The escalating rivalry between the EU and Russia in their shared neighborhood creates important
economic political and legal challenges for the lands-in-between. Belarus and Ukraine have
received proposals of integration from both the EU and Russia. However the extents to which
they accepted these offers differ and result from a multitude of factors as well as their
interplay affecting the policy choices of their governments. International integration is a
foreign policy question but it has a strong domestic dimension too. Explaining various
integration stances demands considering a country's foreign and internal affairs. Alla
Leukavets applies here Putnam's two-level game-theoretical approach in combination with
findings from Europeanization literature and democracy promotion studies. She develops various
actor-centered and structural explanatory variables and applies them in the subsequent
empirical analysis. Her research results benefit from triangulation through primary documents
analysis and semi-structured interviews with elites and experts in Minsk Moscow Brussels and
Washington DC. The book analyses how the simultaneity of European and Eurasian integration
challenged the two countries to make a major strategic integration choice. The study sheds
light on the reasons for and genesis of the Ukraine Crisis and on how external actors such as
the EU can succeed in facilitating domestic reforms in Eastern Partnership countries.
