cyber activity, and co-option of business and political elites.

"[citation needed] On 9 May 2015, on the occasion of the attack by Albanian terrorists in the city of Kumanovo, the Putin-awarded and Russian intelligence agent,[72] as well as pro-Kremlin journalist Daria Aslamova published a commissioned article in the newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda", in which there was a map of "united Macedonia", including the "liberated" Pirin part of the region, which was declared "occupied" by Bulgaria.

In November 2015, the president of Bulgaria, Rosen Plevneliev, said that Russia had launched a massive hybrid warfare campaign "aimed at destabilising the whole of Europe", giving repeated violations of Bulgarian airspace and cyber-attacks as examples.

[78] Published in March 2016, Swedish security service Säpo's annual report stated that Russia was engaged in "psychological warfare" using "extreme movements, information operations and misinformation campaigns" aimed at policy makers and the general public.

[92] On 28 April 2021, the European Parliament passed a resolution that condemned Russia's "hostile behaviour towards and outright attacks on EU Member States" explicitly mentioning suspected GRU operation in the Czech Republic in 2014, the poisoning and imprisonment of Alexei Navalny and escalation of the war in Donbass.

Unlike in the Cold War, when Soviets largely supported leftist groups, a fluid approach to ideology now allows the Kremlin to simultaneously back far-left and far-right movements, greens, anti-globalists and financial elites.

[156] According to a May 2016 report for the European Council on Foreign Relations, Russia was engaged in "massive and voracious intelligence-gathering campaigns, fueled by still-substantial budgets and a Kremlin culture that sees deceit and secret agendas even where none exist.

[165] In May 2015, the Bundestag's computer system was shut down for days due to a cyberattack carried out by a hacker group that was likely "being steered by the Russian state", according to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Germany.

[177] In October 2014, Denmark's Defence Intelligence Service stated that in June of the same year Russian Air Force jets "equipped with live missiles" had simulated an attack on the island of Bornholm as 90,000 people visited for the annual Folkemødet meeting.

Parliamentary Defense Committee chairman Allan Widman stated, "The old military doctrine was shaped after the last Cold War when Sweden believed that Russia was on the road to becoming a real democracy that would no longer pose a threat to this country and its neighbors.

[195] In his speech at the RUSI Land Warfare Conference in June 2018, the Chief of the General Staff Mark Carleton-Smith said that British troops should be prepared to "fight and win" against the "imminent" threat of hostile Russia.

[196][197] Carleton-Smith said: "The misplaced perception that there is no imminent or existential threat to the UK – and that even if there was it could only arise at long notice – is wrong, along with a flawed belief that conventional hardware and mass are irrelevant in countering Russian subversion...".

Brian Whitmore of Radio Free Europe stated that the case "illustrates the Kremlin's campaign to intimidate its neighbors, flout global rules and norms, and test NATO's defenses and responses.

[207] A Russian state-run channel broadcast a story, supported by Sergey Lavrov on a news conference, that a 13-year-old German-Russian girl who had briefly disappeared had been raped by migrants in Berlin and that German officials were covering it up.

"[208] In Bulgaria, a number of Russian citizens (most notably Igor Zorin and Yevgeniy Shchegolikhin) are involved in cooperation with far-right and anti-immigrant movements, for example organization of paramilitary trainings for "voluntary border patrols".

[210][211] In April 2021, the Czech Republic expelled 18 Russian intelligence operatives working under diplomatic cover after police investigation linked two GRU officers (Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga) to the 2014 Vrbětice ammunition warehouses explosions.

[213] After the October 2022 German railway attack, the Green politician Anton Hofreiter told FUNKE media group that the sabotage reminded him of the disruption of the Nord Stream pipelines where the "trail leads to the Kremlin."

He also downplayed the Western approach of "so-called tolerance — genderless and infertile", and said that the "destruction of traditional values from the top" in the West is "inherently undemocratic because it is based on abstract ideas and runs counter to the will of the majority of peopleRussian and pro-Russian media and organisations have produced fake stories and distorted real events.

[223] In 2018 the European Commission initiated a new Action Plan to counter "disinformation that fuels hatred, division, and mistrust in democracy" as well as interference with elections, "with evidence pointing to Russia as a primary source of these campaigns".

[224] In June 2021, a Russian advertising firm Fazze attempted to recruit numerous YouTube and Instagram influencers for paid posts spreading false claims about several COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by European companies.

[271] The following non-exhaustive list gives a flavour of the type and breadth of the sanctions as well as particular events in the relationship: In March 2022, the EU initiated a "Freeze and Seize Task Force" under Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders, to disburse to Ukraine funds which were left in the coffers of its banks by Russian oligarchs.

Trade ministers also asked the European Commission of Ursula von der Leyen to draw up a plan to place import duties on food, medicines and nuclear fuel from Russia.