The main geopolitical event of the week is apparently the EU-Russian summit at Sochi. There have been talks on gas security, and also on easing visa restrictions.
Will travel to Russia be the same without it? Visits to that dank building in Kensington, occluded by its own private cloud, the bullet headed man who let the anticipatory queue in in groups of five, groups where camaraderie quickly grew after exchanges of nervous jokes?
No longer, apparently. So going into Russia will be easier. So will coming out of Russia.
The east Europeans must have mixed feelings about the latter. There are opportunities for greater trade, but as anyone who has spent time in the European parliament will tell you, it is clear that Russian imperalism remains a sore point.
At plenary speeches accompanying reports on human rights in Russia from the European parliament, the speeches there certainly thick with denunciation from MEPs, perhaps more than is politic. Polish MEPS spend their allowances engaging in vanity publishing projects - distributed free to parliamentarians and assistants - featuring their favoured historians to remind us of Stalin’s crimes, as if west Europeans didn’t know enough about this. (King of England in 1832, anyone?) Politicians like Toomas “My English is better than yours” Ilves, an Estonian socialist, have exhibitions on international women’s day that talk about the suffering of women under, you guessed it, Stalin.
The Balts in particular, with their large, 50 percent minorities of Russians, and which are being emptied of their professionals, their natives, going west to work, might be also ambivalent of the facilitation of family reunification that visa free travel offers. After all, if the UK cannot keep track of its illegals; why believe Estonia could be capable of doing so? And then there is Latvia, which already complains of being infiltrated by 1,000 KGB spies.
