Yeah, we cant let those Asiatics spoil our fruity skittle club.
You said that, not me.
Politically Russia is stable
Now in the Putin/Medvedev era, yes. In the Yeltsin era, not so much. Referring to my earlier post, I believe post-Soviet Russia would be either unstable or undemocratic for some period of time. Either there is an unstable democracy, shaky because of a lack of tradition, or then power is (as per tradition) centralized in a limited power nexus (like Putin and co.), which in turn leads to limitations in terms of genuine general public participation in representative politics.
their economy would be cleaned up & improved by EU membership as would their institutions.
Probably true. However, I believe the older member states would rather see Russia pull its stuff together outside the Union and only after that allow the country to join. It is just realpolitik and risk management, in my view.
As for their great power mindset it's fairly natural Russia was a superpower after all, do we condemn the French for being nationalists or the USA or any other major country? The ''nationalists'' have been over-hyped they are just interested in money & power not making a new empire.
I am not "condemning" anyone, just pointing out that Russia is a huge country with strong, distinct views about its importance in the world. This is in any case due to lead to some hesitation amongst the big W. European countries about Russia joining the community: it does outweigh any single one of them in many ways, demographic and military among them. France, Germany, Britain and Italy run the Union: they like very much to keep it that way. Countries with problematic politics or a questionable economy can be (and have been) allowed to join, but only if they do not threaten the status quo in a too major way.