The Geometry of In-Betweenness: EU Engagement Without Recognition in the De Facto States of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria

The paper investigates the strategic agency of de facto states in the post-Soviet contested periphery through a comparative analysis of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria. Each of these entities operates within a condition we conceptualize as "strategic in-betweenness"—a liminal positionality shaped by asymmetrical dependencies, unresolved sovereignty, and constrained interaction with global normative actors. While structurally similar in their lack of international recognition and reliance on Russian patronage, the three cases reveal distinct strategic behaviors: ambiguous balancing in case of Abkhazia, ideological assimilation in case of South Ossetia, and pragmatic maneuvering in case of Transnistria. In order to explain these divergent trajectories we build a revised triadic framework that integrates Dittmer’s strategic triangle with Toal’s expansion of external normative actors, particularly the European Union (EU). This model allows us to trace how de facto elites navigate the relational geometry between patron (Russia), parental state (Moldova or Georgia, currently the candidate states in relation to the EU), and external actor (European Union), which applies the policy of engagement without recognition towards these de facto states. We also analyze how elite composition (in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria), identity narratives, geopolitical incentives and different aspects of the EU´s policy of engagement without recognition (business/economic; normative/political; cultural/social; and security/geopolitical) co-produce differentiated agency on the side of the de facto states. By analyzing the discourse and strategies of the ruling elite in de facto states, their perceptions vis-a-vis the EU´s policy of engagement without recognition and alignment patterns over key temporal junctures (2014 – the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine as well as the year of the signature of the Association Agreements between the EU and both Moldova and Georgia, and 2022 – the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the year when Moldova gained the EU candidate status and Georgia gained the status of potential candidate), we expose the uneven windows of opportunity for the EU's normative engagement across these spaces. In so doing, the article contributes to a more dynamic and differentiated understanding of agency under conditions of contested sovereignty, norm diffusion in hierarchical orders, and the EU's constrained actorness in geopolitical liminal zones. Our findings strive to contribute to the broader debates about the conceptualisation of the policy of engagement without recognition, the re-assessment of the EU’s external strategies in zones of unresolved conflict, and for mapping the micro-geometries of power and identity in the post-Soviet space and beyond.