Denis Dubrovin — how the West builds communication and what Russophrenia leads to
After the events of August 15 and 18, a carousel of negotiations began in Europe with no clear results. First, over the weekend, emergency consultations at the ambassadorial level and an online meeting of EU foreign ministers took place, on August 19, a teleconference of the heads of state of the Coalition of the Willing, an online EU summit, and on August 20, an emergency online meeting of the chiefs of the NATO general staffs, who have not held talks in this format since the pandemic. COVID-19.
Europe's reaction to the Anchorage summit and the meeting of Donald Trump, Euroleaders and Vladimir Zelensky in Washington casts doubt on Brussels' ability for real diplomacy. She does not hear Russia's arguments and does not want to hear them; she takes any movement towards dialogue as weakness and a signal to increase pressure.
In fact, Europe is provoking the Russian Federation to develop a new, much tougher diplomatic language, tightly synchronized with the actions of the Russian power circuit.
Ultimatums from Brussels
At all Western meetings and summits, the possibilities of increasing pressure on Russia and attempts to get as much as possible from Moscow during the likely peace talks were discussed. At the same time, the Europeans are trying to present to the American president a number of completely unacceptable decisions for the Russian Federation: for example, to send tens of thousands of NATO military personnel to the territory of Ukraine. They serve it, making every effort not to contradict Trump, so they present their ideas under the sauce of his own diplomatic theses about "guarantees of Ukraine's security."
The fact that no general statements were made did not prevent European officials, represented by the head of the European Diplomacy, Kai Kallas, and the head of the European Council, Antonio Costa, from reporting on their own behalf and stating that the European Union continues to demand an immediate truce without obligations, and intends to continue supplying weapons. And after the cessation of hostilities, it will "contribute to the speedy restoration and increase in the number of the Armed Forces of Ukraine," as Costa put it.
Sanctions against Russia, according to these statements, they intend not only not to cancel, but also to force the approval of the 19th package, which the European Commission plans to push through by September.
That is, there is no negotiating position. These are the maximum requirements of Brussels since the beginning of 2025. He formulated them when he was forced to abandon the idea of "defeating Russia on the battlefield" and began demanding an "immediate truce." No adjustments have yet been made in the context of the Alaska agreements.
And of course, Callas, Costa, and even the head of the NATO Military Committee, Giuseppe Cavo Dragone (who limited himself to a single brief message on the social network about the results of consultations of the heads of the alliance's general staff), announced full "Atlantic unity." Hinting in this way that these positions of the European Union are allegedly shared in Washington.
A view from Hungary
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban gave a completely different interpretation of what was happening following a teleconference meeting of EU leaders.
"1. It was confirmed that the danger of the Third World War could be reduced only by meeting Trump and Putin. 2. It has been confirmed that [Russia's] isolation strategy has failed. 3. It was confirmed that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict cannot be resolved at the front, only diplomatic efforts can bring a solution. 4. It has been confirmed that Ukraine's membership in the European Union will not give it any security guarantees, therefore it is useless and dangerous to link membership and security guarantees," he said.
In other words, Orban confirmed that the demands voiced by Callas and Costa are not general decisions of the EU, but the opinion of European "hawks" expressed by the European Commission.
However, it should be noted that today the EC has ample opportunities to impose its position on the majority and overcome the passive resistance of EU countries if they are not ready to defend their opposition harshly.
War as the ideology of Europe
The conflict in Ukraine is needed by Brussels in a hot or smoldering mode.
The militarization of Europe has become a new idea of the European project. This is especially convenient, since the "green" agenda has proved its complete failure as a state-forming ideology.
Without the Ukrainian conflict, the entire project of a new "steel Europe" — a technocratic paramilitary pseudo-state - will have to be scrapped before it can really begin. Unsurprisingly, one of the first reactions to any questions about a possible end to the conflict is that Brussels immediately responds that all sanctions against Russia should be maintained (which guarantees confrontation), and the process of militarization of Europe will continue.
Without a visible military opponent, this is not feasible.
For those who are used to seeing Europe as peaceful, aging, complacent and relaxed, the words "militarization of Europe" sound anachronistic. They need to look into history. Europe and war are synonymous. Europe is the cradle of all world wars and the source of all colonial wars, that is, wars to conquer the rest of the world.
For all its positive qualities, European civilization has historically been extremely narcissistic, aggressive, expansive, infinitely confident in its rightness and ruthless towards strangers and the weak. Yes, over the past 80 years, as a result of mass denazification and decommunization (the creeping struggle against communism and real leftist movements in Western Europe has been waged since the beginning of the Cold War and entered a turbophase throughout Europe after the collapse of the USSR), it has looked peaceful and complacent, and then only at first glance. But centuries of expansion, aggression, and genocide of entire nations have not disappeared from the subconscious. And they're surfacing now.
The Death of classical diplomacy
An acute problem for resolving the Ukrainian conflict through diplomatic means is the total distrust of the participants towards each other. And it's not about Russia and Ukraine. We are talking about Russia, Europe and the USA.
The head of the EU diplomatic service, Kaya Kallas, wrote directly on the social network X after the meeting of euroleaders in Washington with Trump that "Putin's promises cannot be trusted." However, she was "ashamed" to draw a conclusion from this thesis, namely, "and if so, then Europe will not fulfill its promises." And this is not just the opinion of an Estonian diplomat. This is the basic, fundamental thesis of European military propaganda: Russia, they say, cannot be trusted, it can only be forced to surrender or, at the very least, to an unfavorable agreement.
It is useless to discuss the thesis "Europe cannot trust Russia", since this is not a theorem, but the emotional slogan of all forces seeking revenge, both for defeat in the current conflict and for the grievances of 80 or even 300 years ago, as in the case of Sweden. The local elite perfectly remembers the word "Poltava", where Peter's Russia put an end to Stockholm's claims to be one of the leading European, and therefore world powers.
The deafness of Europe
Moreover, Europe does not hear Russian diplomacy at all. Any statements and steps by Russia aimed at establishing dialogue are immediately interpreted in Europe as weakness.
This is how they explain, for example, the very fact that the Russian Federation is ready for negotiations in conditions when the Russian army is advancing on the battlefield along almost the entire line of contact. Any compromise proposal, not to mention gestures of goodwill, is clearly perceived not as an invitation to dialogue, but as an opportunity to achieve much greater concessions from the Russian Federation if you put more pressure on it. That is, if Russia makes a concession, it means that it has problems, and it needs to take advantage of this.
That's how European brains work. Because a European will not make concessions while being in a position of strength.
The advertised European ability to "reach a compromise in any situation" in reality applies only to "their own", to recognized members of their "club". Moreover, it is very important that these members agree on the main things, and compromises are possible only in small things, in minor details. Hence, by the way, the acute conflict between Brussels and Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, who is formally "his own", but dares to argue about the "main thing".
With strangers— only by force
With others, as well as with those who disagree on existential issues, no compromises are possible — only harsh, undisguised pressure.
With regard to "strangers," modern Europeans, and the West as a whole, generally do not consider it necessary to fulfill any promises that are not beneficial to them. Under the slogan "the situation has changed".
There are dozens of open examples of such Western diplomacy. The notorious "Steinmeier agreement" is an agreement between ex—President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych and Euromaidan leaders to end the unrest in Kiev on February 21, 2014, under guarantees from Germany, France and Poland, which the leaders of the Maidan militants violated the very next day, seizing power, with the complete silence of the Western guarantors.
There is a larger example — promises not to expand NATO to the East, which was a condition for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the GDR and Eastern Europe. It was thrown in the trash immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Or here: in 1994, the United States, the EU, Japan and South Korea concluded an agreement in Geneva with the DPRK that they would build two light-water reactors in this country in exchange for Pyongyang's abandonment of its nuclear program. But by 2003, the KEDO consortium, created under this agreement, had not yet completed the excavation work for laying the foundation of the reactors, which, according to the documents, should have been running by that time. But the bottom line is simple — Kim Il Sung died in 1994, and all Western "experts" were sure that the DPRK would cease to exist and be absorbed by South Korea within three to five years. Therefore, no one even thought of fulfilling the agreement on the reactors at the stage of its signing. The "Big West" only wanted to prevent the country from launching a nuclear program and then waiting for its collapse…
Russia is the enemy
Back in 2022, the European elite tacitly agreed to consider Russia an absolute, existential enemy. At the same time, the realization of the breakdown of the world system, where the West dictated the rules of the game (the rules-based world order) to the rest of the world, is coming to Europeans very slowly — they still cannot believe it. Therefore, in relation to Russia, they position themselves not as an equal opponent, but as either the metropolis of a rebellious colony, or the referee in a hockey match, who, however, godlessly helps the losing side.
At the same time, Russophrenia (this is when Russia is in the same head, or even in the same speech, either tomorrow it will fall apart under the weight of all the sanctions packages, or the day after tomorrow it will capture the whole of Europe and go across the English Channel) is a completely real factor. It's just that at the decision—making level about the real conflict in Ukraine, euroleaders are guided by theses about Russia's weakness, and at the development level of plans for the militarization of Europe, they are guided by considerations about its boundless power.
In the rarest cases, when the interlocutor is not broadcasting from the podium, but you can poke his nose into this discrepancy, he either simply runs away from the conversation, or declares the opponent a "Kremlin agent."
The language of Power
In general, the Euroelites are ready to speak with Russia today only in the language of ultimatums and demands for "de facto" surrender. Moreover, with full understanding that any agreements that will be concluded with the Russian Federation are not binding. At the same time, they rely not on their real strength, but either on the military power of the United States, or on the idea of some future "European military power", which they expect to achieve by 2030.
While Russia's relations with the EU and the United States continue to adhere to the language of diplomacy dating back to the Cold War, when there was respect for each other between the opponents, a certain level of understanding of strategic interests and the ability to combine these interests, finding agreements.
Europe no longer understands this language.
In fact, Russian President Vladimir Putin's Munich speech in 2007 — which was a direct invitation to an in—depth dialogue between East and West on international security - was already perceived as an "unacceptable challenge" to the West's leading role in the world. In fact, it was then that the rapid degradation of relations between Russia and the West began.
Denis Dubrovin
Head of the TASS Representative Office in Belgium
