By Patrick Lawrence and Christian Muller, The Floutist, 4/29/26

29 APRIL—’Arte, ‘the’ Franco–German television channel, broadcast a documentary earlier this month titled L’Europe dans la main de Poutine? “Europe in Putin’s grip?” opens with a scene in the Kremlin on 18 March 2014, when President Putin announced the formal annexation of Crimea after a referendum concluded two days earlier. This film is available simultaneously with a two-part doc’y entitled “Putin’s Secret Weapons,” which purports to review the Russian Federation’s “state-directed terror,” its routine theft of Western technology, its “opaque network of spies,” its stockpiles of hypersonic missiles, and so on. “The country could strike Europe within minutes,” the film advises viewers.

Russophobic paranoia of this sort is nothing new, of course. You can go back to Czarist Russia’s 19^th century modernizations and find evidence of it, and then on to the British defeat in Crimea (1853–56), the Red Scare that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, the second Red Scare of the Cold War decades. I trace the current wave to Putin’s 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference, where he assailed the United States’ pretensions to global preeminence. Then came the cynically manipulated Russophobia Donald Trump provoked when, as he rose to political prominence in 2016, he advocated a new détente with Moscow.

What we have seen since the Biden regime intentionally provoked Russia’s February 2022 intervention in Ukraine ranks with any of these previous occasions as measured by the fear-mongering, the war-mongering, and the manufactured delusions that are now woven into daily life, as the just-noted documentaries suggest. This is especially evident in Europe, where unimaginative “centrists”—incompetent to a one, in my view—have been as deer in headlights since Trump II stepped back from Washington’s profligate support of the bottomlessly corrupt regime in Kiev during the Biden years.

French, Belgian, and British troops are just now completing three-months of “war-gaming” in the field—ground forces, armored vehicles, paratroops, underwater divers—in the most extensive such exercises since the Cold War. The three Baltic states are provocatively permitting the Ukrainians to launch drone attacks from their territory into northern Russia. Johann Wadephul has made the certainty of a Russian attack within five years—four at this point—a standard warning in his public pronouncements since Chancellor Merz named him foreign minister last year. Berlin and Paris are in talks to extend France’s nuclear deterrent to the rest of Europe. With the Merz regime in the lead, the Continent has begun dismantling its once-admirable welfare systems in favor of a cross-border military-industrial complex of its own.

Anyone paying attention can discern without much effort that the threat of “Russian aggression” in Europe is a construction with no basis whatsoever in fact. Christian Müller, a Swiss journalist with a long record as an editor and commentator, has chosen this moment to push this reality into the faces of those—including every “centrist” now in power across Europe—who cynically conjure a threat from the East that simply does not exist.

Müller now publishes and edits Global Bridge, an online journal with many distinguished contributors. (Distinguished or otherwise, I am among them.) This week he republished a piece that first appeared in 2021. It is based on a RAND Corporation study that had recently appeared under the title Russia’s Military Interventions: Patterns, Drivers, and Signposts. The full, 186–page research report is here. It is replete with graphs and tables that put Moscow’s security policies in an historical context that goes back to 1946, when the Soviets were rebuilding after the extensive sacrifices the defeat of the Reich required of them. It analyzes all the interventions with which readers may be familiar: There is Afghanistan in the 1980s, Georgia in 2008, Syria in 2015. (The Ukraine intervention, of course, was still to come.)

RAND was as Cold War-ish as any think tank serving the U.S. government was bound to be during those decades, and this makes its conclusions here all the weightier. The Russians are not coming, to turn the title of the old Alan Arkin comedy upside down. They pose no military threat either to Europe or the United States and do not intend to do so. As history shows, it is essentially reactive and acts defensively. We have had this from RAND for six years.

In the RAND report’s language:

Russia engaged in combat only when it felt the necessity to respond to a development on the ground that posed a pressing threat. Moscow sought to achieve its objectives using coercive measures short of military intervention: It undertook combat missions, judging from the two case studies, only when it felt forced by circumstances…. In short, although Russia generally seems more reactive in its decision-making about combat interventions unless its vital interests are directly threatened, Moscow might decide to be proactive in special circumstances (particularly relating to events in its neighborhood).

Given the mounting intensity of the purposely, dangerously cultivated Russophobia now spreading across Europe, Christian Müller could scarcely have chosen a more propitious moment to call our attention once again to the RAND study. Not only does the research discredit all suggestions of “Russian aggression.” The analysis also explodes the notion of “Putin’s Russia”—an egregious trope in the press coverage for many years now—as sheer (please excuse us) bullshit.

The Floutist is pleased to join Global Bridge in republishing this important piece. We are also pleased to feature the acute observations of Paul Robinson, a noted Russianist at the University of Ottawa. The piece first appeared on 6 October 2021—three months before Moscow sent draft treaties to Washington and NATO headquarters in Brussels as the proposed basis of negotiations, four months before Russian forces entered Ukraine on precisely the basis the RAND report describes.

—P. L.

■

Christian Müller.

The RAND Corporation, a world-renowned U.S. research and consulting firm, boasts 1,800 employees in more than 50 countries, who collectively conduct research and communicate in more than 75 languages, and of whom over a thousand—more than half—hold doctorates or even multiple doctorates. RAND is therefore not simply one of countless so-called think tanks. And what is particularly important to note: RAND’s largest clients are the U.S. State Department and the U.S. military: the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. These government clients account for more than half of all RAND revenue.

RAND, this truly gigantic research and consulting firm, has now examined the military behavior of the Soviet Union and Russia since World War II, and especially since the end of the Cold War in 1991. The result is remarkable. RAND demonstrates that Russia’s military interventions are now marginal compared with those of the Soviet Union, and, above all, that these interventions were always linked to an imminent loss and never aimed at gaining additional territory or influence—that is, they were always used to defend the status quo.

RAND’s comparison between the Soviet Union and Russia: The military operations of present-day Russia (red) are no longer comparable to those of the Soviet Union before 1991 (blue).

Paul Robinson, a professor at the University of Ottawa specializing in geopolitical relations and well-known in Canada and the U.S., has closely studied the 186-page RAND report on the Russian military and reviewed and commented on its content on his web portal, Irrussianality. A few of his findings are quoted below as a summary:

A few years ago, I discussed the potential relevance of prospect theory to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Prospect theory states that people are more willing to take risks to avoid loss than to gain. This corresponds to the well-known psychological tendency toward loss aversion. Losing something bothers us much more than not gaining something. In the world of international relations, this means that states are more likely to use military force when threatened with loss than when seeking to acquire something they do not yet possess. It is therefore interesting to see this confirmed in a new study by the RAND Corporation entitled Russia’s Military Interventions: Patterns, Drivers, and Signposts, which analyzes instances of Russian military intervention in the post–Soviet era. The conclusion: One of the main motivations is the prevention of loss.

Elsewhere in Robinson’s work: “In any case, according to the study, it is wrong to see Putin as primarily responsible for Russian military interventions.”

As quoted by Robinson from the RAND study:

If we examine all of Russia’s interventions that meet the threshold described in this report, it becomes clear that most took place before (!) Putin came to power…. Most importantly, there is now a broad consensus among Russian elites on foreign policy issues. There is little firsthand evidence to suggest that Putin’s personal preferences are a major driving force behind Russia’s interventions.

Paul Robinson:

Russia intervenes when it feels threatened by a loss of status, stability, or security in its immediate neighborhood. It does not intervene to pursue “aggressive” or “imperialist” goals or to distract from domestic problems. And it is not a question of Vladimir Putin. Russia will have the same interests and preferences regardless of who is in power.

And once again, Paul Robinson:

In short, all claims that Russia wants to export its authoritarian ideology, destabilize democracy, support the “Putin regime,” or that Russia’s military interventions are driven solely by Putin’s aggressive personality are false.

This graphic from the RAND study shows that military interventions were even more numerous during the time of Putin’s predecessor Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999) than since under Vladimir Putin’s presidency. (As a reminder, Yeltsin’s second term was only possible thanks to financial support from the US under Bill Clinton .)

Paul Robinson’s final paragraph:

The RAND report ends with a short series of recommendations for U.S. policy. Primarily, the U.S. should avoid putting Moscow in a position where it feels it is about to suffer a major loss in its near abroad. As a think tank report, this is a remarkably sober and sensible recommendation,… which I don’t have much to criticize. Essentially, it boils down to not cornering the bear. In this case, it’s clear. The RAND report contradicts the currently prevailing narrative that Russia is bent on aggression and must be reined in by any means necessary, including incursions into its near abroad. If this RAND report is correct, then the [current NATO incursion to Russia’s borders] is just about the worst thing you can do. But I doubt anyone is listening.

Is nobody listening?

Anyone closely observing current events in the EU, and especially in Germany, must conclude that it seems no one among current or future top politicians is actually listening…. A new project has just been announced: The E.U. intends to provide additional training for Ukrainian officers. Training for military deployment against which adversary? Against Russia, of course. To paraphrase Paul Robinson: Everyone—the U.S., NATO, the E.U., and Germany—is trying to corner the Russian bear, knowing that this is precisely when it will begin to fight back. And this cornering is always justified by the same argument: Russia is aggressive, Putin is an aggressor.

Let’s see if at least RAND’s best clients, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. military, read RAND’s latest comprehensive study—and perhaps even take it to heart.

---

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Euronews, 5/15/26

No tribunal for Netanyahu? – Natylie

Thirty-six countries, mainly from Europe, have signed up to a special tribunal to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin for the crime of aggression against Ukraine, which will be headquartered in the Dutch city of The Hague.

The joint pledge was formalised on Friday during the annual meeting of foreign affairs ministers of the Council of Europe, a human rights organisation that has taken the lead in addressing the jurisdictional gap left by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Ministers endorsed a resolution laying down the structure and functions of the management committee that will oversee the tribunal. Among its tasks, the committee will approve the annual budget, adopt internal rules and elect judges and prosecutors. The countries commit to respecting the independence of the judicial proceedings.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, who took part in the ceremony, hailed the moment as “the point of no return” in the years-long search for accountability.

“The Special Tribunal becomes a legal reality. Very few believed this day would come. But it did,” Sybiha said on social media, evoking the spirit of the precedent-setting Nuremberg trials that brought to trial the surviving leaders of Nazi Germany.

“Putin always wanted to go down in history. And this tribunal will help him achieve this. He will go down in history. As a criminal,” he added.

Friday’s resolution was signed by Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Republic of Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

Australia and Costa Rica were the only non-European signatories.

The European Union also endorsed the initiative, even if four of its member states, Bulgaria, Hungary, Malta and Slovakia, did not add their names to Friday’s resolution.

The list remains open for other countries, European and otherwise, to join.

Alain Berset, the Council of Europe’s secretary general, urged participants to complete their legislative procedures and allocate the necessary funding to ensure the tribunal can start working as soon as possible. The EU has already committed €10 million.

The lack of US engagement under President Donald Trump has previously raised concerns about budgetary shortfalls. Trump’s push for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia has also cast doubt over the tribunal’s core purpose: a controversial 28-point draft last year floated the idea of blanket amnesty for war crimes.

“The time for Russia to be held to account for its aggression is fast approaching. The path ahead of us is one of justice, and justice must prevail,” Berset said at the meeting.

The tribunal will be complemented by the Register of Damages, which is collecting claims submitted by victims of Russia’s aggression, and the International Claims Commission, which will review those claims and decide the appropriate payment.

Establishing a special tribunal has been a pressing priority for Ukraine and its allies since the Kremlin ordered the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The initiative was deemed necessary because the ICC can prosecute the crime of aggression only when it is attributed to a state party. Russia is not a signatory to the Rome Statute and can use its veto at the UN Security Council to block any changes.

Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, which apply to individuals who commit the atrocities, the crime of aggression is a leadership crime that falls on the people who are ultimately in charge of controlling the aggressor state.

In practice, this covers the so-called “troika” – the president, the prime minister and the foreign minister – together with high-ranking military commanders who have supervised the assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Putin, the mastermind behind the invasion and the prime promoter of its revisionist narrative, is the most wanted target. But he is unlikely to be judged any time soon.

Crucially, the “troika” will remain immune to trials in absentia – meaning without the defendant’s physical presence – as long as they remain in office. The prosecutor might still file an indictment against Putin and his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, but the chamber will keep the proceedings suspended until the accused leave their posts.

By contrast, trials in absentia can be conducted against those outside the troika while they are still in office, such as Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces; Sergey Kobylash, the commander of the Russian Air Force; and Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of the Security Council. Those who are sentenced in this manner will have the right to a re-trial if they ever appear in person.

Top-ranking officers from Belarus and North Korea, two countries that have directly assisted in Russia’s war, might also be prosecuted. Defendants are expected to be judged in groups, rather than one by one, except for Putin.

The tribunal will have the power to impose strong penalties on those found guilty, including life imprisonment, confiscation of personal properties and monetary fines, which will be channelled into the compensation fund for victims.

As most, if not all, trials will be carried out in absentia, the budget will focus on IT tools and save the expenses related to building and maintaining prisons. The exact amount will be decided between the Council of Europe and the Dutch government.

“There will be no just and lasting peace in Ukraine without accountability for Russia and the perpetrators of the horrific crimes committed against the people of Ukraine,” High Representative Kaja Kallas said in a statement.

“Russia chose to attack and invade a sovereign country, kill its people, deport Ukrainian children and steal Ukrainian land. Russia must face justice and pay for what it has done.”

***

Washington must act to defuse the Baltic powder keg

By Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft, 5/20/26

The Baltic States and the neighboring Russian exclave of Kaliningrad are widely regarded as the most dangerous potential flashpoint for a direct war between NATO and Russia; partly for genuine strategic reasons, and partly because of the intense paranoia at work on both sides.

The U.S. administration needs to engage urgently and intensively to reduce tension in the region.

This tension has spiraled upwards in recent days as a result of Ukrainian drones crossing the Baltic States on their way to attack targets in western Russia. The Ukrainian and Baltic governments have claimed that they were diverted by Russian electronic jamming; but how far this is true is uncertain. It seems at least as likely that, in a number of cases, Ukraine was using safe Latvian and Estonian airspace to get its drones as close as possible to St. Petersburg before entering Russian airspace and encountering Russian air defenses. The drone threat is becoming an acute issue for Russia as Ukrainian drones inflict increasing damage to Russian energy infrastructure.

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has now issued a harsh warning to the Baltic States. It claims (without providing evidence) that Baltic governments themselves provided “air corridors” for drones from Ukraine, that they are planning to allow the Ukrainians to launch drones from their territory, and that Ukrainian military drone operators are already stationed in Latvia.

The SVR statement ends on an extremely menacing note:

“[I]t would be useful to recall that the coordinates of the decision-making centers in Latvia are well known…The country’s membership of NATO will not protect the accomplices of terrorists from a just retribution.”

Last week, the drones issue forced the resignation of Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina. A Ukrainian drone (also allegedly misdirected by Russian electronic jamming) crashed into a Latvian oil storage facility. Her government was accused of failing adequately to strengthen Latvian air defenses. She had earlier dismissed her defense minister over this.

NATO, and the Estonian government, finally do appear to be taking this issue seriously. On Tuesday, a Romanian fighter jet based in Lithuania shot down a Ukrainian drone over Estonian territory, after it had previously crossed Latvia. It was high time that NATO and the Baltic governments took action against Ukrainian drones in NATO airspace, given the prospect of a NATO-Russia war if Russia actually fires missiles at targets in Latvia — something for which Russian nationalist hardliners have been baying.

Unfortunately, other Baltic officials seem determined to ratchet up tension, irrespective of the risks to their countries. On Monday, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys told the Swiss newspaper Die Neue Zuercher Zeitung, “We have to show the Russians that we are capable of penetrating the small fortress that they have built in Kaliningrad…NATO has the capability if necessary to raze Russian air defenses and missile bases there to the ground.”

Budrys said that it is necessary for NATO to demonstrate this in order to deter a Russian attack on the Baltic states that he claimed would spread to the whole of Europe. Indeed, he considers such an attack virtually inevitable, stating that Lithuania has resigned itself to the possibility of being attacked by Russia soon.

Neither Budrys nor the Western media that have reported his statement appears to have noticed the contradiction between simultaneously pointing (correctly) to the extreme military vulnerability of Kaliningrad to NATO attack and claiming Russian plans to attack the Baltic States and start a war with NATO.

And indeed, the military balance in the Baltic demonstrates this very clearly. According to Western estimates cited by the International Crisis Group, while Kaliningrad is an important base for Russian missile forces, it only had 20,000 ground troops there before the invasion of Ukraine, and that number has since shrunk drastically. Including their rapidly mobilizable reserves, the three Baltic states have 136,000 troops, the Poles (who would certainly intervene) some 550,000, and an additional 22,000 troops from other NATO countries are now stationed in the Baltic states.

And yet it is Russia that is supposed to be threatening an invasion? Seriously? In fact, as Russian experts have told me, it is Russia that fears a NATO attack, or an armed crisis leading to a blockade of Kaliningrad, which can be cut off by NATO both by land and sea. With its army tied down in Ukraine, Russia has no troops available to break such a blockade, and therefore, I was told, in this scenario, Russia would have to resort immediately to the threat of nuclear weapons, followed by their actual use if NATO refused to back down. In the case of Kaliningrad, Baltic paranoia is therefore matched by that of the Russians.

Unfortunately, the paranoia of the Balts is being stoked by Western officials and soldiers who also allege, without evidence, that Russia will be both willing and able to launch an attack on NATO within the next few years. This completely ignores the lessons of the war in Ukraine: both the enormous damage done to the Russian armed forces, and the transformation of the battlefield by drones and satellite intelligence. In Ukraine, this has nullified Russia’s advantage in numbers and brought the Russian advance to a standstill. And yet Russia is going to repeat this experience on a vastly larger and more dangerous scale by invading NATO? Seriously?

The threat in the Baltics is not of a deliberate Russian invasion, but of escalation to war stemming from a spiral of retaliation. The Ukrainians appear to have made the move in this spiral by directing drones at Russia over Baltic territory. It is essential that Russia not take the next step by launching its own missiles at targets in the Baltic states.

The U.S. administration should act urgently to warn the Russians against such an attack on NATO members, but also to tell the Balts to moderate their language. Above all, it should tell the Ukrainians clearly and categorically that the U.S. has no desire to be dragged into war with Russia, and that if Ukraine exploits NATO airspace to attack Russia, this will mean the end of U.S. assistance to Kyiv, especially in the form of the intelligence sharing that is crucial to Ukrainian targeting.

It is, of course, quite possible that trying to end Washington’s help with targeting is part of the point of Moscow’s threats, and that Russian intelligence knows perfectly well that the Latvian government has no plan to take such a horribly reckless step as to allow Ukraine to wage war from its soil. The Russian government may also be using this alleged threat to divert Russian public attention from its own failure to prevent increasingly damaging Ukrainian drone attacks, as well as from the stalemate on the ground in Ukraine.

However, neither Russia nor the Baltic states are entirely rational in their attitude to Baltic security, and it would be very foolish for Washington to ignore the dangers of this situation. This latest crisis should provide the Trump administration a strong impetus for re-engaging strongly with the Ukraine peace settlement and putting an early end to a conflict that could pose a mortal threat to both Europe and the United States.

By Brian McDonald, Substack, 5/6/26

Brian McDonald is an Irish journalist based in Russia for many years.

Everyone thinks they understand the Budapest Memorandum. Almost no one actually does.

In the manner of things that get loudly misremembered in the trenches of modern discourse, the documents have acquired the aura of a sacred covenant. They are now promoted as a solemn, signed promise by the United States and the United Kingdom to leap to Ukraine’s defence, guns blazing, should its borders ever be crossed. However, that was never the intention and if we are to speak of memory, we might as well begin with the facts.

Back in 1991, when the Soviet Union folded like a tired accordion, three newly independent states awoke to find themselves the accidental custodians of Moscow’s nuclear warheads: Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. This greatly worried officials in London and Washington, who feared the nuclear materials might leak onto the black market. Thus, a scheme called the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, often called the Nunn-Lugar program, was launched to ensure they were handed over to Russia.

Nevertheless, it’s important to remember these were warheads without a trigger, because the launch codes remained in Moscow. The rockets could no more be fired from Kiev or Minsk than from Kansas or Manchester.

To give it’s full title, The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in connection with the Republic of Belarus’/Republic of Kazakhstan’s/Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, actually three documents signed individually in December 1994, was never conceived as a mutual defence pact or some sort of NATO-lite.



Rather, it was an exchange: these three post-Soviet states would join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear nations. In return, the US, UK, and Russia would respect their independence and existing borders, and promise not to attack them either directly or by hybrid means, such as economic coercion.

In addition the three countries received substantial economic aid from both Moscow and Washington for agreeing to the terms. In 1994 alone, the US sent Ukraine over $600 million in cash payments, while Russia provided fuel rods for nuclear plants and forgave all outstanding oil and gas debts.

The key word in the memorandum was respect and the signatories offered political assurances rather than legally binding security guarantees. There were no enforcement clauses, no compensation protocols, no automatic sanctions mechanism and certainly no obligation for military intervention.

This point matters because nearly every time a public figure invokes the Budapest Memorandum, be it a billionaire with a Twitter account or a former diplomat with a selective memory, they fail to mention these key facts.



By 2006, the United States and Britain had already sanctioned Belarus in response to its elections; a move that, strictly speaking, ran contrary to Article 3 of the memorandum, which called for non-interference in economic affairs. Washington later admitted in 2013 that the document wasn’t legally binding, after another round of penalties were imposed on Minsk.

What’s more there’s another important detail which gets swept under the carpet. Back in the early 1990s, when the Soviet state was being smashed into 15 pieces, Moscow did something no accountant would recommend when it gathered up every ruble of the USSR’s foreign debt and agreed to carry it.



The consequences were brutal and the load nearly crippled the new federation. By the summer of ’98, with oil in the doldrums and the bond traders circling, Russia defaulted. While Kiev, Minsk and Almaty started life debt-free, Moscow, having traded the launch codes for a mountain of invoices, soon found itself receiving lectures about economic virtue from the same capitals that had watched it sink.

The reality is nobody can claim singular virtue here because the Budapest deal was handled casually by every signatory long before tanks or guns ever entered the conversation. Each party simply saw in it what suited them, and discarded the rest.

This definitely isn’t to diminish Ukraine or hold Russia as beyond reproach and we’re certainly not here to litigate the rights and wrongs since 2014. But it’s important to realize that the Memorandum was just an arrangement struck in the afterglow of the Soviet collapse and an understanding among powers eager to close one chapter, as swiftly as possible, and get on with writing the next.

Over time, it has acquired a meaning far larger than the text itself ever contained. Meanwhile, misunderstanding and misrepresentation have done the rest.

In the end, it’s probably fitting that the Budapest Memorandum is so widely misunderstood, given it was basically a strange Cold War coda born of ambiguity and upheld only so long as it was convenient. That, in itself, gives it a special kind of legacy.

By Leon Vermeulen, Substack, 5/13/26

For more than three years, Europe has demonstrated remarkable unity in supporting Ukraine. Financial aid, sanctions, weapons deliveries, refugee support, diplomatic coordination, and political messaging have all reinforced the image of a continent determined to resist Russian aggression and defend the post-Cold War European order.

But beneath this unity lies a growing strategic vacuum.

Europe has invested enormous political capital in sustaining the war effort, yet it remains strikingly unprepared for the negotiations that must eventually follow it.

This reality surfaced again in the immediate rejection by Kaja Kallas of any suggestion that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder could play a role in future discussions with Russia.

From Kallas’ perspective, the rejection is entirely logical.

For the Baltic states, Russia is not merely a geopolitical competitor. It is a historic and existential threat. Their strategic memory is shaped not by abstract theories of diplomacy, but by Soviet occupation, deportations, coercion, and decades of domination. In Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius, the old German tradition of accommodation with Moscow is not remembered as realism. It is remembered as strategic blindness.

Schröder himself is politically toxic across much of Europe because of his long-standing relationship with Vladimir Putin and his association with Russian energy interests after leaving office.

Yet dismissing Schröder outright also exposes a deeper European contradiction.

For all the moral clarity and military coordination Europe has demonstrated, the EU still lacks a coherent framework for how this war might actually end.

That is not a small omission. It is becoming the central strategic weakness of Europe itself.

Europe Has Prepared for War Management — Not Peace Negotiation

The uncomfortable truth is that Europe remains far more prepared to prolong the conflict than to negotiate its conclusion.

Three years into the war, the EU still has no clear consensus on several foundational questions.

What exactly constitutes an acceptable settlement?

Would Europe support:

territorial compromise?

frozen front lines?

neutrality arrangements?

phased sanctions relief?

demilitarised buffer zones?

security guarantees?

postwar economic normalisation?

or eventual reintegration of Russia into parts of the European system?

There is no unified answer.

Who would negotiate on Europe’s behalf?

Would negotiations be led by:

the European Union institutions?

major states such as France or Germany?

a NATO-led framework?

the United Nations?

or an international grouping involving non-Western powers such as China or Türkiye?

Again, Europe has no settled answer.

Most critically: what is the larger European security architecture meant to look like after the war?

This is the question Europe still avoids confronting directly.

Because Russia does not view the war simply as a dispute over Ukraine.

Moscow consistently frames the conflict as part of a much broader confrontation over the post-Cold War security order in Europe itself:

NATO expansion,

missile deployments,

military infrastructure,

sanctions regimes,

energy corridors,

and strategic encirclement.

Whether one agrees with Russia’s interpretation is beside the point. Effective diplomacy requires understanding how the other side defines the conflict.

And here lies the uncomfortable reason why someone like Schröder could theoretically still matter.

Why Schröder Would Be Taken Seriously in Moscow

Schröder’s value would not lie in moral authority. It would lie in strategic credibility.

Unlike many current European leaders, he belongs to the older tradition of German Ostpolitik associated with figures such as Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt — the belief that long-term European stability ultimately requires some form of accommodation between Western Europe and Russia.

More importantly, Moscow would regard Schröder as someone capable of serious strategic dialogue rather than ideological posturing.

This matters because negotiations of this magnitude are never purely legalistic exercises. They depend heavily on trust channels, historical understanding, and the ability to interpret strategic red lines.

At present, many Russian officials view much of the current EU leadership not as potential negotiators, but as openly hostile actors committed to Russia’s strategic defeat.

That makes meaningful diplomacy extraordinarily difficult.

This does not mean Schröder should lead negotiations. Nor does it erase legitimate criticism of his Russia ties.

But the instinctive European rejection of any figure perceived as capable of engaging Moscow also reflects Europe’s broader political discomfort with the idea that coexistence with Russia may eventually become unavoidable.

The War Is No Longer Only About Ukraine

One of Europe’s greatest strategic mistakes has been treating the war primarily as a regional conflict rather than as the collapse of an entire continental security framework.

Any durable settlement would inevitably need to address:

NATO force posture,

missile deployments,

sanctions,

arms control,

cyber conflict,

undersea infrastructure protection,

energy transit systems,

maritime access,

and long-term military confidence-building mechanisms.

And crucially, this extends far beyond Ukraine itself.

The Black Sea

The Black Sea has become central to energy transit, grain exports, naval access, and Russian power projection. Control over maritime routes and security arrangements there will be essential to any settlement.

The Baltic

The Baltic Sea region is rapidly evolving into NATO’s most militarized frontier.

With Finland and Sweden joining NATO, Russia increasingly perceives strategic encirclement in the north. Simultaneously, the Baltic states see any easing toward Moscow as potentially existentially dangerous.

The risks of accidental escalation through naval incidents, cyberattacks, infrastructure sabotage, or military exercises are steadily increasing.

The Arctic

The Arctic is emerging as one of the most consequential geopolitical theatres of the coming decades.

Shipping lanes, undersea cables, strategic nuclear positioning, rare minerals, energy reserves, and military access routes are turning the Arctic into a major arena of great-power competition.

Russia sees Arctic dominance as central to its future strategic position. NATO expansion and increased Western military activity in the region are therefore interpreted in Moscow as part of a larger encirclement strategy.

Any serious long-term European settlement will eventually need to include Arctic security arrangements as well.

Yet Europe still lacks a coherent framework even to begin these discussions.

The Dangerous Cost of Delay

The longer Europe postpones defining a realistic strategic end-state, the greater the cumulative internal damage becomes.

This delay is no longer merely diplomatic. It is increasingly economic, political, social, and institutional.

Europe’s Energy Model Is Under Strain

Europe succeeded in rapidly reducing dependence on Russian energy. But the cost has been substantial.

Higher industrial energy prices, expensive LNG imports, and long-term competitiveness pressures now weigh heavily on European manufacturing. Compared with the United States and China, Europe increasingly faces structurally higher operating costs.

Over time, this weakens industrial confidence and accelerates de-industrialisation risks.

Economic Fragmentation Is Growing

The war has widened internal European divergences:

northern versus southern fiscal priorities,

eastern versus western security perspectives,

industrial versus service economies,

and national versus EU-level strategic interests.

Investment uncertainty remains elevated because Europe still lacks clarity about the continent’s long-term geopolitical direction.

The result is weakening confidence in Europe’s economic trajectory itself.

Social Consensus Is Eroding

Public support for Ukraine remains significant, but the political landscape is becoming more fragmented.

Across Europe, voters increasingly question:

inflation,

migration pressures,

military spending,

sanctions durability,

welfare trade-offs,

and the absence of a visible diplomatic horizon.

Populist and anti-establishment parties are capitalizing on this uncertainty by portraying European leadership as reactive, moralistic, and strategically incoherent.

This is becoming a legitimacy problem.

Europe Still Lacks a Post-American Strategy

For decades, European security ultimately depended on American strategic leadership.

But Europe now faces growing uncertainty about long-term US political continuity, strategic focus, and willingness to indefinitely underwrite European security at current levels.

This means the EU can no longer postpone defining its own geopolitical doctrine toward Russia and Eurasian security.

And yet that doctrine still barely exists.

The Core Problem Europe Does Not Want to Admit

The EU’s central strategic dilemma is becoming increasingly obvious:

Europe knows how to support Ukraine.

Europe does not yet know how to negotiate the peace that follows.

This is why the debate over Schröder matters far beyond Schröder himself.

He represents an older European assumption that stability on the continent ultimately requires some form of accommodation with Moscow. Today’s European leadership, particularly in Eastern Europe, often sees that assumption as naïve or even dangerous.

But refusing to discuss future coexistence does not eliminate the underlying geopolitical reality.

At some point, Europe will likely need to confront questions it still avoids:

How should Russia fit into the future European order?

What balance between deterrence and accommodation is sustainable?

How can escalation risks be permanently reduced?

And what kind of continental security structure can survive after the collapse of the old one?

The danger for Europe is not merely that these questions are difficult.

It is that the continent continues delaying them while economic strain, political fragmentation, social fatigue, and geopolitical uncertainty steadily deepen.

If that continues too long, Europe may eventually find itself entering negotiations not from strategic strength and careful preparation, but from exhaustion.

And history suggests that settlements reached through exhaustion are rarely stable for very long.

By Ian Proud, Substack, 5/5/26

I have said for a long time that the war in Ukraine will continue into 2027. Without a major rethink of policy on the European side, which currently appears extremely unlikely, or without a significant military escalation from the Russian side, which is possibly more likely, the war could in fact run on much longer than that.

I remain extremely pessimistic of there being any policy change on the European side under the current leadership of Von der Leyen with Merz in charge in Berlin, Macron in charge in Paris and Starmer in charge in London.

The main reason is that the European position towards the war has remained unchanged since its beginning. Arguably it has hardened with the plans to remilitarise Europe. The current posture rests on their being no negotiations and no concessions towards Russia, even in spite of US led efforts under Trump to broker peace, which the European side has sought to derail at every turn.

I call this approach ‘anti-diplomacy’ in which negotiations themselves are viewed as a prize and are withheld for fear of rewarding the adversary, in this case Russia.

As it relates to the Ukraine war there is an underlying and sometimes stated assumption here too, including in the mainstream media, that eventual war with Russia is inevitable, and that Ukraine is buying time for Europe to rearm.

At the frontline of Europe’s ‘anti-diplomacy’ is its arch ‘anti-diplomat’, Kaja Kallas, who appears to have no diplomatic skills, or at least not outside of the committee rooms of Brussels, where she appears remarkably effective in herding the cats.

Her most recent reassertion of ‘anti-diplomacy’ happened last week when she said that the EU shouldn’t “beg” to talk to the Russians.

“What we have seen so far is that Russia does not want to engage in any kind of dialogue,” Kallas said after a Nordic-Baltic ministerial meeting. “We should not humiliate ourselves by being the demanders — you know, we beg you to talk to us.” Instead, she said, the goal must be to push Russia “from pretending to negotiate to actually negotiate.”

This was the most bizarre statement for several reasons.

Firstly, Russia has shown itself willing to engage in dialogue. Immediately after the war started in March/April 2022 when a peace deal was almost reached in Istanbul, before it was scotched by Boris Johnson and Victoria Nuland. During talks in Istanbul in the summer of 2025 after Trump came to power. In Putin’s meeting with Trump in Alaska which led to some sort of understanding of what Russia’s demands were. In direct talks with between the Russian and Ukrainian side in late 2025 and early 2026.

Russia’s participation in negotiations was neither demanded nor begged for.

Objectively, European politicians, through ‘anti-diplomacy’, have been unwilling to enter into negotiations with Russia at any point since the war started. After the Alaska talks, Ursula von der Leyen said there was no intent in Moscow to engage in peace talks, even after Putin had held talks with Trump, which was bizarre but also familiar, given the frequency with which this line is trotted out in Brussels and elsewhere across Europe.

Ten months after the war started, Joe Biden said he would only talk to Putin if Russia showed real intent to end the war, in other words, the US would not enter into talks unless Russia agreed to every western demand without securing any concessions including on NATO membership.

In December, Macron said that Europe will need to engage with Putin though that offer went nowhere amid infighting in Brussels around who should be the European representative in Putative talks.

Keir Starmer has said several times that he has no plans to talk to Putin, indeed, the Uk said that it would not enter into talks with Russia even if Europe did.

So, this “anti-diplomacy”, pushed by Ukraine’s western sponsors in which not talking to Russia is the norm, is established and fairly set in stone. In fact, it was first initiated by the UK Foreign Office in the summer of 2014, after Philip Hammond became foreign secretary. Twelve years down the track, the Europeans have adopted this approach lock stock and smoking missile launcher, and now own it.

More recently, Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever has suggested talks with Russia and absolutely nothing has happened.

So, looking back at Kallas’ statement you can see how absurd it is.

Firstly, it is absurd in its suggestion that Europe might “beg” Russia for peace talks. Europe has done everything in it power to avoid talks. If von der Leyen, Merz, Macron, Starmer, or any combination suggested talks with Russia, I believe Putin would agree to that. All the evidence of the talks that have taken place so far, brokered by the US, suggest that is so.

Indeed, throughout the war, there have been ongoing Russia-Ukrainian talks about practical issues such as prisoner and body swaps, and also on the reunification of displaced children with their Ukrainian parents.

A key principle of talks is the need to discuss areas of disagreement and search for ways to find compromise that will be acceptable to both sides and which both sides can agree to. And when I say both sides, I mean just that, both the Russian side and the Ukrainian side. Any peace deal will have to leave both countries feeling safer than they did before the war, and confident that war won’t resume again.

A popular misinformation line in Europe’s “anti-diplomacy” has been that Ukraine must not be left out of talks. And yet, when has Ukraine ever been left out of talks since the war began?

The pathology of European diplomacy has descended into holding countless Summits and meetings about peace that Zelensky attends, but to which the other combatant in the conflict – Russia – is not included.

This summitry serves not to resolve differences between Russia and Ukraine and search for common ground, but rather to reinforce the Ukrainian position as the only right and just position that should not be resiled from.

These summits are intended to avoid any possibility of compromise on Ukraine’s side and to insist on total compromise from the Russian side. As I’ve said before, Zelensky’s permanent star billing at these events allows him to own the narrative that Russia isn’t interested in peace and that only by supporting Ukraine with more funding and weapons, can peace be achieved.

One meeting between Putin and Trump, however, provoked a cacophony about Zelensky being excluded, yet this, too, is nonsense, as Trump has met him on several occasions.

Diplomatic negotiations aren’t about friendship they are about dispute resolution. They are not about favouring one side over another side. A single meeting does not confer legitimacy. It just confirms that there are important things to be discussed.

Europe’s “anti-diplomacy” has created a vacuum which, until Trump came to power, US leaders and now, European and British leaders filled with money and weapons. They didn’t fill it, by the way, with troops, preferring to let Zelensky fight to the last Ukrainian, so the Poles, Germans, French, Italians and sparse ranks of Tommies could be spared.

This is what I have described many times as the neither war nor peace posture of the British and Europeans. They don’t want a direct war with Russia, neither do they want peace with Russia, and so proxy war has become the preferred policy fudge whatever the cost in Ukrainian lives and livelihoods, not to mention Ukraine’s catastrophic depopulation and demographic cliff edge.

What is absolutely clear, is that funding Ukraine and giving it more weapons isn’t intended at resolving Ukraine’s dispute with Russia.

Many will say, of course, that if we don’t give Ukraine weapons, then Russia will take over the whole country. But no evidence is ever provided that Russia’s goal in entering this was really to conquer the whole of Ukraine, rather than to prevent the possibility of Ukraine being used as another NATO client state on Russia’s border.

Right at the start of the war, the first round of peace talks in Istanbul seemed to reach a point where Russia and Ukraine could agree to the conditions for the war to be brought to a close. That included Ukrainian neutrality and non-membership of NATO and an acceptance that Ukraine could join the EU.

So, having captured much less land than Russia occupies today, the Russian side was willing to sue for peace and pull its troops back from the north of Kyiv as a confidence building measure.

Organisations such as the Institute for the Study of War in DC, run by Victoria Nuland, has since claimed that the agreement was a surrender of Ukrainian sovereignty.

Yet, I don’t believe the first Istanbul deal would have been a surrender of Ukrainian sovereignty, but rather a guarantee of its future neutrality a neutrality, by the way, which would have allowed for a slow – and let’s be honest it may take a generation if it ever happens – normalisation of relations with Russia.

We now know, of course, that Victoria Nuland encouraged Zelensky not to take the deal. But the point is that both the Ukrainian and Russian negotiation teams believed that it was a deal that both countries could live with in the interests of ending the war.

That is how diplomacy works. Two sides with vastly opposing positions undertake tough negotiations to hammer out a framework that both can live with recognising that, absent a decisive military victory by one side, some compromise will have to be made.

Here we bring in the second aspect of “anti-diplomat” Kallas’ statement.

The goal must be to push Russia “from pretending to negotiate to actually negotiate.”

If you consider this statement carefully, I don’t understand what is meant by “pretending” to negotiate. Russia has been negotiating and a whole host of prisoner swaps, body swaps and children reunifications have happened at different times.

It also raises the question, actually, to negotiate with whom? Because Russia has been negotiating with Ukraine in circumstances where European leaders refused to engage with Russia in negotiations. There has been no pretence on the European side, they have not wanted either to pretend to, or, actually to negotiate.

And it is clear from Kallas’s rhetoric that pushing Russia to actually negotiate means insisting that Russia simply accepts Europe’s demands for how peace should be restored to Ukraine, with no Russian conditions being met in any settlement.

This, again, is clearly absurd, because Russia occupies 20% of Ukraine’s land – whatever the rights and wrongs of that situation – and has the funds to sustain the war for the foreseeable future, a position that Europe does not occupy. If the intention is to pressure Russia to end the war then that itself implies a negotiation that has not been offered by Europe and does not appear to be wanted by Europe.

Because any negotiation will inevitably lead to some concessions being offered to Russia that will allow Putin to settle and be able to show to his people that the four years of devastation was worth it in some way.

Kaja Kallas on the other hand has over the past year made wild demands that peace in Ukraine will only be possible if Russia fully withdraws from Ukraine back to the 1991 borders, pays full war reparations for all the damage caused to Ukraine, while leaving the door open to Ukraine joining NATO.

It may seem obvious to point this out, but Russia will never agree to this. If Russia was losing badly, then the situation might be different. If Russia was losing badly, perhaps Europe might prefer to maintain the war to inflict a much talked about strategic defeat on Russia. But neither of these scenarios have ever appeared even remotely likely.

So, the cold reality boils down to Europe doing everything in their power to avoid the possibility of such diplomatic negotiations that might result in an agreement between Russia and Ukraine that was markedly weaker than the maximalist calls they have been making since the war began.

And, unfortunately, the longer the war continues, the more solidified this position is becoming in Brussels.

Why? Because a peace deal with Russia will amount to a PR disaster for Europe.

Why? Because since the start of the war, European leaders to a person have been saying that Ukraine will win, and that the situation isn’t as bad as portrayed.

That position is relentlessly reinforced by the western mainstream media who insist that Russia is collapsing and that, ultimately, Ukraine will prevail.

This has never looked remotely true to any independent observer who looks at evidence of economic collapse, troops losses and territorial gains. Yet it is an unshakeable narrative punctuated just occasionally, by the odd voice who raises a hand only to be slapped down immediately, like the Punch and Judy crocodile.

Ukraine not winning will make citizens across Europe ask why they were lied to for all this time.

Since the war has started, citizens have been sanctioned, and in some cases had their citizenship revoked, naysayers are summarily detained at British airports and interrogated if they disagree, elections are rigged in Central European nations, lawfare is used in France against the political party with the largest share of public support, all because they disagree with this narrative.

And you need to understand something here too.

When the anti-diplomat Kaja Kallas holds another presser in yet another expensive designer dress or coat, she isn’t doing so to impart truth, she is doing so to gain attention.

She is safe and democratically uncontested – or rather, undemocratically uncontested – in her job at least until 2029 so she can say what she wants with the mainstream media hanging on her every word and reporting it verbatim as if it is truth.

I don’t know how many politicians in the foreign policy space you’ve met, but I’ve met a lot and I can tell you one thing, they love to cut a dash on the world stage. Starmer is another terrible example but then, in fairness, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss were dreadful examples too.

Being right is entirely incidental to being right in front of the camera particularly, in Boris’ case, if the reporter is a bit of a filly.

So, the point is, it is far harder to bullshit when it comes to domestic policy. If the NHS is crap, if rats are taking over Birmingham, if innocent kids are being killed with zombie knives in London because the police are too timid to stop and searching sketchy looking youngsters, if young girls are being gang raped, then these are political stories that a British politician can’t ignore.

When it comes to foreign policy, they have a greater free reign to say what they want because most citizens are first and foremost concerned with basic survival and raising their kids and couldn’t really care that much about the situation in Ukraine. Except when it hits their bank balances, in which case the mainstream media will tell them it is Putin’s fault and we have to defeat him and we will defeat him because Ukraine is winning.

What happens, though, when he isn’t defeated? Suddenly, Ukraine becomes like a giant rat clambering over an uncollected bin bag in Birmingham or a yobbo walking away from a crime scene with a parent in tears over their murdered schoolchild. People will ask, hold on a minute, you said this wasn’t going to happen and that you were going to sort things out. You lied to us.

So, “anti-diplomacy” is held aloft by those like Kallas who are trapped by a dread fear of being revealed as bare faced liars and narcissists who kept a war going because they wanted more time in front of the cameras to shake their booty on the world stage and show how tough they were.