NATO in Eastern Europe encouraged democratic consolidation through forward-leaning integration culminating with the membership pledges to Georgia and Ukraine at the Bucharest Summit in 2008. Following a period of disengagement, NATO after 2013 renewed its interest in reform promotion through strategic advisory. Russia’s economic revitalisation sustained an expanded foreign policy doctrine, including the establishment of a regional hegemony and destabilisation of non-adherent Georgia and Ukraine to contain the growing NATO/Western influence.