Viktoria Akchurina is Senior Lecturer at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. Her research focuses on state-building in Central Asia and the Middle East, comparatively. She is an author of a number of academic publications on the elite formation, power and hegemony, the incomplete state, security and radicalization, border and water management in central Eurasia. She co-edited a Special Issue on 'Power and Competing Regionalism in a Wider Europe' in Europe-Asia Studies. In her previous capacity as a researcher at TRENDS Consulting in Abu-Dhabi, she published a number of policy papers on the Belt and Road Initiative in the Middle East and conducted research on Russian foreign policy in Syria.

Vincent Della Sala is Professor of Political Science at the University of Trento and Adjunct Professor at SAIS Europe of the Johns Hopkins University. His recent work has focused on narratives and ontological security in Europe, including political myths as well as the EU as a global actor, especially with respect to relations with Russia.

Introduction - The European Union, Russia and the Post-Soviet Space: Shared Neighbourhood, Battleground or Transit Zone on the New Silk Road? 1. The Role of Power in EU-Russia Energy Relations: The Interplay between Markets and Geopolitics 2. From 'Unilateral' to 'Dialogical': Determinants of EU-Azerbaijan Negotiations 3. Between Russia and a Hard Place: Great Power Grievances and Central Asian Ambivalence 4. Geopolitical Imaginaries in Russian Foreign Policy: The Evolution of 'Greater Eurasia' 5. Russia, Europe and the Ontological Security Dilemma: Narrating the Emerging Eurasian Space 6. One Europe or None? Monism, Involution and Relations with Russia