By Leon Vermeulen, Substack, 9/24/26

The EU’s latest attempt to gain control of Russia’s frozen reserves does not eliminate the legal liability. It transfers that liability from Belgium to the whole European Union—including countries that may vote against the plan.

Ukraine needs more money.

The European Union’s €90 billion financing package for 2026 and 2027 is no longer considered sufficient. Kyiv says it needs an additional €27 billion for defence in 2026, with another substantial shortfall expected in 2027.

The approximately €210 billion in frozen Russian Central Bank assets held within the EU have therefore returned to the political agenda. Most of the money is administered by Euroclear, the Belgian financial institution responsible for safeguarding and settling trillions of euros in international assets. Belgium has consistently resisted attempts to use the Russian principal. It fears litigation, Russian retaliation, damage to Euroclear and a broader loss of confidence in the euro.

Brussels has now been presented with a possible solution: move the Russian accounts out of Euroclear and into a new EU institution.

Three former senior officials proposed the idea in August. A cross-party group of 122 members of the European Parliament has subsequently called for its urgent consideration. The transfer, they argue, could be authorised under Article 122 of the EU treaties, which permits emergency economic measures without requiring the unanimous support of all member states. The new EU institution would become the custodian and assume “all legal obligations to the Central Bank of Russia.”

That language tells us almost everything we need to know.

Moving the liability

The proposal does not establish that Russia has ceased to own the assets. On the contrary, it acknowledges that Russia retains a legal claim.

Euroclear currently records the Russian money as a liability. If sanctions are eventually lifted, the Central Bank of Russia can demand repayment. Euroclear is presently prohibited from paying Russia, but the debt itself has not disappeared.

Normally, Euroclear could not simply transfer that obligation to someone else without the creditor’s consent. Russia would hardly volunteer to have its claim moved into an EU-controlled vehicle created to finance Ukraine.

Brussels must therefore use legislation to compel the transfer, remove the liability from Euroclear and place it on the European Union. That may reduce Belgium’s immediate exposure. It does not solve the underlying legal problem. It merely shares that problem among the 27 member states.

If the EU institution held the assets intact, it might reasonably be described as a new custodian. But that would produce no money for Ukraine.

If it lent or spent the principal while leaving Russia with a theoretical promise of eventual repayment, the arrangement would become confiscation in everything but name. A custodian safeguards another party’s property. It does not consume that property and replace it with a politically conditional promise.

The legal doubts have not disappeared

At the end of 2025, the European Central Bank refused to provide a financial backstop for an earlier €140 billion reparations-loan proposal. It concluded that such involvement would breach the EU prohibition on monetary financing.

ECB President Christine Lagarde later described a revised proposal only as coming “closest” to compliance with international law. That was not confirmation of legality. It was a carefully qualified warning that the legal boundary had nearly—but not certainly—been reached.

Belgium remained unconvinced. So did Euroclear.

Euroclear’s chief executive, Valérie Urbain, warned that anything resembling confiscation could violate the international-law protections applying to sovereign assets. She even declined to rule out legal action against EU institutions if Euroclear’s legal and fiduciary duties were compromised.

The latest proposal does not produce a favourable court judgment or create a newly recognised exception to sovereign immunity. It constructs another institutional route to the same money while moving the resulting liability elsewhere.

Brussels may call this legal innovation. International investors may call it circumvention.

Who pays if Russia wins?

This is the question that must be answered before any vote takes place. Suppose the EU transfers the assets to its new custodian and then lends or spends the money. Years later, a competent court rules that the assets must be returned to their legal owner.

Who produces the €210 billion?

Ukraine is extremely unlikely to repay it. Euroclear is supposed to have been released from the liability. Belgium is supposed to have been protected. The new EU custodian will have no independent reserve large enough to satisfy the judgment because the money will already have been used.

The bill would therefore return to the European Union.

The EU would have to recapitalise the custodian, draw upon member-state guarantees, use the EU budget or borrow additional money. Whichever mechanism was chosen, the ultimate burden would fall upon member states and their taxpayers.

This risk is not hypothetical speculation. During the debate in December 2025, one draft offered Belgium and other countries holding Russian assets unlimited protection against successful Russian claims. It proposed “unconditional, irrevocable and on-demand” guarantees ensuring that the Russian Central Bank could be repaid if necessary.

Several governments objected precisely because the guarantee was uncapped.

The Commission therefore understood the problem. If the assets were used and a court later required their restitution, somebody would have to replace the money.

The proposed change of custodian does not eliminate that liability. It moves it from Euroclear’s balance sheet to Europe’s public balance sheet.

Outvoted when the money is taken—charged when it must be returned

Article 122 introduces an even more troubling issue. Because a decision under Article 122 does not require unanimity, member states opposing the transfer could be outvoted. But once an EU regulation has been validly adopted, it normally binds the entire Union.

A government voting against the use of the Russian assets would not necessarily escape the financial consequences. Unless the final legislation specifically exempted dissenting countries, they could still be required to contribute through the EU budget, national guarantees, higher future contributions or repayment of additional EU borrowing.

Hungary, Slovakia, Belgium or another opposing state could therefore be outvoted when the assets were taken—and later charged for returning them. This is not merely a legal curiosity. It is a serious question of democratic and fiscal legitimacy.

A qualified majority could impose a contingent liability approaching €210 billion upon every member state, including those that explicitly refused to accept the risk. National taxpayers might inherit an obligation that their own governments opposed and their national parliaments never approved.

Article 122 may allow the Council to make an emergency economic decision. It cannot make €210 billion appear if the courts eventually order repayment.

Nor is it certain that the EU can use the same qualified-majority procedure to obtain unlimited national guarantees or raise whatever new resources would then be required. The authority to assume a liability and the authority to collect the money needed to satisfy it are not necessarily the same.

Europe could therefore discover that it was relatively easy to authorise the spending but politically and constitutionally much harder to finance the consequences.

Investors will understand the message

The EU urgently needs investment. It wants hundreds of billions of euros for defence, energy infrastructure, industrial renewal, digital technology and economic competitiveness. Europe cannot finance all of this from taxation and public borrowing. It requires international capital and continued confidence in euro-denominated assets.

Yet, at precisely this moment, it is debating how to gain control of assets entrusted to Europe’s own financial institutions.

EU officials will say that Russia is an exceptional case. Russia invaded Ukraine, and international law requires an aggressor to pay reparations. They will emphasise the differences between immobilisation, collateralisation and confiscation.

Foreign governments and international investors may reach a simpler conclusion: when political relations deteriorate, assets held in Europe can become political instruments.

They do not have to remove every euro tomorrow. They need only place less of their next investment in Europe. Central banks can increase their holdings of gold, diversify their reserves, use different custodians and conduct more trade through payment systems outside Western control. Each decision may be small. The cumulative effect could be enormous.

Financial trust is built slowly and lost quickly. Once governments begin questioning whether assets held in Europe remain beyond political reach, no regulation from Brussels can order them to forget the precedent.

Spending Europe’s negotiating leverage

The Russian assets are also more than a potential source of money. They are one of Europe’s few substantial bargaining instruments in an eventual peace settlement.

Donald Trump understands their value. His reported 28-point peace proposal treated $100 billion of frozen Russian assets as capital for American-controlled reconstruction projects, with the United States receiving half the profits. Other funds could support future Russian-American ventures.

Washington therefore views the assets not simply as compensation for Ukraine but as negotiable capital.

Using the money now might prevent Washington and Moscow from determining its future without Europe. But it would also eliminate Europe’s own leverage. Once spent, the assets could no longer be exchanged for reparations, security arrangements, sanctions concessions or Russian recognition of a wider settlement. Europe would have consumed one of its few remaining cards to cover another temporary financing shortfall.

And the demands would continue. The €210 billion is finite; the cost of sustaining Ukraine is recurring. Using the assets might postpone the next financial crisis, but it cannot permanently finance the war.

The real cost

Brussels may succeed in constructing an EU institution capable of taking over the Russian accounts. It may distribute the liability so widely that Belgium and Euroclear no longer stand alone. It may even prevail before European courts.

But success within the EU legal system would not restore international confidence. The world would still have watched Brussels redesign its arrangements until it found a mechanism capable of reaching assets whose legal ownership it continued to recognise.

And European taxpayers would be left carrying the risk. If the courts eventually ordered restitution, the same governments that told their citizens the Russian assets would finance Ukraine could be forced to explain why those citizens must now finance Russia’s repayment.

That lesson could last much longer than the money.

Brussels may devise a mechanism allowing a qualified majority to spend Russia’s assets today. It cannot guarantee that a future court will uphold that decision—and it cannot prevent Europe’s taxpayers from receiving the bill tomorrow.

By Sylvia Demarest, Substack, 9/15/26

Introduction

On September 14, 2026, the US confirmed that for the first time that the US Space Force had stationed arms in earth’s orbit. Air Force Secretary Troy E. Meink did not provide details about the type of weapons or reveal when they had been deployed. The Space Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment. With this action the US becomes the first nation to place arms in space. This could result in a dangerous arms race, a war in space, or even the placement of nuclear weapons, in space.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun, immediately urged the US to “stop expanding its military force and preparing for war in outer space.

Russia also criticized the move and said that the outer space much be kept “free of any weapons” and called for countries worldwide to make sure of that. “We are counting on broad international consolidation to continue working toward the complete demilitarization of space,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Here’s the New York Times: “This is a response to Pentagon fears that China and Russia are making advances in space operations that could threaten U.S. ground forces as well as American satellites.”

“In 2024, The New York Times reported that American intelligence agencies had raised concerns that Russia could be planning to put a nuclear weapon in space, a threat that could disrupt satellite networks that are vital to everything from communications to military operations.”

“Shortly after President Trump returned to the White House last year, he signed an executive order to expand American air defenses, including the development and deployment of “space-based interceptors.” The project, named the Golden Dome, would be designed to guard against weapons such as hypersonic missiles, which Russia has deployed in Ukraine.”

“The United States, Russia and China began testing weapons capable of destroying satellites decades ago, but the United States has since disavowed such arms because they leave destructive debris fields in orbit.”

“In recent years, the Air Force started developing “low-debris-causing weapons” capable of disrupting or disabling enemy satellites, Frank Kendall, who served as Air Force secretary under President Joe Biden, told The Times in a 2024 interview.”

“Gen. Chance Saltzman, who served as the Space Force’s chief of space operations during the Biden and second Trump administrations until his retirement last month, told a Senate committee in 2023 that the new space weapons systems would be fully operational by 2026.”

“Neither Mr. Kendall nor Gen. Saltzman specified how the systems would work. Other former Pentagon officials have said they likely would include lasers, high-powered microwave systems or even U.S. satellites that can grab or move enemy satellites.”

“Mr. Kendall said in 2024 that it was prudent to recognize that space “is a place that can be used for military advantage.””

The US, under Trump, has taken the first step, a step that could lead to an arms race in space.

Speculation that the Space Force Destroyed a Chinese Satellite

On September 14^th the Substack, Coffee and Covid, discussed the possible use by Iran of satellite images obtained from China to target US military bases in the Middle East. One attack resulted in the deaths of 3 US soldiers.

The Substack noted this article “Chinese Satellite Breaks Apart in Rare Orbit That Could Hold Debris for Centuries.” The Substack reported that “China’s six-month-old Yaogan-50 ‘reconnaissance’ satellite had experienced what aerospace professionals call an “anomalous event,” which is a technical phrase meaning the expensive spacecraft is now a large collection of much smaller and less expensive objects.”

The Substack noted that the monitoring website, Gunter’s Space Page, had dated the Yaogan-50’s breakup to around late July. On July 20th, President Trump tweeted, “Every time Iran kills an American Soldier they will pay for that killing many times over!”

The Substack concluded: “On July 20, Trump promised revenge. And around late July —days following the base strike— a Chinese military spy satellite in an exotic retrograde orbit abruptly became 47 commemorative diplomatic paperweights traveling several miles per second. To be fair, there is no proof that the United States transformed Yaogan-50 into Yaogan-1-through-47. Nor would there be. That’s the whole point.”

Let’s be clear–If the US Space Force destroyed this Chinese satellite, this was a very stupid thing to do and will surely rebound on the US in many very dangerous and unknown ways. A battle over satellites in space would represent an attack on civilization itself and could harm the US as much or more than Russia or China because the US is completely dependent of satellite imagery for communication, navigation, intelligence gathering, travel, and targeting. If this happened, it is another example of out-of-control militarism and would represent yet another idiotic decision on the part of Donald Trump, the consequences of which will outlast his term.

In response I left this comment on the Substack’s website:

“Given how dependent the US is on satellites, if the Space force did take out that Chinese satellite, it may be an act we will live to regret. Two can play this game and given how the US is using our satellites so that Ukraine can target and kill Russians, whatever kind of “gentleman’s agreement” the major powers had was breached long ago—by the US and NATO! Both China and Russia have the ability to target and destroy our satellites. If this is done at scale, satellites in space will no longer be safe because of all the debris. This is why wiser heads in Moscow and Beijing have not done something so foolish. If this satellite was intentionally destroyed, this is yet another example of a dangerous and unnecessary escalation.”

The History of the Space Force

On December 20, 2019, President Donald J. Trump signed into law legislation creating the first new armed service since 1947–the U.S. Space Force. The new armed service was part of the Defense Authorization Act of 2020 which authorized $738 billion for the US military. The legislation authorizes the organizing, training and equipping the Space Force.

“Space is the world’s newest warfighting domain,” Trump said at Andrews. “Amid grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital. We’re leading, but we’re not leading by enough, and very shortly, we’ll be leading by a lot.”

Space Force will help the United States “deter aggression and control the ultimate high ground”, the president said. Since Trump took office, the US has spent almost $2.5 trillion on the military.

Later the Space Force’s mission was declared to be to “secure our Nation’s interest in, from, and to space.”

On Friday January 24^th, 2020, the White House officially unveiled the seal of the new U S Space Force, with commentors immediately noting its similarity to the logo of the Star Fleet Command from Star Wars. Others pointed out that the Starfleet logo likely was based on the symbol used for the early US Army Air Forces, which used the delta symbol as well as early Air Force space organization emblems dating back to 1961.

“After consultation with our Great Military Leaders, designers, and others, I am pleased to present the new logo for the United States Space Force, the Sixth Branch of our Magnificent Military!” President Trump tweeted.

In early September 2026 President Trump sent out an image of the proposed Space Force uniforms. Again, this drew immediate comparisons to pop culture as resembling a Starfleet and uniforms likened to “Battleship Galactica” and “Star Wars”

Below is the design of the Space Force dress uniforms.

Militarism Uber Alles or as they say “live by the sword, die by the sword”.

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By Branko Marcetic, Responsible Statecraft, 8/1/26

Ukraine is already suffering a severe demographic crisis as a result of the decision to eschew peace talks and pursue military victory instead — a decision backed emphatically by U.S. and European leaders earlier in the war.

The ensuing combination of large-scale casualties and a mass emigration of Ukrainians has left the country facing several factors that imperil its future as a viable state: not enough young and able-bodied citizens to fund its welfare state, a potential future labor shortage, and a mortality rate that outstrips its birth rate nearly four times over.

Now, some Ukrainian officials and Western war hawks are discussing an idea that would make this already crisis-level situation catastrophically worse: drafting women to fight in the war.

The proposal had already been discussed earlier this year, after a female drone commander wrote in favor of the idea and a dozen Ukrainian women received erroneous military summonses, sparking headlines around the country. The start of this month saw a petition filed urging the conscription of childless women, an idea backed by some military figures. That includes former Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov, who, pointing to the example of Israel, said “we can survive only if everyone accepts that they must defend Ukraine,” adding that it would “double our mobilization resource.”

Some of those cheering Ukraine’s war effort from outside the country have also embraced the idea. Keith Kellogg, who until December 2025 served as President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, recently endorsed the proposal, adding that it is “very important for women, as part of society, to serve.” The Telegraph recently published a piece framing Ukrainian women’s military service as a victory for feminism; the article quoted one female drone operator endorsing the drafting of women and describing the idea as “inspiring.”

In spite of all this talk, the idea hasn’t gained real traction. A senior official on Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council said it “won’t happen”; Zelensky’s chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov deemed it “not necessary” since there were still many men who were yet to be drafted; and the petition referenced above has received only a small fraction of the signatures it needs to receive an official response from the president. By contrast, a petition in 2022 opposing the Ukrainian government’s increasingly aggressive recruitment strategies quickly received well over the 25,000 signatures it needed.

Nevertheless, the growing talk about drafting women, particularly from Ukraine’s Western backers, is an ominous development for several reasons. One is that, as Western pressure to scuttle peace talks early in the war reminds us, Ukrainian policy on both the war and other matters isn’t always wholly up to Ukraine.

This idea is a sign of the bleak situation facing Ukraine because of the decision to prolong the war. The fact that conscripting women is being floated at all indicates that Ukraine has suffered enormous casualties and suggests that the manpower shortage and recruitment crisis that have plagued Kyiv’s military campaign and led to deep social divisions and popular resentment may be even worse than we realize.

It’s also a reminder of the vast imbalance between Russia and Ukraine that continues to make outright military victory for the latter unlikely. Moscow has also thrown its people into the proverbial meat grinder of war, but, simply put, it has a lot more bodies to work with than Ukraine does.

Most mainstream discourse tends to discuss Kyiv’s military success or failure as a matter of the quantity of military aid it receives. But, the damage inflicted on Russia by Ukraine’s drone campaign notwithstanding, even modern conflict still requires human beings to use those weapons, not to mention man the broader industrial infrastructure necessary for any war effort. That serious thought is being given to drafting women is yet another signal that Ukraine is faltering in this area, lending credence to ousted former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov’s recent warning that Ukraine is “gradually, slowly losing” the war.

In a reasonable political climate, this sorry situation would lead us to rethink our definition of being “pro-Ukraine.” The war’s most ardent cheerleaders charge that the worst thing that could happen to the country is to be forced to cede territory in negotiations that end the war. Such a result is, of course, profoundly unfair to Ukraine. But is it truly worse than a future of perpetual crisis and dysfunction brought on by the eradication of vast swaths of its able-bodied population?

YouTube link here.

John Mearsheimer discusses his observations about his recent trip to Russia from September 8th through September 12th.

By Mihail Evans, Cambridge University Press, 5/2/25

Abstract

When the European Union was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2012, the citation stated that military conflict on the continent was “virtually inconceivable” owing to its action. This article will examine what role its acts and omissions played in the origins of the Ukraine crisis. The tensions stoked by potential NATO membership have been well aired. However, this article will argue that the treatment of minorities and particularly of the Russian language was equally important. The EU’s failure to address these questions by insisting Kjiv grant substantial linguistic rights, or even regional autonomy as foreseen by the second Minsk agreement, was a significant cause of the conflict.

1. Introduction

Ten years ago, John Mearsheimer attributed blame for what was then merely a crisis in Ukraine to the West on account of the reckless expansion of NATO. He also considered “the European Union’s expansion eastward” to be an aggravating factor.

While accepting his core argument, I think it underestimates the extent to which non-strategic considerations have also been a major provocation. Putin has repeatedly made quite clear that it is not just potential accession to NATO that is unacceptable to Russia but also the nature of recent Ukrainian regimes and their policies.

It was Putin’s decision alone to send his troops across the Ukrainian frontier on 24 February 2022, but the EU is blameworthy for failing to address the militant nationalist policies of recent regimes while loudly trumpeting itself as bringing a new democratic culture to the region.

2. War in Europe: “Virtually inconceivable”

The EU was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace a little over a decade ago – something now almost forgotten – because it had “for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy, and human rights in Europe.” The citation specifically remarked that the post-1989 “enlargement did away with the division between east and west and settled many ethnically based national conflicts.”

After reciting the events following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the award commendation concluded: “in an era of major economic difficulties and social unrest, the Union had played a stabilising role. Crises of that nature had previously triggered political and military conflicts in Europe. This was now virtually inconceivable, largely on account of the EU.”Foo

What then did the bloc do – or fail to do – that resulted in Russia’s invasion on 24 February 2022? It did nothing to encourage Ukraine to institutionalise the rights regime that was necessary to prevent Putin’s feeling that he needed to intervene. Even with the east of the country in open conflict it was neither involved in negotiating a settlement nor in ensuring that the regional autonomy envisaged by the second Minsk agreement was enacted in practice.

The Venice Commission has declared Ukraine a “multi-ethnic country,” noting the figures from the last census, taken just after the millennium: “Ethnic Ukrainians make up 77.8% of the population. Other ethnic groups are Russians (17.3%), Belarusians (0.6%), Moldovans (0.5%), Crimean Tatars (0.5%), Bulgarians (0.4%), Hungarians (0.3%), Romanians (0.3%), Poles (0.3%), Jews (0.2%), Armenians (0.2%), and Greeks (0.2%)” as well as Karaites, Krymchaks, and Gagauzes.Footnote ³ A study on the eve of the invasion by a leading Ukrainian sociologist concluded that the country was “ethnoculturally diverse” and that “Ukrainian citizens differ greatly in their ethnocultural practices and ethnolinguistic identifications.”F

The fact that there has not been an official census since 2001 suggests an attempt to officially conceal or deny this reality. Although the percentages of minorities are relatively small, they are often found in relatively dense geographical clusters. That ethnic identity and linguistic usage are not conterminous is a notable feature of the situation in Ukraine. Almost fully one-third of the population (geographically concentrated in the south and east) declared themselves to be native Russian speakers, many coming from other minorities. Many who identify as ethnic Ukrainians speak better Russian than Ukrainian.

In the independence period, language policy was governed by a language law adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR in 1989. This made Ukrainian the only state language, a situation that was considered dissatisfactory in many quarters and that regularly became an issue during election campaigns.Footnote ⁵ After a number of failed attempts, a new language law was passed in 2012. This would have allowed “regional or minority languages” (a term taken from the Council of Europe’s European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages) official status on a regional basis. A rather modest measure by European standards, it provoked a nationalist backlash that led to political polarisation.

The EU failed to forestall conflict by not challenging the chauvinist language policy that followed. In pursuit of privileged access to Ukraine’s markets, the EU arguably fatally destabilised the country.Footnote ⁶ The signing of an Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU, which would have established a free trade area, provoked a crisis. It meant that Ukraine would not be able to take up an alternative offer from Russia of joining a customs union with it, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Public opinion in Ukraine was very divided about which course to pursue. The Association Agreement entailed embarking on a massive programme of legislative alignment with profound economic, social, and political consequences. When at the Vilnius summit in 2013 the EU refused to offer compensation for the loss of significant existing trade with Russia, President Yanukovych refused to sign the Association Agreement.

This sparked the much-mythologised “Maidan” protests (often prefixed “Euro”), which culminated in over a hundred deaths. Exhaustive investigations by University of Ottawa academics have now demonstrated that these protests were perpetrated by far-right nationalist elements within the protestors” ranks.Footnote ⁷ However, in narratives promoted at the time and since by the EU and widely promulgated by the Western media, the shootings were blamed on state forces. Following a procedurally irregular vote in parliament, Yanukovych was deposed as President and replaced by Poroshenko, an oligarch with a support base in the nationalist west of the country. His new government was notoriously hand-picked in advance by American officials. The illegitimacy of this government led to spiralling unrest in eastern regions of the country where ethnic Russians predominate. In an admission of its inability to lead, the EU largely fell silent diplomatically as attempts were made to find a solution to what was turning into a civil war. Russia became involved but “was slow to send weapons” and, unlike Crimea, did not at this time seek to incorporate these territories.Footnote ⁸ The bloc is profoundly culpable, given that it was in a very powerful position and had significant leverage, notably the carrot of progress towards accession, which could enable it to get Kjiv to do many things that, as we shall see, it would rather not.

3. The trigger

The widespread claim that Russia is a neo-imperialist state does not bear close scrutiny. Putin’s oft-cited regrets about the collapse of the USSR notwithstanding, his actions can be understood as a reaction to circumstances rather than a part of a neo-imperial plan to recreate the USSR. His essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” is often mentioned, but it is rarely noted that it ends with his comparing Russia and Ukraine to Germany and Austria or the United States and Canada, two separate countries with much in common who should respect – a significant choice of word that deserves more attention than it has received – one another.F

After seizing Crimea, Putin drew a line and did not attempt a full-scale invasion until 2022, allowing Ukraine ample time to build up its forces. He placed his hopes primarily in non-military courses of action. Following the incorporation of Crimea, he declined to support those who wished to establish a “Novorussiya” in eastern Ukraine.Footnote ¹⁰ Putin may well have anticipated a less confrontational status quo emerging again in Kjiv, as it had on occasions in the past. Zelensky’s election in 2019 on a platform of negotiating a solution to the conflict in the Donbass likely encouraged him in this.

He might also have imagined that a native Russian speaker – who has spoken of his struggles to learn Ukrainian – might be able to find a durable solution to the long-running language problem. If so, he could not have been more mistaken. The nationalist policies of Porshenko’s government were maintained and extended by the new government.Footnote ¹¹ The 2021 law on the native peoples of Ukraine has been almost entirely unreported, but a strong case can be made that it was a significant trigger for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

This piece of legislation made manipulative use of an idea from international law that had been developed to recognise aboriginal peoples in colonial situations. The statute made an entirely novel distinction between “indigenous peoples” – who on this occasion alone are uniquely defined as those who have no governmental organisation outside the state of Ukraine – and “national minorities” who do. The necessity of this distinction is far from clear.Foo

Practically, it was a pointless statute, given that only Crimean Tatars and two small Jewish sects in Crimea were designated as indigenous. It is hard to avoid the impression that this law was rather a goad to Putin on the question of rights, legislating for tiny fractions of the population in a territory he controlled while passing over the situation of Russian speakers, a focus of acute concern. He certainly took it as a provocation, declaring that “the division into indigenous, first-class categories of people, second-class, and so on – this is definitely completely abhorrent, reminiscent of the theory and practice of Nazi Germany.”Footnote ¹³ Yet his famous essay stressing the shared historical origins of Russia and Ukraine published less than a fortnight after the law was formally enacted, still recognised Kyiv’s sovereignty. Its closing plea for respect might be taken as a final and urgent request for diplomatic engagement.

However, no significant response was forthcoming, least of all from the EU. It has become well recognised that a dynamic of escalation and counter-escalation around NATO alignment occurred in the immediate run-up to the invasion. The signing on 20 November 2021 of a “strategic partnership” with Ukraine by U.S. Secretary of State Blinken was perhaps the final straw. This committed the United States to Ukraine’s full integration into NATO and stressed Ukraine’s claim to Crimea. However, as a vague statement of a distant aspiration, it can seem puzzling that Putin acted so swiftly and decisively. Certainly, the academic literature on the causes of the war frequently struggles to account for Putin’s invading exactly when he did.Footnote ¹⁴ However, if we take into consideration the law regarding the native peoples of Ukraine and the language question more widely, we can see that, for Moscow, the cultural threat was imminent.Footnote ¹⁵ As Dominique Arel pithily remarks, “By 2022, Russian schools were virtually gone.” Putin may well have felt that he had waited too long and put too much hope in diplomatic solutions.Footnote ¹⁶

4. Minority rights and the origins of the conflict

The failure of successive Ukrainian governments to instantiate satisfactory linguistic rights for minorities is especially egregious given that the USSR gave, and Russia still gives, a remarkable degree of recognition to them. Constitutionally, the USSR was an ethno-territorial federation based on a four-tiered set of national territories, each endowed with varying degrees of autonomy, comprising an elaborate system of political and administrative institutions.

More than half of the territory of the Russian Soviet Republic itself was allocated to non-Russian nationalities as their national homelands. Overlaid onto this was a system of personal nationality based on descent, not residence, which had no territorial component whatsoever.Footnote ¹⁷ Russia itself did not abandon this framework with the demise of the USSR. The 1993 Constitution is very much a continuation of the structures of the Soviet period in regard to languages and minorities.

Will Kymlicka, a noted theorist of multiculturalism, has remarked that this arrangement “may have important lessons for Western democracies.”Footnote ¹⁸ As with much under socialism, realities did not always fully meet aspirations but against such a background, it was inevitable that Russia would have more than minimal expectations about how an independent Ukraine would treat its Russian-speaking minority.

This was the situation the EU needed to address. The Nobel citation specifically mentioned the dissolution of Yugoslavia and implied that it had internalised the lessons of that conflict. The reality was that while recognising the problem the EU failed to develop a substantive solution.

The EU has announced its aspirations while failing to make good on them in practice. Most notably, in June 1993, the European Council laid down a new set of conditions – the Copenhagen criteria – that any candidate state must meet to join. These require candidate countries to achieve “stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities.” These were entirely new stipulations that had not been demanded of previous applicants. There has been considerable discussion and much angst around Poland and Hungary’s backsliding after accession regarding questions of the rule of law and democracy. In contrast, minority rights have not been raised with the same urgency and, despite proposals, were never incorporated in the aborted Constitution or its functional replacement, the Lisbon Treaty of 2007. No mechanisms were ever created to manage how states, once members, treated their minorities.Foot

As a result, the fate of Ukraine was already decided by decisions made by the EU during the first wave of post-communist accessions. Hungarian minorities outside Hungary, Roma populations, and Russian speakers in former Soviet republics that became members or candidates of the EU were identified as the major challenges. A rush to incorporate the Baltic states, the most economically advanced areas of the former USSR, led to concerns for fundamental rights that had been trumpeted so loudly being hastily swept under the carpet.Fo

On independence, about one-third of the population of Latvia and Estonia were native Russian speakers, largely owing to the immigration of Russians during the Soviet period. But citizenship was conferred only on those residents or their descendants who had been living in the state before the annexation of 1940. In both cases, a linguistic qualification for naturalisation was introduced and citizenship could not be obtained without demonstrating linguistic competence in the only official language.

This left 700,000 Russians stateless in Latvia, out of a population of 2.5 million. Nic Craith, a leading authority on European minority rights, concluded that Russian speakers “were effectively deprived of certain key rights.”Footnote ²¹ The granting of citizenship to all those born since independence – the so-called “stateless children” – became almost the sole issue around which pressure was focused by the EU. After securing this goal, it would appear that the bloc had no further ambitions, despite it having the powerful tool of membership conditionality at its disposal.Foo

The extent to which Russia attempted to constructively engage with the pertinent international structures over a lengthy period is remarkable. As late as January 2015, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov asked only for compliance with the recommendations of the OSCE, the Council of Europe, and relevant UN committees concerning non-citizens, “nothing more nor less.”Footnote ²³ To observe this is not to claim Russia as an international paragon but to note that it was for a long period willing, for the most part, to work within a rules-based international order to achieve its goals. Mark Galeotti, a leading academic observer of Russia has described Putin as “a rational actor, and even a cautious one” and contended that “failed Western diplomacy” turned “a potential pragmatic ally” into a confrontational opponent.Fo

5. Militant nationalism in Ukraine

The first major attempt to address the linguistic rights situation in independent Ukraine came in July 2012 when the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, passed a law that would make any language spoken by more than 10% of a region’s inhabitants into an official “regional language.”Footnote ²⁵ The response was explosive, with physical violence in the parliamentary chamber being just the start. Yet this legislation aligned with European values and drew in particular on the concepts of the Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The law was similar to reforms which resolved tensions over the use of Hungarian in Romania, albeit having a lower 10% rather than 20% threshold. While the EU failed to back these new linguistic rights, it threw itself behind the Maidan demonstrations the following year, not seeming to pay close attention to their composition. As John Mearsheimer has remarked, the new government that came to power after Euromaidan had four high-ranking members who could legitimately be called neo-fascists, drawn from the far-right groups who had risen to prominence during the “Euromaidan.” Another factor making the administration after 2014 increasingly nationalist was that the most Russian regions of the east were embroiled in conflict. As a result, where previously the Ukrainian parliament was roughly balanced between east and west, now nationalist regions had the upper hand.

A joint-authored survey concluded that “between 2014 and 2019, the Ukrainian government passed a number of new laws that significantly restrict the right and possibility to use minority languages.”Footnote ²⁶ An education statute of 2017 mandated that all education be conducted in Ukrainian with the exceptions of permitting the use of minority languages in primary education and English or other EU languages in higher education. In response, the governments of several EU member states with kin populations inside Ukraine – including Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, and Greece – raised objections. The EU itself not only failed to act publicly at a high level but institutionally appears to have been willing the issue away. It did not shy from declaring “the rights of the Crimean Tatars … have continued to be gravely violated through the shutting down of Crimean Tatar media outlets” but had no firm statements to make concerning Kjiv’s new law.Footnote ²⁷ The following year, a report on the implementation of the Association Agreement by the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament, which might be expected to take a critical stance with regard to the Commission, mentioned under human rights only the situations of the Roma and LGBT communities. Hungary achieved public action only by addressing NATO rather than the EU. After threatening to use its veto, the NATO Secretary General obtained the rather minimal statement that Ukraine would comply, at least formally, with the Venice Commission’s recommendations.Foo

It might be suspected that once the EU had admitted members who failed to give their Russian speakers citizenship, let alone substantive minority rights, it would not be in a position to insist that Kyiv meet higher criteria. But, even beyond this, the impression that the EU has persistently been less than full-throated in its advocacy of minority rights is hard to avoid. Indeed, the Copenhagen criteria only addressed the issue in the wake of the Council of Europe’s “Charter for Regional or Minority Languages” (adopted 1992). The Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU of 2014 does not mention linguistic rights at all; “non-discrimination of persons belonging to minorities” is included under Title II Political Dialogue and Reform, but there is no further specification. This vast document of more than 20,000 pages gives minute attention to such details as the permissible duties on passenger cars while effectively ignoring what should have been seen by the EU as a vital issue.

In gauging whether the Copenhagen criteria had been met, the bloc largely did so secondhand, relying on assessments made by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission on the implementation of the Charter. It can be argued that there is a fundamental problem – beyond even its particular failure to uphold the rights of Russian-speaking inhabitants of the new aspirants for membership – that prevents the EU from establishing and enforcing a rigorous standard on minority rights. This fatal obstacle is France’s objections to special treatment for minorities. Stipulations of the first article of the constitution concerning equality have come to be understood to mean that distinctions among citizens should not be recognised by the state. France has signed the Charter but never ratified it. Given that France and Germany habitually act as the principles of the EU, it might be suspected that this stance has posed an insuperable impediment to the bloc effectively enforcing linguistic or minority rights.

In 2019, Hungary’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs objected that the “Law on Supporting the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language,” which mandated that business must be conducted in Ukrainian with a hotline established to report firms for not switching to Ukrainian upon request, “strongly violates the rights of the Hungarian minority.” Hungary insisted that “it is shameful that a country that is striving to develop an increasingly close relationship with the EU has made a decision that is in complete opposition to European values.”Footnote ²⁹ Other legislation enacted in this period required all printed mass media in Ukraine to be published in Ukrainian, with the exception of publications which were simultaneously published in it and another language, a particularly onerous demand for the smaller languages.

On all these matters of express concern to the governments of a number of member states, the EU failed to make official statements while pouring much diplomatic energy into repeatedly and loudly condemning the occupation of Crimea. Often appearing self-righteous in its rhetoric, it fell into an oppositional dynamic and was unable to practically engage substantive Russian concerns. In a significant development that largely went unreported in the West, Putin signed an order simplifying the procedure for obtaining a Russian passport for residents of eastern Ukraine’s rebellious regions. Ominously, no longer was Russia making statements about pursuing matters through international structures, perhaps the first hint that he was anticipating violating the sovereignty of the post-2014 borders.

It is not that the question of rights more widely has not been raised in relations between the EU and Ukraine. In 2015, the EU refused to implement a new visa regime unless sexual orientation and gender identity anti-discrimination legislation were put in place, an entirely new normative demand on any potential member state. After much resistance, legislation to this effect was passed. Yuriy Lutsenko, the Verkhovna Rada’s majority leader, commented that “it is better to have gay parades in Kiev than Russian tanks.” There was apparently no recognition that forestalling the latter development might also necessitate avoiding antagonising their larger neighbour by the repression of the Russian language in Ukraine.

The extent to which extreme nationalist ideology had taken over in Kyiv is evidenced by Ukraine’s first language ombudsman – of all people – declaring: “The dream was always to cultivate, build or construct a powerful homogeneous Ukrainian monolith – a society of the like-minded, who speak the state language, having no disagreements on major issues of state.”Footnote ³⁰ The very least that must be said is that this is not a statement that in any way aligns with the broad principles on which the EU is based. Whether such a declaration is totalitarian or not would require a longer discussion. It is especially troubling in a situation where many of the most extreme nationalist organisations in Ukraine see themselves as ideologically continuous with groups that fought with the Nazis during the Second World War. The “fascism” of elements of the political scene in contemporary Ukraine is not a fantasy “talking point” of Putin but a matter in plain view that has been amply documented by Western journalists.Foo

6. The EU abscondus and the Civil War in the east

The EU’s push to expand its markets was a proximate cause of the conflict in Donbass. After it broke out, talks in Geneva proceeded without it. The OSCE was a signatory to the first Minsk Accord and France and Germany to the second, effectively a stunning admission of its inability to act. While a civil war raged in eastern Ukraine, the EU – whom the Nobel Committee had named the guarantor of continental peace only two years previously – appeared powerless to take the initiative.

The last high-level meeting between Russia and the EU was a summit in January 2014, more than eight years before the invasion. That a proposal to meet in 2021 collapsed after objections from the Baltic states and Poland suggests why the EU was ultimately unable to act effectively in relation to Ukraine. How could a bloc that contained two member states that were denying fundamental rights to their own Russian speakers insist on minority rights there? Putin likely felt that with hindsight it was a fatal error to allow the Baltics to join NATO without resolving the language question. Certainly, as we have seen, over a period of years, diplomatic approaches to addressing it proved unavailing. The deep historical links between Ukraine and Russia, which he himself emphasised on numerous occasions, would make it especially important that Russian speakers not be denigrated there.

There are a number of liminal regions in Europe that are or have been the site of significant contestation: Alsace-Lorraine, Southern Jutland, South Tyrol, Ulster, and Transylvania are among the most notable. Donbass and other eastern regions of Ukraine also stand out as potential flashpoints and should have been the focus of careful and attentive diplomacy. Merkel declared on a visit to Kyiv in August 2014 that federalism was the only solution in Ukraine.Footnote ³² If the EU had used its membership conditionality to insist on giving the region autonomy as firmly as it pushed for gay rights, Putin would arguably have never invaded. Yet it sat on its hands when, as Dominique Arel puts it, “radical right groups used violence in August 2015 to prevent parliament from passing a constitutional amendment that would have allowed autonomy for Eastern Donbas and facilitated implementation of the Minsk Accords.”Footnote ³³

The costs of the bloc’s failure to act have been massive and go far beyond the estimated cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine of $500 billion. The total number of casualties on both sides is now thought to exceed more than a million, a staggering figure. Whether Russian or Ukrainian, the reality of the deaths of young Europeans is the same. This is precisely the scenario, a war between two states on the continent, costly in lives and materially, that the EU has long claimed was its founding raison d’etre to prevent.

Yet it has not only proved completely incapable of preventing the conflict in Ukraine, but at crucial points, the EU has significantly enflamed the situation with its aggressive push for markets and reckless encouragement of the deposition of an elected head of state. After the collapse of Yugoslavia, the EU recognised the principled and pragmatic importance of minority rights. However, when it came to the crunch, they failed to push new members to implement them for Russian speakers. In particular, had the EU resolutely reined in nationalist regimes in Kjiv and helped resist NATO expansionism, it is probable that Putin would never have considered invading Ukraine.