MOSCOW. June 21 (Interfax) - Russia views the European Union's enlargement as a process that is negative and essentially hostile toward its national interests, Russian Permanent Representative to the EU Vladimir Chizhov said in an interview with Izvestia.
"The European Union used to be an economic association, which assumed a political dimension over time, aspiring for strategic autonomy, and so on. However, it has lately degraded to the level of a military bloc auxiliary to NATO. Therefore, this is quite a different European Union now. And naturally, we view the European Union's enlargement process as negative and essentially hostile to Russia's national interests," Chizhov said.
Previously, "we perceived the European Union's enlargement as a regional dimension of globalization," but "the European Union has changed, after all," he said.
Asked whether Russian-EU relations could normalize, Chizhov replied, "Not all bridges have been burned, but most of them."
"Let's see what's going to happen next. At least there will be no business as usual anymore; it just can't be so. We understand this, and they [the EU] also understand. Therefore, this is going to be a new system of interrelations, which has yet to be built. But it can be built only based on equal cooperation. To this end, they should change their attitude toward Russia. As long as they view Russia as an opponent, as an adversary, what cooperation can we talk about?" he said.