Russia and Democratic Europe

DN Opinion

The Russian siege and Europe's response

Victor Ângelo
International Security Advisor. Former UN Under-Secretary-General

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Published on: 25 Sep 2026, Diário de Notícias, Lisboa, Portugal
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The recent Duma elections were well staged. They confirmed the internal control exercised by the regime, the decision to continue the illegal war against Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin's structural policy against Europe, which has gradually evolved from occasional provocations to a strategy of persistent and calculated pressure.

Moscow operates on several complementary fronts: sabotage, cyberattacks, electronic signal jamming, the instrumentalization of migrants, propaganda, military intimidation, and support for extremist and pro-Russian political forces. The purpose is not to immediately destroy Western capabilities—not for lack of will, but through strategic calculation. In reality, it is about testing and exposing the political frailties of democratic Europe, with actions surgically below the threshold of NATO's Article 5. The authorship of these actions is systematically denied, exploiting the inherent slowness of democracies in gathering evidence and making decisions. Putin is an expert at transforming political doubt into an instrument of equivocation and at fostering fractures among allied nations.

This pressure materializes on coordinated fronts that many insist on treating as isolated incidents. From Kaliningrad and other unidentified locations, satellite navigation disruptions are already a recurrent issue, affecting aviation and maritime navigation across a vast swath between Poland and Scandinavia. In terms of sabotage, the damage to submarine telecommunication cables in the Baltic Sea since 2024 is now compounded by the threat in the Arctic, where a Russian military unit has reportedly studied ways to disable the region's cables. On the land borders, the migratory instrument orchestrated via Belarus has adapted: in response to the physical barriers erected in Poland, the pressure has shifted towards Lithuania and Latvia through new tactics.

Often treated in isolation by certain political sectors and parts of public opinion, the war of aggression against Ukraine is not a parallel conflict: it is the most brutal manifestation of this very same strategy. There are those who still fail to grasp this connection, viewing support for Kyiv as a mere gesture of solidarity or an obligation that is difficult to justify—a tragic misreading. While on the rest of the continent Moscow operates in the grey zone to avoid collective retaliation, in Ukraine it resorts to direct military force to achieve the same end: to subjugate democracies and unilaterally redraw European security. Support for Ukraine must therefore be unequivocally integrated into the broader framework of defending democratic Europe. Ukraine is our first trench.

Europe's vulnerability, however, is predominantly political and internal. The Kremlin finds Trojan horses within the very heart of the European system: certain extremist parties and movements. Whether through submission, ideological convergence, or financing, or through anti-Americanism or xenophobic repudiation of European integration, these forces ultimately serve Moscow's objectives. By normalizing the Russian narrative, attacking NATO, hindering aid to Kyiv, and sowing scepticism towards European institutions, these extremes amplify the hybrid war.

The European response is dangerously asymmetrical. On the eastern and Nordic flank, the response to the threat is already State doctrine: Finland has integrated hybrid analysis into its comprehensive defence, Estonia is investing in digital resilience, and Warsaw and Vilnius are preparing for escalation scenarios. In Western and Southern Europe, the awakening has been delayed. Although there are shifts in perception and policy in Berlin, Paris, London, Rome, and even Brussels, the response remains too slow, bureaucratic, and fragmented.

This delay reveals a certain incomprehension of the autocratic vision of the regime led by Vladimir Putin. The risk encompasses all of Europe outside the Russian orbit, from the Ukrainian front and the Baltic region to the North Atlantic. Anyone in Lisbon or other European capitals who deems Russia to be distant and their country safe from hybrid attacks demonstrates an embarrassingly naive attitude. In a multidimensional war, traditional geography is no longer a shield. To underestimate this reach is to directly imperil Portuguese critical infrastructure—most notably the Atlantic submarine cables, ports, airports, and energy networks. It is to forget that these connections, if sabotaged, will affect not only our country but a significant part of the West.

This vulnerability is currently exacerbated by the uncertainty surrounding the American commitment. The political distance between Europe and the US continues to widen. They are two perspectives seemingly in the process of divorce. The announced review of the US posture in Europe, involving troop reductions and greater conventional responsibility for allies, has its justifications and will ultimately strengthen European autonomy, but it requires a realistic timetable. The Kremlin is well aware of Western deterrence's reliance on the credibility of its guarantor, and it exploits any hesitation to intensify the pressure.

Russia takes advantage of our difficulty in operating within this intermediate zone between peace and war. It no longer limits itself to testing our degree of tolerance; the signals it sends us should be a cause for concern. It will most likely not act against our part of Europe in the same way it has in Ukraine since 2014, with the occupation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas, and since 2022, with the full-scale invasion. Putin recognizes that an attack on a NATO member could trigger the collective response provisioned in Article 5 and that clandestine actions, including false-flag operations, complicate the unequivocal attribution of responsibility. His political leadership prefers clandestine actions, typical of secret services, agencies in which Putin places a higher degree of trust than in the armed forces. The time has thus come for democratic Europe to abandon its old naivety, grow up, and take its rightful place at the table of international relations: Diplomacy and Defence.

Responding to a critique of my BRICS Summit text

My text about the BRICS Summit, available in this blog, was written the day before the meeting in New Delhi.

A preview is not a verdict smuggled in before the evidence. It is a thesis offered for the meeting to test. New Delhi was the test. 

The meeting happened. The record is public. It does not do the work you want it to do.Start with what you treat as refutation. Iran and the UAE held their highest-level contact since the war began. That is true, and it is not trivial. It is also not BRICS acting as a strategic unit. It is two members, sitting on opposite sides of a shooting war, using the host’s rooms to talk.

The same two members had already blocked a foreign ministers’ text in May.

The leaders’ declaration exists because Indian diplomats spent days sanding the language until nobody had to name the United States, Israel, Iran, or the strikes on Gulf territory. “Maximum restraint” and “deep concern,” with national positions recalled in a subordinate clause, is not the cure for tactical paralysis. It is paralysis transcribed into 140 paragraphs. Consensus by omission is still consensus. It is not capacity.

The same holds for the other bilaterals. Modi and Xi discussed border stability. Modi and Putin set a $100 billion trade target for 2030. Those meetings matter. They would have mattered in a hotel corridor without a BRICS logo on the backdrop. 

Present trade is in the region of $65 billion, and the Indian side has been explicit that most of that is Russian oil. A target weighted toward energy shipments is a bilateral energy relationship, not a new payments order. 

When the institution’s value is the corridor, the plenary is the spectacle.

You then enlarge the declaration into a programme. It covers tariffs, coercive measures, the Middle East, terrorism, AI, quantum, digital public infrastructure, a grain exchange, local-currency settlement, NDB lending in local currency, a startup fund under consideration. Listing topics is not the same as moving them. The approved text does not name Ukraine. It does not name the United States on tariffs. It condemns unilateral coercive measures in the abstract and then goes home. 

Whether any of the technical work proceeds is, as you say, a fair question. Calling a document that cannot mention the two largest wars involving its members a strategic coming of age is not.

On payments you accuse me of scoring a test nobody sat. Fine: nobody in New Delhi tabled the yuan as a global reserve currency. India and Brazil would not wear it, for the capital-control reason everyone in the room understands. The live project is interoperability — UPI, Pix, the digital renminbi — plus settlement in national currencies. That work is real, slow, and worth doing. It is also not what the political advertising of this grouping has been for years. The public claim has been an alternative to dollar dominance.

Measuring the summit against the claim its members make when they speak to their own audiences is not a trick. It is taking them at their word.The AIIB point is narrower, and here you land a hit. The bank has a shareholder list that includes Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Australia. London joined as a founder against Washington’s advice. That institution is not a BRICS vehicle, and folding it into the New Delhi story as if it were was a category error. I should not have done it. The error does not rescue the rest of the architecture argument. It simply means the AIIB should be debated as a China-led multilateral with Western capital in it, which is a different and more interesting fight than the one you want.

The NDB is the opposite of a gotcha. The bank halted new business in Russia because American secondary sanctions made the alternative too expensive to operate. You present this as proof that the institution is not Beijing’s political instrument. I presented it as proof that the instrument cannot do the job advertised for it: shelter a founding member from the system it was created to dilute. Both sentences can be true. Only one of them answers the question my column asked. If the “parallel” bank does what Washington requires when the choice is real, the parallelism is conditional. Fragility is the right word for that. Loyalty to Beijing is a separate accusation, and not the one that matters here.

Then the frame. Yes, the criticism of Bretton Woods is legitimate. Quota review has been stuck for a decade. The Fund’s leadership conventions are a Wester relic. An American blocking minority over major IMF decisions is a political fact. None of that converts every communiqué in New Delhi into a working substitute. You set up a closed circuit: reform is vetoed, therefore the alternative must be treated as architecture, and if the alternative is called thin, the critic has left the victims of the veto with “patience.” That is not an argument. It is a demand that disappointment with the IMF be honoured by inflating BRICS. 

States in that position have ordinary options: coalition-building inside the Fund, bilateral swap lines, payment links, commodity trade in local currency. They are already doing some of them. They do not become a new order by being stapled to a 45-page text that cannot say “Ukraine.”

As for the adjectives: they are judgments. The declaration’s silence on a war fought by a founding member is not “abyssal” because a columnist likes the word. It is the measurable gap between the group’s census — eleven members, a large share of population and output — and its ability to describe the world it inhabits. If that register reminds you of agitprop, the remedy is a counter-list: a named loan book that replaced sanctioned finance at scale, a settlement system that cleared Russian or Iranian trade without dollar reach, a Middle East paragraph that could survive contact with the members who were shooting at each other.

You have the talks, the target, and the text. Produce the rest.

Xi skipping the General Assembly is a minor exhibit and I will not lean on it. Leaders skip that General Assembly week. But Xi is a keyn speaker for multilateralism. He should be in New York to show its attachment to the top multilateral organisation. 

You might think that atttendance is a weak test of multilateral sincerity. The stronger test is whether a grouping built to contest the existing order can, when it meets, name the conflicts that divide it and fund the alternatives it announces. 

New Delhi named almost nothing and funded nothing new. That is not a prediction written in the future tense. It is in the minutes.

Vladimir Putin and today's Russia

 https://victorangelo1.substack.com/p/putins-grip-on-power-where-it-stands

A review of Vladimir Putin's absolute control of power.

Russia and Ukraine: War or Diplomacy?

 

G7 and Ukraine: More War or Investing in Diplomacy?

Victor Ângelo

International Security Advisor. Former UN Under-Secretary-General

Published on: 19 Jun 2026

The 2026 G7 summit in Évian once again placed Ukraine at the centre of the agenda. And it followed, essentially, a line already known since 2022: the reaffirmation of support for Kyiv, the condemnation of the Russian Federation, and promises of more weaponry. But this time, the final declaration sounded more like a ritual than a strategy. It was reduced to vague phrases. Behind the façade of cohesion, sanctions, and military commitments, the central question remained unanswered: how to transform support for Ukraine into a strategy that leads to the end of the brutal Russian aggression?

The leaders present praised Ukrainian resilience and promised to bolster arms production, vital for Ukraine's defence, especially air defence. However, the absence of a serious commitment to diplomacy was glaring. A clear statement was missing: peace is not merely a strategic necessity. Diplomacy is the only way out to prevent the situation from worsening and to revive hope in International Law and multilateral mechanisms.

Continuing the conflict indefinitely benefits no one. It drains resources that should be allocated to other urgent challenges and entails tragic human costs, alongside growing material expenditures that are increasingly difficult to mobilize.

The Toll on Nations

• For Ukraine: It is, above all, a threat to the very survival of the State. Each additional day of aggression means a further shattered economy, newly destroyed civilian infrastructure, and less tax revenue to sustain basic services—not to mention the most intolerable cost of all: the continuous loss of human lives. The longer the war drags on, the more difficult the rebuilding of the country becomes.

• For Russia: The continuation of its mistake exacerbates the erosion of its economy and society. The flight of skilled professionals and capital, technological shortages, and the rest, are all hidden behind a "war economy" whose logic is imperialist in nature. Ultimately, it is about ensuring the regime's survival, not the country's security. Industries and services linked to the war and the militarization of the economy have become the engines of GDP and employment. And Russian human losses are incalculable.

• For Europe: The cost is not abstract. The conflict has exposed our external dependencies regarding energy, cybernetics, security, and defence. And it is causing increasing budgetary pressure. Financing our sovereignty and supporting Ukraine's legitimate defence does not come cheap. Extraordinary funds must be found, competing with other priorities, while instability and inflation fuel a growing political fatigue. It is this fatigue that threatens to test the Western bloc's cohesion in the coming years—especially if public opinion begins to ask, quite rightly, what the plans and the timetable are.

The Risk of Escalation

There is yet another cost that rarely enters this accounting: the risk of an uncontrollable escalation. The longer the war drags on, the greater the likelihood of an isolated incident—a disproportionate response—dragging other actors into the conflict. It is precisely this risk that has been exposed in recent days.

While the Évian summit was taking place, a Russian frigate fired warning shots at a British yacht crossing the English Channel. The motive should not be dramatized—the vessel was sailing at a short distance from the frigate, and the shots can be justified as a warning signal to navigation. What matters is the symbolic significance. The incident with the frigate, which is navigating those waters in a back-and-forth manoeuvre intended to provide military protection to the phantom tankers seeking to bypass sanctions, highlights that the Russian frontline can easily expand to Western Europe.

Beyond the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Arctic, the English Channel has become one of the most sensitive points of strategic friction between the West and Russia. It is the most congested maritime highway on the planet, where any Russian military manoeuvre inevitably intersects with civilian traffic. It now receives coordinated attention from the British and French navies, as well as NATO's naval deployments—but a miscalculation carries a high level of probability. In recent months, alongside NATO, the British and French navies have escalated their alert levels in the Channel in the face of Moscow's provocations: espionage by the Yantar ship in November, submarines in April, and the interception of vessels from the Russian phantom tanker fleet.

The Crossroads

Doubt remains as to whether the summit recognized that the Russian war in Ukraine has reached a crossroads: either it gives way to a negotiation process or it enters a spiral, a self-sustaining cycle where each side interprets the other's actions as a justification to escalate its own response.

Defending peace cannot mean Ukraine's capitulation, nor accepting a vague armistice that would merely freeze the aggression today until an inevitable new Russian invasion tomorrow. Rather, it demands the political courage to create the conditions for a verifiable ceasefire, with security guarantees, international monitoring mechanisms, and a political process capable of leading to a lasting peace.

This mechanism should function as an antechamber for genuine multilateral mediation. For this to be possible, we must articulate a narrative that has hitherto not existed—the clear guarantee that this is not about deciding Russia's internal destiny, but rather about reaffirming the primacy of International Law as the foundation of relations between States.

I must reiterate that diplomacy remains the only alternative to achieve peace. Therefore, I highlight the memorandum of understanding signed this Wednesday between the United States and Iran. It is a positive example, even bearing in mind that its implementation faces a minefield of obstacles:

• The ambiguous dimension of some points in the memorandum;

• US political instability;

• The interests of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which blatantly profits from the parallel economy created by the sanctions and resists any opening;

• The opposition of regional powers such as Israel, a country that views any concession to Iran as an existential threat.

But the memorandum and the negotiations that ought to follow can be seen as an example by the conflicting parties in Ukraine. Namely, they remind us that time is of the essence: without a concrete plan—a UN mandate, a verification mission, a reconstruction fund, and a timetable for negotiations—we risk perpetuating a conflict that no one can endure indefinitely.

Singapore could be the right place for a mediation between Russia and Ukraine

 The Russian war against Ukraine requires mediation beyond the Euro‑Atlantic framework

Victor Ângelo

Volodymyr Zelensky’s long open letter to Vladimir Putin on 4 June was not a conventional diplomatic initiative. It was another move in a hybrid war with no end in sight. By publicly calling for a ceasefire at the precise moment when Russia’s economic elite and figures from the Global South were meeting in St Petersburg, the Ukrainian president’s primary aim was not to persuade the Kremlin — and it was revealing that he published the letter before delivering it to its addressee, a gesture openly criticised by Putin’s inner circle. Zelensky sought to exploit visible tensions within the Russian system and to remind the international community that Kyiv continues to take the initiative while Moscow remains mired in a devastating war of attrition.

As a political gesture, Zelensky scored points. He again showed that Putin is more concerned with protecting his image and person than with the fate of his people. But wars on this scale do not end because an aggressor suddenly rediscovers the virtues of moderation. They end when military pressure, economic hardship and political isolation reduce the benefits of escalation and compel serious negotiation. The question is not whether Zelensky’s letter was timely. The question is how to turn pressure and stalemate into a mediation process that is not merely a delaying tactic.

In theory, that mediatory role belongs to the United Nations, which in practice has little or no capacity to alter the political calculations of a permanent member of the Security Council.

The alternatives display equally evident limits. Geneva, one of the locations proposed by Zelensky, has its neutrality challenged by Moscow because of Switzerland’s alignment with EU positions. Gulf states are preoccupied with the crises now besetting the Middle East. Turkey — whose mediation capacities were demonstrated in the Istanbul process of March 2022, when negotiations came closest to a result before collapsing — is a NATO member, a geopolitical space the conflict has already outgrown. India has strategic weight but lacks impartiality. New Delhi has consistently shown greater interest in preserving strategic ambiguity than in applying real pressure on Moscow, not least because it has significantly increased imports of Russian oil and purchases of military equipment and components for the development of its civil nuclear energy sector.

A credible host must satisfy four criteria simultaneously. First, political acceptability: it must be accepted, above all, by Moscow and Kyiv, and have political credibility in Washington and Beijing.

Second, legal latitude: the decisions of the International Criminal Court (ICC) cannot be ignored. The host country must provide a clear legal basis to receive senior Russian representatives without undermining the accountability framework the ICC defends.

Third, technical competence: extraordinarily complex issues are at stake — sanctions, frozen assets, security guarantees, reconstruction financing, energy corridors. Peace processes do not fail for want of rhetoric; they fail because guarantees are vague and violations go unsanctioned.

Fourth, structural discretion: public negotiations are fruitless. A host that cannot protect the confidentiality of working sessions will render the process impossible before it begins.

In light of these criteria, I look to Singapore and judge that it deserves more attention than it has received — but the argument requires precision, not mere faith. The country possesses a rare set of institutional conditions that make it a plausible — if not obvious — candidate to coordinate an international mediation.

Indeed, in terms of political acceptability, Singapore simultaneously maintains a strategic partnership with the United States and counts China as its largest trading partner, with decades of functional relations that include discreet channels of communication between Beijing and Western actors. This dual interdependence reveals a substantial capacity to act as a credible interlocutor.

Regarding the ICC, Singapore is not a State party to the Rome Statute. It could also suspend its own sanctions on Russia as an incentive to participate, without compromising the broader architecture of Western sanctions. And it could negotiate with Moscow to be removed from the Kremlin’s list of “hostile countries”. A process of this kind would require concessions that may at first seem unimaginable, but perhaps are not. Curiously, Singapore’s Prime Minister, Lawrence Wong, will visit the Russian city of Kazan next week as part of a Russia–ASEAN summit and will meet Vladimir Putin.

Singapore is one of the world’s major financial and international arbitration centres, with institutional capacity to deal with the most complex aspects of any peace process. Its record also shows it can manage confidentiality, logistics and security for high‑risk events — with exemplary diplomatic professionalism.

Just as Paris, Oslo or Doha became venues for diplomatic processes that transcended their geographic scale, the effectiveness of mediation often depends more on the conditions a host can offer than on its military or geopolitical weight. Singapore would remove the process from the fraught Euro‑Atlantic frame and rewrite it within a genuinely multilateral context.

Intellectual honesty requires recognising the limits. No country can force Russia to negotiate. Mediation will only begin when the Kremlin concludes that prolonging the aggression has become politically and economically unsustainable, and a military disaster. That moment may not be near. But it will come, and it is important to have a prepared and competent diplomatic architecture to initiate mediation.

Singapore would still have to accept the role. Washington, Beijing and other capitals should discuss the option and discreetly sound out the country’s political willingness, as well as the receptivity of Moscow and Kyiv. This mediation, when it occurs, must be handled with great circumspection and originality.

(Published in Portuguese in Diário de Notícias on 12/06/2026)

Diplomacy today: the art of deception?

The Diplomacy of Deception: War and Cynicism in the Easter Season

Victor Angelo

We enter this Judeo-Christian Easter period with a world marked by instability, prolonged violence, and a disturbing normalisation of war. From Ukraine to the Middle East, and including Iran, conflicts are accumulating that expose not only the marginalisation of traditional diplomacy but also a growing cynicism in international relations. Instead of the pursuit of peace, we are witnessing the instrumentalisation of diplomacy as a Trojan horse for force and aggression, a systematic contempt for International Law, and the accelerated erosion of the multilateral order built after 1945.

Regardless, this is one of those times of year that demands we speak even louder, and with total courage, about the importance of peace and ethics in politics and life.

In the case of Lebanon, the answer is clear: the violence and the gravest humanitarian crisis the country faces have no end in sight. Benjamin Netanyahu's government is betting on war and the destruction of the forces it classifies as enemies. His government's actions also have a very negative impact on the international image and the future of Israel—something that, it seems to me, does not receive due attention. The Israeli people are held captive by a coalition of extremist fanatics who manipulate the country's public opinion and use racism, the illusion of an ethno-religious belief, and fear as instruments to consolidate power.

Netanyahu disregards international norms and United Nations resolutions. His political decisions and the resulting military campaigns will one day be judged in the international courts based in The Hague. Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) has a moral obligation to condemn the policies of Netanyahu's government and to maintain a diplomatic distance from that regime.

This should, in fact, be the EU’s diplomatic practice when dealing with regimes that do not respect International Law. This is called soft power: a coherent position in the face of global or regional challenges, based on principles established as International Law over decades. The EU's geopolitical strength must lie in an unambiguous diplomacy, free from indecision or opportunism. To be seen by the rest of the world as a Union that follows an international policy based on convenience—in the vein of double standards—might be considered by many as political realism. But that type of realism leads to the disregard for Human Rights and to the crises currently crushing the Middle East and other parts of the world. Geopolitical realism is a historical step backwards.

The warlords practise the diplomacy of deception. It is an error to classify this practice as the diplomacy of chaos and improvisation. The politicians behind the aggressions against Ukraine, Iran, the rest of the Middle East, and other regions, pretend to be ready to negotiate. However, they follow a deliberate strategy of disruption. They know what they are doing. Diplomacy masks bellicose intent. There may be a good measure of historical ignorance and miscalculation, but the primary explanation for their decisions lies in the return to the old idea of "gunboat diplomacy" as the engine of international relations.

The war of aggression against Iran, which has political and economic consequences reaching far beyond the collapse of the Middle East, showed that traditional diplomacy—based on treaties, protocols, and predictability—has ceased to matter to leaders like Donald Trump. It has been this way since 2014 and, on a large scale, since 2022 with Vladimir Putin.

The diplomatic initiatives that pretend to be underway hide a preference for the theory of shock and confrontation, and an imperial Diktat philosophy inspired by the 19th-century world and the reality experienced until the end of the Second World War. The ruse involves keeping adversaries and allies in a climate of constant pressure and uncertainty, acting on the basis of surprise. It is not about improvising, but rather about surprising in order to attempt to dominate.

Surprise causes institutional paralysis, namely at the level of multilateral systems and diplomatic alliances. In reality, in Trump's case, it endangers the continuity of the UN's political dimension and the credibility of NATO. Within these and other multilateral institutional frameworks, trust disappears—which is the foundation of effective diplomacy—and with the loss of trust, the future of these institutions enters a phase of absolute uncertainty. I believe it is naive not to see this danger.

What should the response of European States be? Subtly clear. It must be based, concretely, on firmness and diplomatic distancing while continuing to insist on the value of alliances, which must not compromise multilateral cooperation. European leaders must also stress that it is vital to bring an end, without further delay, to the armed aggressions currently underway. Moreover, Europe needs to understand that an unpredictable international reality based on subordination to a problematic ally favours the political centrality of other States—in this case, China.

China seeks to be seen as a bulwark of stability and the sturdiest pillar of multilateralism. The big question, besides it being an authoritarian power, is whether the Chinese economy can sustain this global leadership role that is falling into its lap.

In any case, Europe cannot afford to lose out in this competition for centrality. Any imbalance that favours a superpower, even one as apparently predictable as China, contains, in the long run, a great risk of conflict.

This Easter, the message I dare to address to European leaders is summarised as follows: it is fundamental to resurrect. 

Ukraine, Iran and the European geopolitical priorities

 

Ukraine or Iran? The Frontier of European Sovereignty

By Victor Ângelo

The war launched on 28 February by the US and Israel against Iran is not merely a flashpoint of instability in the Middle East and a high-risk global disruption. It is the result of a labyrinthine decision that raises many questions. For this reason, it has become the most debated topic in various international arenas. The angles of analysis are numerous: the legality of the decision, its objectives—including Iran’s nuclear power and the essence of its regime—geopolitical, macroeconomic, and humanitarian implications, the absolute marginalisation of diplomacy and the multilateral political system, as well as issues related to American domestic politics.

For us, it is also the shock that has exposed the European Union’s strategic hesitations. While the world wonders about the future, Europe faces an undeniable truth: by allowing itself to be dragged into the Persian Gulf, it risks forgetting that the future of our continent will be decided, in large part, on the plains of Ukraine.

For Europe, supporting Ukraine is not just any foreign policy choice among others—it is an absolute priority. It concerns the defence of our territorial integrity and our values, the security of neighbouring countries seeking to join the community, and the survival of the European project itself. Russian aggression targets not only Kyiv, but above all the demolition of the entire architecture of cooperation that has sustained peace on our continent since 1945.

Ukraine’s return to a solid and just peace will reinforce the conviction that European borders remain inviolable. For Europe, to lose would herald a future of submission to Moscow or an endless dependence on a Washington that is now increasingly distant from European philosophy and political choices.

Leaving Russia aside, let us add that the EU cannot be subordinate to American zig-zags and interests. Partnership and alliance must not be synonymous with vassalage. This does not imply waiving the right to criticise or sanction autocratic regimes. Sanctions are a way to resolve disputes between states without resorting to war. What remains unacceptable are armed conflicts and military actions outside the legal framework of the United Nations.

An alarming dimension of the current conflict in the Middle East is the immediate drainage of resources that would be vital for the legitimate defence of Ukraine. Recent estimates indicate that more than 1,000 Patriot (PAC-3) interceptor missiles have already been fired against Iranian attacks since 28 February. It is a contrast in which Ukraine loses out, despite the gravity and legitimacy of its situation being incomparably superior. In four years of resistance, Ukraine has received fewer than 600 of these very same interceptor missiles.

This disparity suggests that the Trump administration markedly prioritises the regional objectives of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over European democracies. Brussels cannot stand by in silence while the "shield" that should protect the Ukrainian air space is consumed in a strange war in the Middle East. Every resource spent in the Middle East represents a new opportunity for the Russian missiles that massacre the Ukrainian people day and night.

It is in the light of this strategic error that the recent position of the European leadership must be read. In this scenario, the message Ursula von der Leyen delivered this week to EU ambassadors is profoundly ambiguous. The speech left the impression that von der Leyen has moved closer to the ideas of Trump and Netanyahu than to the letter and spirit of the United Nations Charter. In the specific case of the attacks on Iran, von der Leyen echoed the arguments—the pretexts, to be more precise—repeatedly mentioned by Washington and Tel Aviv rather than International Law. She abandoned the field of neutrality and mediation, once again weakened Kaja Kallas’s more dialogue-oriented line, and left a significant portion of European observers perplexed, including important wings of the European Parliament.

Europe must be seen by the rest of the globe as a space of values and compliance with international law, of geopolitical balance, and as a defender of the multilateral system. Our strength lies there: in cooperation with the countries of the South who see in International Law the protection they require. By adopting the rhetoric of "military force," as if Europe could become an armed superpower overnight, the President of the Commission seemed to ignore that the true authority of our Union rests on the acceptance of universal values and solidarity with the different peoples of the world. As António Costa stressed after the President’s speech, the EU must defend the international order based on rules. Costa left no room for ambiguity.

I, too, do not wish to be seen as ambiguous. I am against submission, and I do not defend a policy of neutrality, because not choosing is in itself a choice, and rarely the best one. I advocate neither silence nor indifference. As Dante said more than seven centuries ago in his monumental work, the Divine Comedy: "the most pitiless flames in Hell are reserved for those who chose neutrality in times of crisis." Respect for International Law and the right to self-defence are not neutral. They are civilised ways of saying no to arbitrary decisions, the use of brute force, and attacks against human rights. It is this crystal clarity that I expect from European leaders and that the future demands of us.