Russia’s Relations With Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania

This edition examines Russia's relations with the southern and western states of the Black Sea region. In the first article, Şener Aktürk examines the Russian-Turkish political relationship. He highlights that relations have been disrupted by serious disputes over Georgia and Syria, but suggests that, nonetheless, they are bound together by trade, jointly founded international organizations, a nuclear reactor project, and cooperation against international and domestic ethnic separatist terrorism. In the second article, Natalia Ulchenko considers the economic relationship between Russia and Turkey. She details the problems that the two sides are faced with, in spite of their steadily increasing bilateral trade volume and investment flows, and highlights the rather different positions that they take towards addressing them. In the third article, Kyril Drezov analyses Russian-Bulgarian relations. He outlines that the fall of Boyko Borisov's government has revived hopes in Moscow about resurrecting Russian energy projects in Bulgaria, notably the Belene nuclear power station, and that Putin is likely to work with all existing political factions to this end. In the fourth article, Simona Soare examines the Romanian-Russian relationship. She characterizes it as functioning according to a strained dynamic, which occasionally escalates to outright tension, with the gradual normalization of the relationship restricted by mutually hostile perceptions and seeming politically-incompatible national interests.