The EU and crisis in Ukraine: policy continuity in times of disorder?

This chapter examines the dominant continuity of the EU’s transformative policy in Ukraine during the crisis in Ukraine. Natorski scrutinizes how the Euromaidan revolution, the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass affected the dynamics of EU policy reproduction since 2013 and explains the EU-Ukraine-Russia discussions on the potential trade consequences of the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. The dynamics of the continuity of the EU policy towards Ukraine and the altered role of Russia are explained in terms of the discursive representations of the crisis in Ukraine by the EU. The chapter concludes that the policy reproduction and change depend on what actors make of the crisis and to what extent crisis representation can be mediated coherently through the background discursive schemes.