Things like student exchanges, etc, were also severily limited in scope. Russians only ever saw EU as tourists, not as neighbours. And tourists can sure swap one destination for the another. Russians knew that they live in Europe, but did not feel the neighbourly presense of the EU.
This is not accurate. In the USSR and after its collapse, Russians generally don't consider themselves European. I also think this aligns more or less with how the rest of the world sees Russia if you consider the standards of living and the freedoms citizens have in Russia (e.g., no freedom of speech; not being able to freely travel to most of the world). On top of that, don't forget that geographically, most of Russia is in Asia.
> standards of living
Comparable and exceeding some countries in EU (e.g. Bulgaria)
> freedoms citizens have in Russia (e.g., no freedom of speech)
Some freedoms are there, some are not. Before 2022 it was similar to some parts of Europe.
Also, freedom is not synonymous to Europe.
> able to freely travel to most of the world
It is not that bad. 127 visa-free countries, more than e. g. Montenegro, Moldova, Albaina - all of which are 100% European.
> geographically, most of Russia is in Asia
This is a meaningless argument. Britan was 90% not in Europe in the year 1912. But no one would say it was not European.
The current conflict is going to break it up into smaller chunks sooner or later. I'm going to enjoy watching it burn.
https://www.politico.eu/article/how-the-us-broke-kosovo-and-...
Like the multi-generational families some of their members living in Ukraine, some in Russia? Didn't seem to stop the war sadly.
Boris Yeltsyn was proposing to Bill Clinton to admit Russia into NATO. This way Russian ambitions would be tamed and channeled into something more constructive.
But a few red flags - Russia just barely held together at that time and had its own civil war. Also, there's the risk of Russia joining just to walk away with the keys to the kingdom at any later point. If the CFE inspections (1) were anything to go by, Russia didn't exactly play fair.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_F...
Your own link says: "The treaty proposed equal limits for the two "groups of states-parties", the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact" and later "most former non-USSR Warsaw Treaty members subsequently joined NATO, followed later by the Baltic states and the states of the former Yugoslavia".
"CFE-II took into account the different geopolitical situation of the post-Cold War era by setting national instead of bloc-based limits on conventional armed forces. NATO members refused however to ratify the treaty..." [0] What a surprise.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_F...
No more tariffs. No more visas. Vastly more economic cooperation between Russia and the European Union. That's the vision presented by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an editorial contribution to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung on Thursday.
"We propose the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok," Putin writes. "In the future, we could even consider a free trade zone or even more advanced forms of economic integration. The result would be a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of euros." [0]
[0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-v...
