EU-Russia relations are becoming more and more tense.
The latest row is about animal products, Russia is threatening to
ban all imports of EU animal products from 1 January when Romania and Bulgaria join the EU. First of all, Russia is extremely pissed to see two more of its former satellites joining the EU and has been imposing all sorts of economic sanctions on both countries for years, so this is just an escalation in the 'punishment' for leaving Moscow's orbit. Second, it's a convenient bargaining chip in the other EU-Russia row about energy trades that will be discussed later this week.
I haven't seen that kind of tension since the days of EEC-USSR talks in the 80s, and Russia is actually using the same strategy as the USSR back then, which is to refuse to talk to the EU as a whole about trade issues and insist on having separate bilateral talks with each member state, a classic "divide to conquer" strategy (like sending 25 letters to each EU state about the possible animal products ban blaming Bulgaria and Romania for the problem, while the proper procedure would have been to send only one letter to the EU commission which is in charge of trade issues).
This clearly shows how the EU needs to evolve toward a more federal structure that will be able to resist more efficiently to the bullying from the big countries we have to compete with (US, Russia, China, India, Brazil) and will render that "divide-and-conquer" strategy completely useless.