Russia is the object of constant inclusion and exclusion from the political community and common identity during the normative interaction with the European Union in the field of democratization. In many respects, both processes are realized through the discursive construction of «transition», where the social reality is represented as a «road» with the signifier «Russia», moving toward the ideologically established standard of «Europe» and «democracy». A post-Marxist discourse analysis shows that the Ukrainian crisis of 2014 between Moscow and Brussels did not lead to the transformation of this Eurocentric style of relations. While some parts of the discursive construction were temporarily deactivated, the other ones stayed put, revealing a deep sedimentation of Eurocentric patterns and categories inside the Russian public field.