Introduction

The Russian invasion of Ukrainian territories in February 2022 spurred the EU into a frantic search to update its grand strategy and develop new policies regarding its eastern neighbourhood. The unprovoked war sparked a zeitenwende for Europe, as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz put it in his 27 February 2022 speech to the German Bundestag (Scholz, 2022). This is so, not only because the brutal war has come with much Ukrainian suffering and destruction, but also because the European Union (EU), with much success in keeping the continent in relative peace since 1945, has belatedly realized that it urgently needs to revamp its grand strategy given the new existential threats and challenges that have destabilized the continental and global order.

Understandably, the Russian war in Ukraine has also led to a renewal of European and global interest in Europe's recent peripheral dynamics. There have been important geostrategic shuffles in the EU neighbourhood over the last two decades, which has prompted the EU to develop new policy responses to them. In this context, the European Security Strategy (European Council, 2003), the European Neighbourhood Policy (Commission of the European Communities, 2004), the EU Global Strategy (EEAS, 2016) and a few other interim initiatives all reflected the trajectory of the EU's evolving grand strategy and neighbourhood policies. However, two more recent developments in the wake of the war in Ukraine have been particularly significant in this evolving EU strategic trajectory.