Should it also be worried? Worst kept secret. The timing has not escaped analysts. Image source, EPA. Image source, Reuters. The Greek prime minister, whose party's roots stem from the Communist party, visits Moscow in May. Greece's historical ties to Russia are not just religious and go back to the birth of the modern state. When Greece was still part of the Ottoman Empire, Greeks often looked to fellow Orthodox Russians for help Greece's War of Independence was initiated in by a secret group formed in Odessa known as Society of Friends Filiki Eteria Ioannis Kapodistrias, a Greek foreign minister of the Russian Empire, was elected first governor of the fledgling independent Greece in The "Russian party" was a dominant political force in the new state.
Mr Karamanlis was rejected by voters a year after signing a gas deal with President Putin. All this makes Europe, and especially Germany, uneasy.
Image source, AP. Official Russian propaganda paints the EU as morally corrupt and politically divided. Between 60 and 70 percent of Russians now express an unfavorable opinion of the EU—a reversal from previous decades, when favorable opinions were in a similar range.
This odd meeting of the Russian and Greek minds reveals very poignant irony. Just as economic reality dictates that Greece must swallow bitter pills from Brussels to get its house in order, Russians must also cooperate with the EU to get their lost-in-transition country back on the modernization track.
But when Vladimir Putin took the reins of power back in early , he saw that initiative as the source of discontent that prompted street protests in Moscow and resolutely put an end to it. The deliberately-fueled confrontation with the West fit very well into this regime-consolidation strategy. They never expected the EU to gather the resolve to impose meaningful economic sanctions. Failing that, they expected the sanctions regime to soften as the conflict dragged on into a second year.
Now, they are at loss about how to escape from a trap of their own making. Russia and Turkey find themselves on opposite sides of the Ukraine conflict too. Ankara and Kyiv held Black Sea naval exercises in Turkish-backed deployments of armed drones and Syrian mercenaries in late helped turn back a military offensive by the Libyan National Army, which has long enjoyed support from Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and France.
In Syria, the two countries now accommodate each other, although their interests collide. Syria is a place where compartmentalization broke down in and Maintaining it could prove challenging again in the future. Lingering anti-U. Gazprom sent gas to Greece for the first time in , signing long-term supply contracts.
The Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline was to transport Russian oil from the Bulgarian Black Sea coast to the Aegean, but this project floundered when Bulgaria pulled out in Greece agreed to buy Russian BMP-3 infantry combat vehicles in , but it then cancelled the order amid a growing debt crisis and subsequent decline in defense acquisitions.
None of those deals materialized. The economic downturn in Europe after the global financial crisis pushed it to the brink of default in Over the following years, Greece and the EU negotiated a series of bailouts with harsh austerity measures and mandates to privatize state assets.
These proved unpopular, leading to a spike in Euroskepticism that opened doors for Russian financial diplomacy. Greece has also faced the brunt of the European refugee crisis as thousands of migrants sought escape from the Syrian conflict and other parts of the Middle East or North Africa.
It is on the front line of migration flows into Europe, adding strain to its economy, exacerbating domestic discontent, and boosting populist politicians.
After the elections, a coalition government of the left-of-center Syriza and the far-right Independent Greeks parties played to that anti-EU sentiment, threatening an outright pivot toward Moscow should Brussels and Athens fail to agree on bailout terms.
It continued robust public diplomacy to play up cultural and historic ties, deploying a narrative of Orthodox brotherhood to fortify relationships with politicians, church officials, and civil society. Putin visited in and , with clear displays of his efforts to promote Russia as a benefactor of conservative Orthodox values.
Malofeev has been linked to the initial efforts to destabilize eastern Ukraine in and the Montenegro coup. Efforts to upend the agreement included allegedly bribing Greek Orthodox clergy and government officials, and stoking nationalist fervor against it via social and traditional media controlled by Savvidis.
He purportedly also provided support to far-right protesters and soccer hooligans to mount demonstrations, some violent. Efforts to thwart the Prespa agreement led the Greek government to expel four Russians in July and to detail the evidence behind these malign Russian influence operations.
In the elections, Syriza lost fifty-nine seats and moved into the opposition, the Independent Greeks did not run at all, and the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn lost all of its seats. In a slight twist, Moscow also uses anti-colonial rhetoric against the United Kingdom, which once ruled the island and still operates air bases there.
The attractiveness of Cyprus to Moscow is based on its role as an offshore financial center, its nonaligned status, and the possibility it could serve as a logistics center for Russian naval operations. In the last years of the Cold War, in an effort to slow the arms race in the Eastern Mediterranean, the United States imposed an arms embargo on Cyprus in This gave Moscow an opening to cultivate closer security and military links in the post-Soviet era.
Cyprus has been a consistent buyer of Russian arms since the s. These ties facilitated a agreement allowing limited port calls for Russian naval ships, a point of friction with Washington. EU sanctions against Russia, however, have begun to alter that dependency, with a stark decline in weapons agreements and deliveries in recent years.
It is also receptive to greater security cooperation with NATO. Cyprus is a playground for Russians—whether wealthy and with more limited means—to park their money in the relative safety of an EU country in a bank account, real estate, or other investments. Some of the Russian money flowing to Cyprus is capital flight as oligarchs, along with average citizens, seek places to park their money away from the arms of the Russian state. Russian corporations and wealthy individuals often expatriate their assets to Cyprus only to repatriate them at a later date.
The Cypriot banking industry had grown dependent on inflows of Russian individual and corporate wealth. In the end, these Russian offers came to naught. Strong relations with the United States only mean that Greek diplomacy has to take into account American interests in the region. On the other hand, the Kremlin has always preferred to deal with individual European counties rather than the EU as a whole for obvious reasons.
The Kremlin welcomes the new Greek government's aspiration to develop a more autonomous foreign policy, at a time of increased tensions between Moscow and Europe. So what does the Tsipras government want from Russia? It's simple. It seeks an improved relationship with Moscow that would bring investments and cheap energy to the ruined Greek economy. It also wants Moscow to lift its sanctions against Greek agricultural producers. In addition, Athens is probably playing the "Russia card" in order to improve its bargaining position in the current negotiations with the EU-IMF troika.
However, economics cannot explain everything. Greece is a small and relatively resourceless country with a rich heritage that is a blessing as much as a curse.
It creates a sense of cultural overconfidence that constantly gets in the way of formulating realistic policy responses. Simultaneously, Greece has suffered from identity insecurity due to its perceived cultural uniqueness.
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