DISINFO: Eastern Partnership is a leash to control participating countries
SUMMARY
The European Union will not destroy the Eastern Partnership, because this partnership represents for the EU an anti-Russian format and a leash that it throws around the neck of Eastern European countries, thus controlling them.
RESPONSE
A recurring pro-Kremlin narrative about the EU's Eastern Partnership, presenting it as an anti-Russian structure.
The Eastern Partnership (EaP) is a joint policy initiative, based on voluntary participation, which aims to deepen and strengthen relations between the European Union (EU), its Member States and its six Eastern neighbours: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, as it is mentioned on the official website. It was released on May 7, 2009, by the Joint Declaration of the Prague Eastern Partnership Summit. There is no mention of Russia in the policy's stated goals. On 26 June 2021, Belarus took a voluntary decision suspending its participation in the EaP, after the EU imposed sanctions on Lukashenka's government for the presure on its own polulation, human rights violations and for the forcing down of the Ryanair airplane with Roman Pratasevich. See an overview of EU's policy towards Belarus here.
The Eastern Partnership initiative is not a leash to control the participating countries. The Eastern Partnership (EaP) was established as a specific Eastern dimension of the European Neighborhood Policy, which contains both a bilateral and multilateral track.
See here a similar case, claiming that this structure was initially designed as a geopolitical trap.