Marginalizing Europe: Russia meets the United States in Geneva and NATO in Brussels | European Union

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After months of saber-rattling from Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, Russian officials made a diplomatic tour of Europe this week, meeting with the United States in Geneva and NATO in Brussels. Amidst this diplomatic whirlpool, Europe’s largest diplomatic club was absent. The European Union does not play an official role in the talks, although its officials have drawn up potential sanctions to be imposed on Russia if the Kremlin decides to invade Ukraine.

The EU’s exclusion from talks on war and peace in its own backyard is painful. “Between Putin and Biden, Europe is marginalized,” one Le Monde headline published last week. And the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, made an indifferent remark. “I don’t care,” he said when asked by the BBC if the US should move forward with the Geneva talks. He said that the Russians “deliberately excluded the European Union from any participation” but was assured by the United States that “nothing will be agreed upon without our strong cooperation, coordination and participation.”

Officials downplayed the importance of excluding the European Union. “European allies are on the table, because European allies are in NATO,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. After the NATO-Russia talks, Stoltenberg plans to brief EU defense ministers on their meeting in the port city of Brest in northwestern France on Wednesday evening. The two organizations share 21 member states and pages of pledges to improve cooperation.

Not everyone buys this comforting story about Europe’s absence from the summit table. “It is of great concern to me,” Radoslaw Sikorski, a former Polish foreign minister who now sits in the European Parliament, told the Guardian. “The European Union is a neighbor of both Ukraine and Russia, these are countries with which we have extensive relations. And what happens between them affects many member states. Of course we should be there and I am surprised that we are not.”

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, then Catherine Ashton, was at the negotiating table with the United States, Russia and Ukraine in 2014 in Geneva, after the invasion of Crimea. France and Germany later switched to the narrower Normandy format, talking to Kiev and Moscow, in an effort to end the conflict in Ukraine. “It was the actions of some member states, Germany and France, and the diplomatic blunder by Ukraine in accepting the Normandy formula, and then the Minsk formula, that got us nowhere,” Sikorsky argues. “Through a series of gaffes, we ended up with the European Union being left out of an issue of vital importance to us.”

In an uncomfortable irony, the crisis is unfolding as EU defense and foreign ministers meet this week in Brest to discuss how the EU can be a more powerful player in a global order that challenges authoritarian forces and rogue actors. The search for “strategic autonomy” for the EU is being spearheaded by France, which took over the EU’s rotating presidency this month. A high-ranking French government official said Europe should be “fully sovereign, free of its choices and in control of its own destiny”.

Another Russian invasion of Ukraine is an obvious big test for “sovereign” Europe. More than 100,000 Russian troops are stationed around Ukraine’s border and US intelligence has reported that 175,000 could be deployed by the end of January.

European Union leaders have warned of “serious consequences” in response to any further military aggression against Ukraine. The exact consequences are a closely guarded secret, with officials believing that telegraphing the details would benefit Putin by allowing him to calibrate his response. Even senior diplomats say they don’t know exactly what the European Commission has prepared. However, an extensive list of options has emerged covering finance, technology and people.

In the event of a full invasion, Russia could be isolated from the Swift system, the banking messaging system that connects 11,000 companies in more than 200 countries. The few close to the Kremlin could see their assets in Western jurisdictions frozen. The European Union will also come under pressure not to approve the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which has been completed, but it must clear regulatory hurdles before Russia can begin pumping to Germany.

“The Swift option is one that is being looked at closely,” said veteran French diplomat Pierre Vimont, who was the most senior civil servant in the EU’s diplomatic service between 2010 and 2015. Impose financial sanctions, as well as individual sanctions.” He said the ultimate outcome would depend on the nature of Russian aggression. “If the Russians go ahead with a direct, large-scale military invasion, one can expect the EU to respond with the same force.”

Diplomatic sources have indicated that a large-scale invasion would unite the European Union for action, while a continuing campaign of Russian hybrid attacks, disinformation, and support for proxy forces in the Donbass makes the decision even more difficult. European countries trade more with Russia and have more to lose than the United States, which makes the sanctions calculations more complicated.

“On the contrary, there is still pressure from Russia, but we remain at the same level of tension, it will be more difficult,” Vimont said, referring to Nord Stream in particular. “It appears that this will depend to a large extent on the circumstances.”

Meanwhile, member states remain divided over whether an EU military mission should be set up to train the Ukrainian army, as well as an EU civilian mission that has been on the ground since 2014 to help Kiev improve its police, courts and border forces.

Poland, the Nordic countries and the Baltic states would like to see a full-fledged military training mission with EU soldiers on the ground, while other countries are wondering if the same result can be achieved by increasing financial aid to Ukraine. The question has gone back and forth, since the Ukrainian government requested a military training program last July.

Sikorsky argues that Ukraine has much greater needs than European countries. What Ukraine really needs is a set of anti-ship, anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, but these are national decisions. I hope that member states will prepare contingency plans to do so if Putin carries out his threats.”

Tomasz Valašek, a Slovak parliament member and former ambassador to NATO, has argued against the assumption of the EU’s split, pointing to the bloc’s decision to impose wide-ranging economic sanctions on Russia in 2014 – measures that are still in place. “Historically, the track record indicates that when Russia crosses red lines, we are doing the right thing, not the other way around.”

“what [Putin] Recently, with the mobilization of more than 100,000 soldiers in Ukraine, and now with the unprecedented requirements of a security architecture, this has actually had a unifying effect. We have gone beyond a mere ordinary level of resourcefulness and provocation to something new, something that really serves to unite Europe.”

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