Europe, Russia and the Case for Talking before it is Too Late
The question hanging over Europe is not whether Russia is innocent or whether Ukraine has a right to defend itself. It is something more uncomfortable: how long can two nuclear-armed power blocs continue climbing an escalatory ladder before somebody discovers that the next rung is missing?
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, after seizing Crimea in 2014 and supporting separatist forces in the Donbas. Those facts are relevant, but they do not exhaust the history of the confrontation, nor do they mean that every Russian security concern can simply be dismissed as propaganda. For decades Moscow objected to the eastward expansion of NATO and, above all, to the possibility that Ukraine might eventually become part of the Western military system. Western governments replied that sovereign countries have the right to choose their own alliances. Both propositions can be true at once: smaller states possess sovereignty, while great powers also react, sometimes brutally, when they believe hostile military structures are approaching their borders.
That is the security dilemma at the heart of the disaster. One side's defence becomes the other side's threat. NATO governments regard enlargement as the voluntary choice of countries historically frightened of Russia. Moscow regards the same process as the steady movement of an American-led military alliance towards Russian territory. The Baltic states and Poland look at Russian history and see ample reason to fear Moscow. Russians look at NATO's expansion, Western intervention in places such as Kosovo and Libya, missile-defence systems and military cooperation with Ukraine and see evidence that Western assurances should not be taken at face value. Each side can therefore assemble a history in which it is reacting to the other.
None of this requires accepting the Kremlin's justification for invading Ukraine. It does require understanding that wars are rarely ended by telling one belligerent that its account of how the conflict arose is inadmissible before negotiations begin.
The nuclear dimension makes that necessity much more urgent. Russia and the United States still possess the overwhelming majority of the world's nuclear weapons. SIPRI estimated that the world contained 12,187 nuclear warheads at the beginning of 2026, with Russia and the United States together possessing about 83 per cent of stockpiled warheads. Thousands remain deployed, and more than 2,000 deployed warheads are maintained at high operational alert, overwhelmingly by the two former Cold War superpowers. This is not simply another European territorial dispute. It is a confrontation taking place beneath machinery capable of destroying modern civilisation.
The reassuring argument is that nuclear deterrence works. It worked throughout the Cold War, and it has so far prevented NATO and Russia from fighting one another directly over Ukraine. Western governments have armed Ukraine while avoiding formal entry into the war. Russia, despite increasingly severe confrontations with NATO states, has likewise stopped short of deliberately attacking NATO territory in a manner that would unmistakably trigger a general war.
But deterrence is not magic. It is a human system dependent upon rational calculation, accurate information, functioning communications and leaders correctly interpreting the intentions of their opponents. History contains enough nuclear false alarms, misunderstood military exercises and technical failures to make complacency difficult to defend. The longer a confrontation continues, the more opportunities there are for a drone, missile, sabotage operation, intelligence failure or battlefield decision to produce consequences nobody originally intended.
There is another danger. Deterrence can gradually turn into a contest in demonstrating that one is not deterred. Russia makes nuclear threats; Western governments insist they cannot allow themselves to be intimidated by them. NATO increases military support; Moscow argues that NATO is becoming a participant in the conflict. European governments discuss stronger deterrence; Russia responds by strengthening its own nuclear posture. Each individual step can be presented as defensive and rational. The cumulative destination may nevertheless be profoundly irrational.
This is where some of the public discussion about Ukraine has become too rigid. To say that Russia must not be rewarded for aggression is understandable. But international diplomacy has never operated on the principle that settlements are negotiated only with governments whose conduct is considered morally acceptable. Negotiation normally occurs precisely because the alternatives have become worse.
Nor does negotiation mean surrender. A ceasefire is not recognition of sovereignty. Talking to Moscow does not require accepting Moscow's version of history. Territorial questions can be deferred. Security guarantees can be negotiated. Sanctions can be linked to compliance. Arms-control arrangements can be revived. Demilitarised areas, monitoring mechanisms, phased withdrawals and international guarantees all belong to the traditional vocabulary of diplomacy because wars usually end through imperfect arrangements rather than moral vindication.
Russia, too, would have to compromise. Moscow cannot reasonably expect Ukraine simply to trust assurances after years of warfare, nor can Ukraine's security concerns be treated as imaginary. Any durable settlement would need to provide Ukraine with credible protection against renewed attack while simultaneously addressing Russian fears about the future military configuration of Ukraine. That is an extraordinarily difficult circle to square, but difficulty is not an argument for abandoning diplomacy.
There have in fact been negotiations throughout the conflict. There were the Istanbul discussions in 2022, subsequent contacts and prisoner exchanges, and later American, Russian and Ukrainian diplomatic initiatives. Fresh US-led efforts resumed in September 2026 after a six-month interruption, and Ukrainian officials say preparations are being made for renewed trilateral talks. The distance between the parties remains substantial, particularly over territory and Ukraine's future security arrangements, but the diplomatic door has never completely closed.
Europe also needs to recognise that Russian behaviour does not occur in an historical vacuum. Russia has been invaded repeatedly from the West, most catastrophically by Nazi Germany, and Russian strategic culture has long placed extraordinary emphasis upon strategic depth. That history does not grant Moscow ownership of neighbouring countries. Poland, Finland, the Baltic states and Ukraine have equally powerful historical reasons for fearing Russian domination. The point is precisely that Europe contains competing historical memories, each of which looks compelling from inside its own borders.
A durable peace therefore cannot be constructed entirely from either Moscow's narrative or Brussels' narrative. Russia cannot obtain lasting security by making its neighbours terrified of Russia. NATO cannot obtain lasting European security merely by making Russia more insecure and hoping deterrence manages the consequences forever. Eventually some conception of security has to emerge in which neither side believes that its survival requires the strategic defeat of the other.
That was one of the forgotten lessons of the Cold War. Washington negotiated arms-control agreements with Moscow not because American presidents trusted Soviet leaders, shared their ideology or considered Soviet foreign policy legitimate. They negotiated because distrust between nuclear powers was precisely why rules, hotlines, inspections, treaties and continuing communication were necessary.
That logic is becoming more important rather than less. SIPRI warned in 2026 that nuclear arsenals are again being modernised and that reliance upon nuclear weapons is increasing while arms-control structures deteriorate. New START expired in February 2026, removing another piece of the architecture that once constrained the two largest nuclear powers.
Europe therefore faces two dangers rather than one. The first is that military aggression becomes an accepted method of changing borders. The second is that, in attempting to prevent that outcome, Europe becomes trapped in an indefinite confrontation between nuclear powers in which every side believes backing down is more dangerous than escalating. Neither danger should be dismissed.
The answer cannot simply be "give Russia what it wants." Ukraine is a country, not a bargaining chip, and Ukrainians will have to live with whatever settlement emerges. But neither should the answer become an open-ended assumption that another year of war, another weapons package and another escalation will eventually produce circumstances in which diplomacy becomes unnecessary. Diplomacy is what adversaries do when friendship is impossible.
The realistic objective now should be neither the humiliation of Russia nor the abandonment of Ukraine. It should be the reconstruction of a European security order in which Ukraine can survive as an independent state, Russia does not believe NATO is preparing to encircle or dismember it, European countries do not live permanently under the threat of Russian attack, and nuclear weapons retreat once again into the background rather than becoming instruments of everyday political signalling.
Such an outcome would satisfy nobody completely. That is usually what successful diplomacy looks like. The alternative is to continue testing deterrence in the belief that because catastrophe has not happened yet, it will not happen tomorrow. Perhaps that calculation will continue to work. It worked, narrowly, through some frightening moments of the Cold War.
But when the potential price of being wrong is measured not in territory but in cities, populations and perhaps civilisation itself, talking to one's enemy is not weakness. It is one of the reasons diplomacy exists.
