Tamar Sulukhia, the Director of ISET and the ISET Policy Institute, took part in a discussion organized within the RECONOMY program. This online forum focused on the ways the Russian invasion of Ukraine has challenged the EU’s approach towards the future of Eastern Partnership countries, as well as prospects for EU integration.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has profoundly affected nearly every aspect of the global economy, from food and energy security to supply chains and financial markets. The World Bank (June 2022) estimates that the 2021 5.5% rebound global growth is therefore expected to drop to 2.9% y/y in 2022.

During the Russia-Ukraine the EU has become a clear example of how substantial reliance on a single country to satisfy energy needs can threaten nations’ economic development, and how challenging the task of achieving energy security is while substantially depending on a single country in key energy products.

On February 24th, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. This event not only marked the collapse of a painstakingly built global security architecture and destroyed the lives and livelihoods of millions of civilians in the heart of Europe, it also put the world on the brink of the largest nuclear, humanitarian, and ecological catastrophe since WWII.

The war in Ukraine had just begun when I wrote (on the ISET Policy Institute's website and in the Georgian Times) that the present events in Ukraine offer the world a chance to become better. I could not have predicted at the time that hostilities would unfold in such a disastrous fashion or scale, nor could I have anticipated that, following four weeks of the war, we would witness an even larger and, I would say unimaginable human and global catastrophe.