Abstract
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Greece has maintained a solid position in support of Ukraine and complete alignment with EU and NATO policy. Greece has actively supported Ukraine, despite a long-standing, bipartisan policy of engagement with Russia and pro-Russian solid sentiments in the society. This chapter delves into the factors influencing Greece's policy regarding the Russian aggression in Ukraine. This policy is constructed upon normative arguments serving national security considerations. It elucidates how the conflict in Ukraine has reinforced traditional principles and axes underpinning Greek foreign and security policy.
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1 Introduction
Russia’s military assault on Ukraine on 24 February 2022 marked a turning point in European and global security and ended more than four decades of the post-Cold War era. The war, designated by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a ‘special military operation’ to ‘de-nazi-fy’ and demilitarize Ukraine, surprised the international community. Nevertheless, several weeks before the assault, western leaders and agencies had evidence of Russian plans to invade Ukrainian territory. Russian officials denied such claims repeatedly, with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov arguing in January 2022 that Russia ‘will not attack, strike, invade, quote-unquote, whatever Ukraine’ (Kiely & Farley, 2022). The effects on Europe have been significant as the continent has witnessed the first war of such scale engaging European countries in the post-war period. Since the beginning of the conflict, the option of using nuclear weapons by Moscow has also been on the table, leading analysts and policymakers to draw parallels with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The President of the USA, J. Biden, commenting on the threat level, argued that ‘we have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis’ (Sanger, 2022).
Following the invasion of Ukraine, the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) replied immediately and vocally, first, condemning Russian aggression as a violation of international law; second, stating their diplomatic and military support for Ukraine; and third, announcing measures to sanction Russia. Greece, a member of the EU and NATO, fully aligned with its Western allies and did not opt for a ‘fence sitting’ policy despite strong pro-Russian public sentiment and a long-standing bipartisan policy of engaging with Russia. Greece’s positioning in the war in Ukraine reflects its traditional foreign policy preference for collective solidarity and the status quo.
2 Greece’s Policy: Continuity and Change
The response of Athens to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 marked a discontinuity from the past. First, it ended a somewhat cautious policy towards the Ukrainian conflict that had been followed since 2014; second, it ended a long-standing policy of non-military engagement in regional conflicts; and third, it ended a dominant ‘Russia first’ approach in Greece’s Black Sea policy. The positioning of Athens, however, did not depart an inch from the fundamental pillars of its foreign policy as a status-quo power, namely the inviolability of the principles of territorial integrity, sovereignty, and the peaceful settlement of disputes.
When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Greece held the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union. At that time, its ability to take any initiative in mediating the Ukrainian conflict was extremely limited as the country’s diplomatic capital and credibility had been severely diluted by a severe financial crisis which was also consuming all its resources. The Greek Presidency had prioritized issues related to Eurozone governance, migration, and the EU maritime policy rather than EU foreign policy. Nevertheless, during the Greek Presidency, on 21 March 2014, the political part of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU was signed. On several occasions in 2014, Athens used its term at the Presidency of the Council to issue statements on the situation in Ukraine condemning the violation of the principles of international law and of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) by Russia (OSCE, 2014a, 2014b). At all international fora such as the OSCE, the Council of Europe, and the UN, the Greek government took a firm stance in supporting Ukrainian sovereignty but still stood in favor of a ‘functional’ relationship between the EU, NATO, and Russia (Prime Minister Office, 2021).
In the run-up to the invasion, Athens pursued a policy against alienating Russia following a similar approach of other EU countries such as France and Germany. In this regard, Athens followed the same pattern as in previous cases, such as the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the war in Georgia in 2008, condemning Russian illegal acts but calling for engagement with Moscow. On 18 February 2022, a few days before the invasion, Greek Foreign Minister Dendias had a meeting with his Russian counterpart summarizing the Greek position on Ukraine along three axes: the need for immediate de-escalation, Greece’s support for the implementation of the Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 agreements, and the security of the Greek community in Ukraine, in particular in the broader area of Mariupol and near the contact line (Kanonidou, 2022). Before the war, in December 2021, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, where several bilateral agreements were signed. At the Press Conference, Mitsotakis acknowledged the importance of maintaining a dialogue with Russia, explaining that ‘Russia is part of the European security architecture and for this reason, many countries are interested in its participation in a dialogue, especially between Russia and the EU and Russia and NATO’ (The Russian Presidency, 2021). The prime minister also raised concerns around the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis in the hope of a diplomatic solution, arguing that ‘the Minsk agreements must be observed, among other accords’ (The Russian Presidency, 2021).
When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the Greek government displayed remarkable speed in its response, immediately condemning the Russian aggression and moving away from its previous policy of balancing EU/NATO responses with perceived national security concerns that Russia could support. The statement issued by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 24 February 2022 referred to the Russian attack on Ukraine as ‘a flagrant violation of International Law and universal Values… [which] undermines European Peace and Security’, expressing solidarity with Ukraine (MFA, 2022a). Numerous official statements followed contemning Russian policy, including Moscow’s decision to illegally annex Ukrainian territories occupied by its military forces (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions), which was once more called ‘a flagrant violation of International Law and null’, a decision that ‘Greece does not recognize’ (MFA, 2022e).
Evacuating Greeks from the war zone in Ukraine and providing shelter to Ukrainian refugees preoccupied the Greek authorities in the first days of the war. Athens took measures to implement the EU directive of opening its borders to Ukrainian nationals through actions such as the integration program Helios. Helios provided a housing allowance, Greek language courses, and vocational guidance services for asylum seekers. According to the Greek authorities, 70,676 refugees from Ukraine had crossed the Greek border since the beginning of the war by July 2022. However, several refugees used Greece as a stopover to go to other European countries, as shown by the applications submitted to recognize refugee status. By the end of July 2022, a total of 19,273 online applications were submitted, resulting in the issuance of 18,048 Temporary Protection Permits. In February 2023, it was estimated that approximately 22,000 Ukrainian refugees were still in Greece, primarily women and children (UNHCR, 2023).
As sanctions became the primary tool of the Western response, Athens also adhered to these despite the cost to its recovering economy. Athens had raised several concerns on the first set of sanctions in 2014/15, which were agreed upon in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in the Donbas area. However, since 2022, it has conformed to several succeeding sanctions, including blocking Russia’s currency reserves, restrictions on economic cooperation and mobility, diplomatic sanctions, and sanctions on the energy sector. In this context, Greek authorities temporarily seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker carrying a crew of nineteen Russians in April 2022, and Greek airspace was closed to Russian airlines. Greece’s full implementation of the Western sanctions led to a war of statements, unusual for traditionally good Greek-Russian relations. The Greek MFA accused Moscow of spreading fake news and disinformation.
The spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, accused Athens of ‘Russophobic hysteria cultivated by the authorities due to the decision to suspend practically all bilateral types of cooperation, including Common Tribute Years (Ekathimerini, 2022). Bilateral relations were further strained when, in April 2022, the Greek authorities declared twelve members of the Diplomatic and Consular Missions of Russia to be personae non gratae in protest against the war crimes committed in Bucha. A couple of months later, Moscow responded with the decision to declare eight members of the Greek Embassy and the Consulate General in Moscow as personae non gratae. In July 2022, Moscow included Greece in the list of ‘unfriendly’ countries established in May 2021, restricting the number of local staff hired at Greece’s diplomatic missions in Russia to thirty-four (The Russian Government, 2022).
At the EU level, Ukraine’s application for membership, submitted on 28 February 2022, has been supported by Athens on geopolitical grounds. However, Greece opposes the fast-track process that some Eastern European countries put forward for Ukraine. Greek society is among the least supportive of Ukraine’s accession to the EU. According to a survey by Euroskopia conducted between 8 and 11 March 2022, 39 percent of Greeks interviewed responded negatively to Ukraine’s EU membership (Newmoney, 2022). Interestingly, when the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to accept Ukraine’s application to join the European Union, two of the 13 EU MPs who voted against it were Greeks from the far right and the far left.
At the diplomatic level, Athens supported initiatives in support of Ukraine, such as sponsoring the draft Resolution on aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, which was submitted to the UN Security Council on 25 February 2022 but was vetoed by Russia. Its voting in favor of Ukraine’s territorial integrity in all Resolutions at the General Assembly of the UN reflects Greece’s traditional position of not objecting to any common position concerning this principle.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has also been condemned by the Greek Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (Ecumenical Patriarchate, 2022), exacerbating long-standing rifts between the Greek Orthodox world and the Russian Church. The Russian Orthodox Church—whose leader, Patriarch Kirill, has been under sanctions by the EU—has endorsed the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a war against ‘evil forces’ (Rhodes, 2022), a stance that has deepened the confrontation with the Ecumenical Patriarchate based in Istanbul which is the head of worldwide Orthodoxy. Moreover, the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, employing an encyclical letter read in all the churches of the country, condemned the invasion of Russian troops and the war in Ukraine, making its structures (Hostels for Refugees and Migrants of the NGO Synyparxis of the Church, the NGO of the Archdiocese of Athens Apostoli, etc.) available for the hosting of Ukrainian refugees. Tensions between the two Patriarchates had deepened considerably following the decision of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to give the Ukrainian Church autocephaly (independence) in 2018.
Yet, the government’s decision to provide military assistance to Ukraine marked a significant milestone in Greek foreign policy. Greece has never sent weapons abroad as a matter of principle, except for the Patriot Air Defence System sent to Saudi Arabia in 2022, or had direct military involvement in regional conflicts. Even during the Yugoslav war in the 1990s, Greece was not involved militarily but had only permitted the use of its territory to transit NATO troops within the context of its membership in the alliance. Nevertheless, it was among the first countries to support Ukraine by supplying it with military aid (Kalashnikov assault rifles, rocket launchers, and ammunition) within its participation in NATO and the EU and in solidarity with Ukraine (Ministry of Defence, 2022). It also reached an agreement with Germany to provide infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) to Greece in exchange for Greece transferring Soviet-style weapons to Ukraine. Access to the port of Alexandroupolis in north-eastern Greece was also offered to support military aid to Ukraine and strengthen NATO’s eastern flank as it provides access to Ukraine via Bulgaria and Romania. The issue of Greece’s military assistance to Ukraine has become the main point of domestic political debate.
The strong condemnation of Russia’s aggression also departed from the balancing act reflecting Athens' ‘Russia first’ approach to Black Sea security matters involving Moscow. Before the war, Greece was often accused of not openly supporting EU positions regarding Moscow-driven protracted conflicts as in Abkhazia and South Ossetia or concerning EU sanctions on Russia. Despite elements of continuity in Greek foreign policy, Russia’s military attack on Ukraine has been a turning point, setting limits on any support for Russian views and positions that Greece, traditionally friendly towards Russia, can provide. At her speech at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 22 June 2022, the Greek President E. Sakelaropoulou said that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine represented ‘a direct and frontal challenge to liberal democracy and European values’ (Council of Europe, 2022). In explaining the Greek position in favor of the decision to expel Russia from the Council of Europe, she stressed the need for unity against aggression. She argued in favor of the Parliamentary Assembly’s proposal to establish an ad hoc international tribunal to investigate the crime of aggression against Ukraine, expressing Greece's interest in the Mariupol region, where a Greek community has lived for centuries. Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Dendias also participated in a Ministerial Conference focused on accountability for Ukraine in the Hague (on 14 July 2022), co-organized by the Dutch government and the International Criminal Court. Greece also abstained from the General Assembly of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC), held in Moscow on 6–9 June 2022, as a protest against Russia’s aggressiveness.
3 Framing Greece’s Policy
How can Greek positioning on the war in Ukraine be explained? For the Greek economy coming out of a decade-long, severe financial crisis, the economic consequences had to be weighed heavily when shaping the Greek policy on the war in Ukraine. The war itself and the subsequent wave of sanctions have led to disruptions in the global supply chain, currency fluctuations, and soaring energy prices. These factors have exerted pressure on national economies and the overall well-being of societies, even those situated far from the military conflict. Nevertheless, the economic factor did not weigh heavily on shaping Greece’s response to the war due to shallow inter-dependencies between Greece, Russia, and Ukraine. Overall, Russia plays a minor role in Greece’s foreign trade, except for energy, mainly gas imports. Russia’s weight in Greek exports is meager, only about 0.81 percent before the war (Manoli, 2020: 506). Bilateral trade and economic relations have been on a steady decline since the first round of sanctions was imposed on Russia in response to the annexation of Crimea. Between 2013 and 2017, Greek exports of agricultural products, which constitute its main goods exported to Russia, declined by 80 percent (Manoli, 2020: 506). The flow of foreign direct investment between the two economies is minimal, making it a non-critical factor in Greece's stance on Ukraine and the economic sactions imposed to Russia (Nakou, 2022). Greek stock FDI in Russia was 46 million USD, and Russian stock FDI in Greece was 733 million USD in 2018, accounting for just 0.6 percent of total FDI in Greece. However, sanctions on the energy sector raised concerns for the Greek government. Greece has had a significant dependency on Russian energy imports, with Russian sources accounting for 39 percent of the country's natural gas imports and 26 percent of its oil imports in 2020. In this respect, Greece looked for alternative energy providers to reduce its dependence on Russian natural gas and moved fast towards the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) option.
Thus, national security preferences and expectations deriving from its role in the EU and NATO rather than economic factors constituted the critical determinants of Greek policy. As discussed in this section, four parameters weighed heavily on Greek positioning vis-à-vis the Russian war on Ukraine. First, the existence of a population of Greek origin in the war zone topped Greece’s agenda at the first stage of the invasion and led to an active role by Athens in raising the humanitarian dimension of the war. Second, national security preferences underpinned the immediate and solid response of the Greek government to Russian revisionism and military aggression. The policy of Greece in support of international law and the principle of territorial integrity and sovereignty is directly linked to its national security concerns in addressing what is perceived in Athens as the existential threat of (Turkish) revisionism in the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. Third, Greece’s integration into the EU and NATO structures and its interest in further consolidating its place in the Euro-Atlantic community determined the measures Athens implemented to support Ukraine and sanction Russia. Fourth, the long-standing, bipartisan policy of ‘Russia first’ had defined Greece’s policy in the run-up to the invasion but collapsed on the day of the invasion.
3.1 Greeks in Ukraine
The protection of the population of Greek origin in Ukraine, especially in the conflict zone along the Black Sea and the Azov Sea coast, was put forward by Athens as its main policy priority even before the war was launched. On 31 January 2022, just days before the war erupted, Foreign Minister Dendias visited the Greek community in Mariupol with a message of de-escalation. Three days before the war started, on 21 February 2022, at the EU Meeting of Foreign Affairs held in Brussels with the presence of the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba, the Greek Foreign Minister Dendias raised the issue of the security of the Greek minority again on the contact line around Mariupol (Liberal, 2022).
‘For Greece, the protection of civilians and the provision of humanitarian aid to the Greek Diaspora in Ukraine constitutes a top priority, especially in the Black Sea coastal cities, such as Mariupol and Odesa, where the Greek Diaspora has lived for centuries’, Greek Foreign Minister Dendias stated in an interview on 17 April 2022 (MFA, 2022c). Greeks were established on the territories running from the Donbas to Odesa in the seventh century BC and have been there for centuries, being, among others, the founders of Mariupol in 1780. Over the centuries, the status of the Greek population in the region has changed, but 100,000–120,000 people remained in the area before the 2022 war. The pro-Russian versus pro-Ukrainian orientation of the Greek community has been a matter of discussion as the population lives in an area where Russian influence is historically significant and most of the community is Russian speaking. Still, since the war began, the Greeks of Ukraine pledged more allegiance to Kyiv (Taxydromos, 2022), although relations between the Greek community and Kyiv have not been untroubled. An issue of tension has been the legislation on ‘The Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine’, adopted by the Ukrainian parliament on 1 July 2021. This legislation did not grant indigenous status to the Greek-origin population in Ukraine, leading to accusations of discrimination against Kyiv. The law aims to protect the rights of autochthonous ethnic groups in the territory of Ukraine who do not have a state outside of the Ukrainian state. However, only three such groups were declared indigenous (Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks), all living in Crimea (Ukrinform, 2021), creating a reaction among other ethnic groups. Speaking of the Greek community in Ukraine, Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias, while visiting Mariupol and Sartana on 1 February 2022, just a few days before the Russian invasion, said that ‘besides issues of security, it also faces serious issues with welfare and living’, and reiterated that ‘the Greek state will help as much as possible in resolving these issues’ (Naftemporiki, 2022a).
As soon as the war erupted, human losses were marked within the Greek community, causing a reaction from the Greek government, which was ‘appalled’ by the death of ethnic Greeks. Athens expressed its discontent with Russia's use of Chechen fighters in Mariupol and organized three operations to evacuate Greeks from Ukraine, namely the ‘Nostos I’ to get Greeks and Cypriots out of Kyiv, ‘Nostos II’ in Odesa, and ‘Nostos III’ to evacuate Greek citizens from the city of Mariupol. Greece’s consul general in Mariupol, Manolis Androulakis, was the last EU diplomat to leave, assisting dozens of ethnic Greeks in evacuating the city. Still, it is estimated that most Greeks chose to remain in Ukraine at that time. On February 26, 2022, the Russian envoy was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, which condemned the bombing of civilians in Sartana, a town on the north-eastern outskirts of the city of Mariupol, which had resulted in the death of two ethnic Greeks (MFA, 2022b). Greece sent humanitarian aid missions, and the Greek Foreign Minister visited twice the region of Odessa, after the war started, in April and July 2022. The Greek government raised the issue of Mariupol in international fora so that the perpetration of war crimes could be investigated. In April 2022, a letter was sent to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court asking for an investigation into the crimes committed in Mariupol and the villages of Sartana and Volnovakha (MFA, 2022b). On 12 July 2022, amidst the war, N. Dendias visited Odessa, where an agreement was signed to digitize historical documents and books related to the city’s Greek community.
3.2 Greece’s Power Considerations
A key pillar of Greek foreign policy, as is the norm with relatively small powers in the international system, is the respect for the rules and principles set out by international law and the participation in alliances that serve these principles. The resolute policy of Greece in firmly defending the principle of territorial integrity and sovereignty is directly linked to its national security concerns about the Turkish claims over Greece’s sovereign rights and sovereignty and concerning the Cyprus issue. Greece has often attempted to internationalize the problem of the revisionist policies in the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean and has pushed for EU sanctions on Turkey. The casus belli with which Ankara threatens Athens, the violation of Greek and Cypriot territorial waters, and the ‘Blue Homeland’ (Mavi Vatan) doctrine are viewed by Athens as key manifestations of Ankara’s revisionism (MFA, 2022d). Prime Minister Mitsotakis, in his speech at the United States Congress in May 2022, indicated a parallel between Putin’s and Erdogan’s policies:
‘Mr. Putin is striving to create a world in which power is for the strong state but not the small. A world in which territorial claims are made on the basis of historical fantasies and enforced by aggression rather than decided by peace treaties. A world in which armies rather than diplomats settle disputes. He will not succeed. He must not succeed. He must not succeed, not only for the sake of Ukraine but also in order to send a message to all authoritarian leaders that historical revisionism and open acts of aggression that violate international law will not be tolerated by the global community of democratic states. The language of resentment, revisionism and imperial nostalgia shall not prevail’ (Prime Minister Office, 2022b).
Despite significant differences, the Ukrainian and Cypriot conflicts share similarities. They constitute cases of invasion and illegal occupation in the name of population protection, followed by secession and/or declaration of state-like entities that are either illegally recognized by the aggressor or annexed. The two conflicts were linked in the speech of Prime Minister K. Mitsotakis to the USA Congress in May 2022. The Cypriot President Nikos Anastasiadis has often argued that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine uses the ‘same arguments that Turkey used to invade Cyprus’ in 1974, drawing a parallel between ‘similar actions of certain countries’ which ‘seek, through revisionism, to overturn either geographical or historical data records’ (Kefalas, 2022). Greece and Cyprus have been further alarmed by the parallel drawn between the Russian separatists fighting in Ukraine’s Donbas region and the ethnic Turks of the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on 21 February 2022 (Kyriakides, 2022).
The war in Ukraine has reaffirmed the essential pillar of Greek foreign policy in preserving sovereignty and peaceful resolution of disputes. Still, it has also become a turning point in the Greek doctrine of non-engagement militarily in conflicts, especially in neighboring areas. Though somewhat symbolic, the military aid Athens sent to Ukraine was framed within moral arguments but was linked to national security interests as Athens hoped for reciprocal gains. Prime Minister Mitsotakis made this clear when explaining how the decision to provide military aid to Ukraine, apart from being ‘morally just’ was also beneficial for Greece’s national interests. Mitsotakis argued that Athens would have no moral standing to ask for similar assistance if it found itself in the same position, especially compared to other European countries, threatening Greece’s sovereignty (Stamouli, 2022). Thus, Greece became an active advocate of a strong Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and abided by the decisions of its EU and NATO allies on the basis of the collective ‘solidarity’ that has also often been evoked by Athens. By sending military aid to Ukraine, Athens signaled that it would use any means, including military options, to counter revisionism in its border regions.
Greece’s response to the war in Ukraine has thus been filtered by its core security concerns, framed in normative argumentation. The war presented an opportunity for Athens to consolidate and upgrade its place in the Euro-Atlantic community after a decade of a severe economic crisis that undermined its credibility as a European ally. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reaffirmed Greece’s Western path and deepened US-Greek military cooperation amidst the threats challenging NATO’s eastern and south flanks. At the same time, the war constituted a case to illustrate Greece’s geostrategic importance, which had been weakening in the previous decades. The port city of Alexandroupolis, at the north-eastern part of the country and the entrance of the Dardanelle Straits, has become essential in facilitating the transit of American military equipment to Eastern Europe and Ukraine, circumventing the Bosphorus Straits.
The Alexandroupolis port had come to the forefront in the 2000s when Russia, Greece, and Bulgaria agreed on the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline, which would have given Russia more influence in the region. Instead, the port is now developed into a center for liquefied natural gas (LNG) coming from international markets, a project supported by the European Commission and the US. Thus, dismantling energy relations with Russia provided a new window of opportunity for Greece to underscore its role in Europe’s energy security while also boosting projects on exploiting and transiting natural resources in the Eastern Mediterranean. The launch of the LNG terminal project in Alexandroupolis in May 2022, which is expected to be operational by the end of 2023, will cover domestic needs and provide energy to neighboring countries in Southeast Europe. A second floating LNG facility, licensed in Thrace’s sea, could potentially supply Moldova and Ukraine with LNG.
3.3 Dismantling the Greek–Russian Relationship
The Greek response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 turned Athens from a ‘friend’ to an ‘unfriendly’ country for Moscow. In his speech before the Greek audience in Athens on 2 December 2009, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov had stressed that ‘there are few other countries that are so closely related as Russia and Greece with such a long history of sincere friendship’ (Lavrov, 2009). However, in July 2022, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a degree including Greece and other European countries among the states committing hostile acts against Russian diplomatic and consular missions abroad. What did it take to unfriend Greece?
In the post-Cold War era, Greece attempted to balance its obligations as an EU/NATO member on the one hand with its special relationship with Russia on the other hand. Such positioning has reflected a need to balance ‘integration’ in Euro-Atlantic structures and ‘exceptionalism’ (Triantaphyllou, 2018: 107–117). Despite adopting a norm-based approach in positing regional security issues, Athens has considered Russia an indispensable part of the European security architecture. It thus made use of its Chairmanship at the OSCE to launch the Corfu process in June 2009 to accommodate Russian concerns and take forward the dialogue on Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security. Greece was also among the old EU/NATO member states that objected to offering a Membership Action Plan to Ukraine in the NATO Bucharest Summit of 2008.
Notwithstanding cultural and historical linkages at a societal level, Greek-Russian mutual understanding in the post-Cold War era was underscored by shared views on global issues (especially in the 1990s). As one of the European states for which Moscow did not pose a security threat, Greece has advocated in favor of strategic partnership and sectoral cooperation between the EU and Russia, and, until recently, it was one of the least anti-Russian countries globally. As Siakas and Paschalidis (2021) have argued, Greek Russophilia is of two types: the soft approach, expressed as a positive predisposition towards Russia, and the hard-core approach, which advocates an embrace of Russia by breaking with Greece’s ties to the West. While pro-Russian views have declined drastically since the invasion of Ukraine, differences from the wider European public remain apparent evident. A Eurobarometer poll on 6 May 2022 showed that 53 percent of Greeks supported sanctions against Russia, compared with a European Union average of 80 percent. Just 40 percent of Greeks supported financing weapons purchases for Ukraine, versus 67 percent of Europeans (European Commission, 2022). Another survey conducted by Politico in March 2022 showed that 60 percent of Greeks found Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ‘unacceptable’, compared with 86 percent, 82 percent, and 78 percent in Spain, Germany, and France, respectively (Psaropoulos, 2022).
Still, the New Democracy government broke ties with the public’s Russophilia and took sides, engaging diplomatically and militarily in support of Ukraine. ‘We took sides. Unequivocally. We stand by Ukraine against [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s aggression … He will not succeed’, Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, told a joint session of the US Congress on 17 May 2022. Russia's decision to illegally annex the occupied territories of Ukraine (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions) was accordingly described as ‘illegal’, a ‘flagrant violation of International Law’, and ‘null’. The aggressive revisionism paradigm put forward by Moscow posed a direct challenge to Greece’s security premises with Turkey. Putin’s tactics in Ukraine, and especially Russia's justification based on historical revisionism, echoed in Athens those of Turkish President Erdogan, who in his visit to Athens in 2017 referred to the need to revise the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, which defined Turkey’s modern borders and Greek-Turkish relations (Lang, 2017).
Bilateral relations with Russia had been shaken since the financial crisis that brought Athens close to economic collapse. When the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition took power in 2015, the Greek government came up with alternative views on fiscal policies and foreign relations, including with Russia, hoping the latter would come to its rescue as a lender. This, however, did not happen as Moscow offered moral support and long-term cooperation but no financial aid. The expulsion of twelve Russian diplomats in Greece on national security grounds in the summer of 2018 marked a significant deterioration of Greek-Russian relations. Since then, bilateral relations have never fully recovered despite the visit of Prime Minister Mitsotakis to Moscow on 8 December 2021. However, what has alarmed Athens has been Moscow’s deepening alliance with Turkey, the selling of S-400 missiles to Ankara, and Russia’s silence over Ankara’s policies in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. The wars waged against Christian orthodox peoples (as in Georgia in 2008) further diluted the perception of Moscow as the protector of the Orthodox world.
The political system and the public have come to regard Russia with almost equal suspicion to the US, while pro-Europeanism has strengthened. A survey of Greek opinion conducted by the think-tank Dianeosis just after the war in Ukraine broke out asked Greeks to pick a single reliable ally. Only 4.8 percent picked Russia, 6.7 percent picked the US, and 65 percent chose France, with Greece recently signing a defensive alliance (Georgakopoulos, 2022). The war in Ukraine was a wake-up call reminding Athens of its place in the West, both culturally and geopolitically, and of the importance of NATO/EU membership in addressing security threats.
3.4 Domestic Political Debate
All parties in the Greek Parliament have sided with the government in condemning the attack of Russia in Ukraine. At the same time, all have raised concerns about the ramifications of the war on Greek-Turkish relations. The standard line across the Greek political spectrum has been that Russia’s aggressive war has clearly violated the Charter of the United Nations and universally accepted rules for resolving transnational disputes peacefully. All parties have also commented on the need for the Greek state to take the initiative and stand by the population of Greek origin in Ukraine, most of which lived in the war zone. Still, there are essential deviations in their positions on a series of related issues; Russia’s accountability for the war, the alignment of Athens with the EU and NATO, the type of assistance Athens should provide to Ukraine, and how the war could end. These deviations were exposed at a high-level meeting in the Hellenic Parliament on 1 March 2022, at which the New Democracy government informed all the parties of its policy on the war in Ukraine and the repercussions for the country (Prime Minister Office, 2022a).
Military assistance to Ukraine was the most debated issue domestically. The socialist PASOK-KINAL party was the only opposition party that sided with the government on this issue. In contrast, all other parties objected, calling for the government to send only humanitarian aid. The left-wing opposition party SYRIZA claimed that ‘the direct involvement of Greece in the war in Ukraine, which is dangerous for our national interests, is increasing with each passing week, at the same time as the tension on the part of Turkey is escalating’ (Greek City Times, 2022). He criticized the government for joining forces with the EU even though the EU has not taken action to halt revisionist claims and impose sanctions against Turkey for violating Greece’s sovereign rights and the Cyprus issue (SKAI, 2022). Along the same line of argument, the leader of the party of National Solution, Kyriakos Velopoulos, disapproved of the government’s decision to send military assistance to Ukraine, arguing that Russia and Ukraine are pro-Turkey, thus Greece should not take a position (Proto Thema, 2022). SYRIZA saw the offer of an EU candidate status to Ukraine positively and called for targeted sanctions on Russia that would make Russia come to the negotiation table but not establish a new economic Cold War. Following other Eurosceptic political forces, it blamed the West, particularly the US and the EU, as primarily responsible (SYRIZA, 2022). The Greek Communist Party (KKE), framed the war in Ukraine as an imperialist war (KKE, 2022) while joining forces with other Communist parties to ‘denounce the activity of fascist and nationalist forces in Ukraine, anti-communism and the persecution of communists, the discrimination against the Russian-speaking population, the armed attacks of the Ukrainian government against the people in Donbas’ (SolidNet, 2022). The leader of the Greek Communist Party, Dimitris Koutsoubas, noted that ‘the formal start of the new war was the unacceptable military intervention of Russia which promotes its plans of capitalist unification and exploitation of peoples and for this, the KKE condemned it unequivocally from the first moment’ (Naftemporiki, 2022b). But he accused the West of provoking this war due to the ‘methodical economic, political and military encirclement of Russia by the USA, NATO, EU’ (ibid). The leader of MeRA25, Yanis Varoufakis, also called on SYRIZA and KKE to join anti-war action and stop the government from exposing the country (ERT, 2022) and argued that the solution would be the neutrality of Ukraine. He also saw that the developments in Ukraine had weakened Europe and presented an excellent opportunity to strengthen the diplomatic role of Turkey.
The speech of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy at the Hellenic Parliament on 7 April 2022, upon the invitation of the Greek Prime Minister, became another occasion for political debate. The Greek President Sakellaropoulou was present in Parliament in an act of solidarity, but not all parties were represented. SYRIZA and KINAL welcomed the invitation, while the Communist party objected, arguing that the government of Zelenskyy is a puppet regime of the US-NATO-EU, all of which share the same responsibility as Moscow for the sufferings of the Ukrainian people. Beyond the Communist Party, those who boycotted the speech by Zelenskyy included the right-wing populist Elliniki Lysi (Greek Solution) party and several members of the opposition SYRIZA party who decided not to participate.
4 Conclusion
The war in Ukraine matters to Greece for two main reasons. First, as an aggressive inter-state war, it posed a fundamental challenge to the fundamental premises of the national security strategy of Greece, a small power and the only EU/NATO country whose sovereign rights are contested militarily by a regional power under a casus belli threat. Just in 2020, Athens and Ankara came close to military conflict over sea boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean. As a small power, Greece has framed its foreign policy on two fundamental principles of international law, both undermined by the Russian invasion: national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Second, the Russian invasion of Ukraine constituted an attack on the liberal European order, norms, and security architecture to which Greece is a constituting part, and it challenged NATO and the EU, Greece’s two primary security providers. As for any relatively small power, multilateralism and alliance-building have been critical pillars of Greek security policy. The return to spheres of influence competition by global forces underscores Athens’ place in the Euro-Atlantic community of states. The war in Ukraine has provided the Greek government with an opportunity to firm its belonging in Western society and upgrade the country's geostrategic importance at a time when its security preferences coincide with those of its allies.
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Manoli, P. (2024). Greece’s Response to Russia’s War on Ukraine. In: Mihr, A., Pierobon, C. (eds) Polarization, Shifting Borders and Liquid Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44584-2_21
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