Absolute nonsense from Beevor here.
That was the point of the EU-Russia Partnership Agreement, Council of Europe membership, WTO accession, visa liberalisation talks, Nord Stream, Yamal-Europe, the Allegro train to Helsinki, Siemens trains and turbines, Renault at AvtoVAZ, Western European banks in Siberia, French retail across Russia, and decades of Russian gas powering Western European industry.
The problem is that Russia was never offered a serious place inside the European security or economic architecture and was merely treated as a supplier of energy and capital, not as a partner. Russian investment in the West was always treated as suspicious (remember the furore over Alexander Lebedev buying the London Independent, despite also funding Russia's main pro-Western liberal newspaper).
Russia, the largest country in Europe, was the only European country not given a roadmap to EU membership or alignment. Even Georgia and Armenia were given these pathways, despite being entirely in Asia.
So spare us the fairy tale that Moscow simply woke up one morning and โchoseโ dependence on China. Western Europe deliberately locked Russia out.
Beevor: Russian rulers have long feared that unless Russia keeps expanding, it will contract.
Russiaโs real geopolitical strategy should have been the opposite: accept Europeโs core security demands and integrate economically with Europe instead of threatening it since the 2000s.
By doing so, Moscow could have balanced its power between Europe and China, selling energy, commodities and industrial inputs to multiple major markets instead of becoming structurally dependent on China and India.
Instead, Russia chose to continue its expansionist policy
That decision cut its economic ties with Europe, pushed European countries into their largest rearmament since the Second World War, accelerated Europeโs energy independence, and turned Moscow into an economic vassal of China and India.