While experts speculate about what security guarantees could be offered to Ukraine ahead of the anticipated one-on-one peace talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, questions continue to arise about Europe’s role in the process. Studio Europa Maastricht discussed the issue with historian and EU–Russia relations expert at Maastricht University, Jules Ortjens.
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Speaking about the main results of US President Donald Trump’s negotiations with Putin on Ukraine so far, Ortjens warns that the sense of relief Europeans are experiencing is very short-lived:
“You have to set the threshold really low with the United States these days. But if we zoom out, there has always been this inherently different attitude that the United States has toward Russia compared to Europe. It should have been completely clear to us since the beginning of the Cold War. It was clear when students in the early 1980s protested against American nuclear bombs being installed in Europe. But what we still don’t grasp is that, for the United States, Russia is not as important an entity as it is for Europeans. Yes, it can be a geopolitical threat to American hegemony at times, but at other times it is utterly uninteresting to Washington.”
Acknowledging that Trump can command far more space, whereas Europeans must accept, whether they like it or not, that Russia is here to stay, Ortjens adds:
“Russia is too big to integrate into our European hegemony, but it’s also too big to ignore. What frightens me right now, in these negotiations between America and Russia with Europe standing on the side lines, is that there is still no clear, common European strategy in the long-, medium-, or short-term for how to deal with Russia. In the short term, I’m somewhat relieved. But in the long term, I’m worried that Europe still hasn’t defined a clear framework for the future of EU–Russia relations.”
Russia is too big to integrate into our European hegemony, but it’s also too big to ignore.
Despite the significant aid Europe has provided to Ukraine, the Kremlin remains focused on Washington and dismissive of European leaders, treating them as irrelevant. Ortjens explains that while this posture is partly performative, it also reflects the state of EU–Russia relations:
“From a rational point of view, the Russians should fear Washington more than Brussels. They know that. And for that reason Moscow puts on this performance – strengthening that difference and ensuring Europe remains fragmented. If you start inviting Ursula von der Leyen to the Kremlin, Europe is more likely to unite. The more the Kremlin acknowledges Europe as an entity in these negotiations, the more potential strength the EU has. So it’s of course a strategy by the Russians to ignore the Europeans.”
From a rational point of view, the Russians should fear Washington more than Brussels.
But it hasn’t always been that way, Ortjens emphasises:
“I’d like to remind us that in the immediate aftermath of World War II, particularly France under Charles de Gaulle played an important role as a third geopolitical partner. Sometimes it was a convenient dealbreaker for the Americans, sometimes for the Soviets. But we seem to have lost that kind of position in today’s negotiations and that’s definitely worrying.”
The fact that the historic meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin might take place on European soil is also not a game changer, Ortjens argues:
“Not if that European soil is Budapest, because that would mean a continuation of the common interest of Washington and Moscow in a further fragmented Europe. We still don’t really comprehend, as Europeans, that right now Trump and Putin have common interests and one of those is to keep Europe weak. To actually build a strong European sparring partner, the national leaders who matter right now need to step over their egos. Not all EU members need to back that up, but if the German Chancellor, the French President, the Italian Prime Minister, and ideally the Polish Prime Minister said, ‘Ursula von der Leyen represents our interests—talk to her if you want to talk with us,’ then Europe could actually start to show some muscle. But that’s not happening. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in that sense, is not a useful partner from the European point of view.”
We still don’t really comprehend, as Europeans, that right now Trump and Putin have common interests and one of those is to keep Europe weak.
Reflecting on whether European leaders are capable of preventing Trump from adopting Putin’s vision of how the war in Ukraine should end, Ortjens argues that Europeans have lost the ability to do diplomacy with those kind of leaders, with Angela Merkel being the last European heavyweight able to manage it:
“Trump has a very short attention span. He can change his mind very quickly. And Putin believes in muscle. In that sense, we’re dealing with two rather primitive leaders in their own ways. If tomorrow the European Union, with its national leaders, says, ‘This is the woman to talk to. She is representing our common European interests, and if you don’t do that then the following things will happen,’ that could work. But then you’d be talking on the level of Russian and American diplomacy. In many ways this already started before Trump. If you look at the language used by Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Soviet leaders like Nikita Khrushchev, it was a realpolitik way of dealing with the world – a way Europeans have lost in the past decades. If we start talking in that kind of discourse again, then I think there are possibilities for some kind of dialogue.”
However, the main problem, according to Ortjens, is more deeply rooted in European political culture:
“One of the things that worries me deeply is that we Europeans have come to understand Americans better than we understand ourselves. We have become part of the American political space, even among the left and progressive activists. I’m a big supporter of the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter, but it’s quite sad that we needed Americans to make us aware of social injustice in Europe. Where was our activism for women, where was our activism for people of colour in Europe before the Americans raised their voices? It means we’re so obsessed with American political culture that we’ve come to understand them better than ourselves. Self-declared political junkies in Europe know everything about the political crises in Texas and California, but they don’t really understand the coalition crisis in Poland. Rationally speaking, we as Dutch people should invest much more knowledge in what’s happening in Poland, because our political fate is intertwined with Poland’s. We should be much more worried about that than about whatever is happening in Texas or California. We need a much bigger shift than just hoping the right leaders stand up. We have to start thinking as Europeans.”
One of the things that worries me deeply is that we Europeans have come to understand Americans better than we understand ourselves.
The best possible outcome of the peace talks for the EU would be to take more responsibility, Ortjens concludes:
“The best outcome right now would be for us to accept – whether we are Lithuanian, Irish, Italian, or Dutch – that these tensions with the United States, alongside the threats from Russia and the feeling that we are not truly protected in the Western hemisphere, should push us to step over our little provincial national egos and act according to our common European interests. If we don’t, then countries like America, Russia, and China will only take advantage of us. I really hope it also makes us realise that such challenges won’t disappear after the Trump administration. We might have four years of Joe Biden again, or another Obama-like president, but we are dealing with a politically unstable yet economically self-sufficient country across the ocean that will do whatever it wants, which is not necessarily aligned with European interests. So we have to get our act together. That is the best outcome of the negotiations. I truly hope we take our European responsibility in Ukraine. Right now, Ukraine is the country paying the biggest price for this European naivety.”
Jules Ortjens teaches European integration and political history at Maastricht University. Ortjens graduated in EU-Russia Studies, which he completed at the University of Tartu (Estonia) and the HSE Research University of Moscow in 2019.
