I mean......what else could it possibly count as, if not European?
Yes, in geological terms. But in political terms, Moscow is not european (anymore).
When speaking in political terms, it does mean exactly that. There is a clear wall between moscow and europe and everyday more of the remaining ties are being cut.
10 years ago, it was a lot different.
But of course this does not affect the geographical classification of moscow, but this is really not the same.
No, it does not. Russia is part of Europe purely because of the geographical location. It always will have a relevance for neighboring countries, simply because it's there. This won't change, as long as people are living there, and it won't change just because the communication has lowered or even shutdown.
> There is a clear wall between moscow and europe and everyday more of the remaining ties are being cut.
The Wall is between Russia and the EU (+NATO), not Europe. The majority of Europe is part of the EU, but EU is not Europe. And Political, Russia wasn't a big player in EU anyway. East-Europe is their interests, there they still have their connections running in Non-EU-Countries.
Yes, in the geographical context.
But this is still not the same as the political context.
There is kind of a long, shared (christian) history. And there are people who say, russia should be closer to the EU, than Turkey, or Bulgaria, because of that.
Putin sees himself in the image of the european (christean) emperor tradition.
"The majority of Europe is part of the EU, but EU is not Europe"
And EU means Unified Europe. So who and what is european, to qualify to become unified?
Open and ongoing question, but geography only plays a minor part in it. That was my main point. Political charged terms are seldom clear and precise and european is such a term, with more ambiguity than the clearly defined geographical term.
My point above was simply, that words have different meaning in a different context. There is the geographical meaning of "Europe" then there is the political construct called EU and then the vague cultural concept Europe. Switzerland and Norway for example are not in the EU, but are very much part of europe. Bulgaria is in the EU, but is rather "balkan".