This report investigates how the European Union can build stronger common programs and projects with Russia, its Eastern partner countries, and Central Asia. The objective is to establish synergies between actions that are presently segmented among these three regions. A particular goal is to induce Russia to become a genuinely cooperative positive-sum game player in the wider European neighborhood, and to abandon its attempts to rebuild the former Soviet Union as its sphere of influence. The authors believe that the current global financial and economic crisis could become the tipping point to set in motion a change of strategic attitudes -resulting in a cascade of cooperative actions of the kinds outlined in the report.