While Vladimir Putin is still waiting for a phone call from US President Donald Trump, a shifting political balance in Europe may be strengthening his hand in forthcoming diplomacy to try to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Leaders across a swathe of central and eastern Europe are starting to break with the united front presented by the European Union and NATO in support of Ukraine and against Russia.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, long the EU’s most Kremlin-friendly leader, is increasingly being joined by nationalists in countries such as Slovakia, Austria, Bulgaria and Croatia in questioning sanctions on Russia and military aid to Ukraine. Romania’s far-right presidential frontrunner dismissed Ukraine as an “invented state” that will be broken up because “the war is lost.”
Even in Germany, a so-called firewall established by mainstream parties against cooperation with the strongly pro-Russian Alternative for Germany has been breached, over migration policy, ahead of elections next month in which the far-right party is polling in second place.
Trump is attempting to push President Putin to “make a deal” to end the war quickly. He’s threatening more “big” sanctions and to crash the oil price to try to wreck Russia’s economy if Putin resists.
Moscow may calculate it can withstand such pressures in negotiations with Trump by magnifying divisions in Europe to weaken support for Ukraine.
That may help Putin to deflect Trump’s focus toward Kyiv to swallow settlement terms more favorable to Russia, conscious that the US president is already skeptical of continuing to finance Ukraine’s defense.
Most of the nationalist leaders in Europe are professed admirers of Trump and are looking to him to end the war and so bolster their economies.
By potentially fracturing European unity at a critical moment, the irony is they may give Putin the political breathing space to continue trying to settle the war on the battlefield. — Tony Halpin