Europe's Power is Defined by the Ability to Take Action in Ukraine

Europe’s red lines on support for Ukraine continue to invite Putin to destroy more of Ukraine and further destroy the international rules based order. While Ukraine shields the peace of NATO nations from Russia’s aggression, Europe’s political formula of ‘supporting Ukraine for as long as it fights’ is humiliatingly inadequate. To claim its geopolitical power, Europe must take action in Ukraine.

When Ukrainians are asked what kind of support their country needs, most politicians in Europe prefer they do not answer honestly. Ukrainians are welcome to discuss military aid, financial support, increased sanctions, or even international justice for Russian perpetrators of war crimes, but the expectation of direct European military involvement in Russia’s war is a forbidden topic. It is a red line which makes friends of Ukraine uncomfortable, and friends of Russia in Europe furious.

After 12 years of one of the bloodiest wars on the planet since World War II, Europe still expects Ukraine to defend against Russia’s war and genocide on its own. The firm rejection by European governments of even a hint of their possible military action in Ukraine remains Europe’s main geopolitical weakness. This also allows Moscow to believe it can achieve its genocidal objectives in Ukraine by prolonging its war and pushing it further, counting on Ukraine to run out of people and resources with which to defend itself.

The future of a united Europe as a global power hinges on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russia’s defeat can secure this future. This objective cannot be achieved by Europe staying out of the fight and outsourcing its protection from Russia to Ukraine. The sleeping giant  of Europe can be awakened not by speeches at conferences, but by action that proves its strength. Europe’s power is defined by its ability to act in Ukraine. The first move of this awakened giant should be a Humanitarian Military Mission to help defend civilians and critical infrastructure – particularly nuclear facilities – from Russia’s war of annihilation.

Dismal Consequences of Inaction Are Catching up With Europe

European leaders tend to ignore that their failure to act decisively against Russia has eroded Europe’s power projection. Their fear of taking risks has turned the powerful alliances of the European Union and NATO into a ‘gilded cage,’ wedging European nations between appeasing Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, incapable of asserting their own strategic autonomy, stripped of the ability to project real power.

Political slogans from European leaders reflect a consistent premise underlying European policy for the last four years: that Russia’s war is Ukraine’s alone to fight. The slogans have changed, but their underlying message has remained the same, from the Biden-era ‘We will support Ukraine for as long as it takes’ to Ursula von der Leyen’s more recent call to ‘turn Ukraine into a steel porcupine’ as a reawakened Europe takes responsibility for its own security. Other rhetoric – such as ‘It’s up to Ukrainians to decide how the war ends’ – often masks a pivot toward Donald Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to concede to Russia through a ‘peace deal.’ The recent push to ‘Keep Ukraine strong in the fight,’ intended to re-energise military aid to Ukraine which has been dispirited by Trump’s ‘peace talks’ also underscores the persistent European policy that prioritises external military aid over direct intervention. Even politicians who acknowledge an ongoing ‘war in Europe’ still act as if defending the continent from Russian aggression is solely Ukraine’s responsibility.

For decades, European establishments have kept Ukraine out of the European Union and NATO to avoid confrontation with Russia. They believed that Ukraine’s membership would weaken the EU by undermining the benefits the largest European economies drew from Russian energy, and that it would weaken NATO by exposing the alliance to a higher risk of confrontation with Russia. They have also operated under the illusion that the high walls of their ‘European fortress’ would immunise them against Russia’s aggressive revanchism. They mistakenly believed that Russia’s ambitions would end at the borders of former Soviet states that were not members of the EU or NATO, assuming European interests would never be directly challenged.

However, the reality of geopolitics has proven them bitterly wrong. From the very onset of Russia's aggression, the tipping point of the global balance of power has been in Ukraine. The Western response to Russia’s war defines the nature of the collective West, the rules of the international order, and the West’s capacity to curb the aggressive ambitions of the global 'forces of unfreedom' led by the Sino-Russian alliance.

The unjustifiable limits on support for Ukraine have damaged Western power projections and undermined the international rules-based order. These limits include:

• Absence of an economic embargo: No comprehensive economic embargo has been introduced against Russia. EU sanctions remain ‘precisely targeted’ to apply limited pressure while minimising losses to European economies.
• Frozen sovereign assets protected: While approximately €210–280 billion in Russian sovereign assets remain frozen in the West, they have not been confiscated using the counter measures mechanism to provide Ukraine with sufficient means to defend itself.
• Lack of legal accountability: No Russian perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide have been brought to international justice. Ukraine was denied the creation of a UN mandated international tribunal for Russia’s aggression. Moreover, there are clear signs some EU governments are intentionally stalling the setting up of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine to use justice for the victims of Russia’s war as a bargaining chip at the negotiating table with Moscow.
• Lack of humanitarian military mission: No Western country has sent a humanitarian military mission to protect Ukrainian civilians or critical infrastructure – including nuclear. This refusal persists despite Russia striking the safety confinement of a Chernobyl nuclear reactor – threatening regional nuclear safety – and Russia’s deliberate attempts to plunge Ukraine into a humanitarian emergency this winter by destroying power grids in extreme cold temperatures.
• Lack of will to join collective self-defence: No Western country has joined Ukraine in its legitimate self-defence under the UN Charter, leaving Ukraine to fight alone against the world’s second-largest military, one that poses a real threat to EU and NATO members. Today, ordinary Ukrainian civilians are defending Europe, sacrificing their families, personal lives and professional careers, while risking their lives on the battlefield and facing extreme torture if captured by Russians. Meanwhile, the trained, professional militaries of NATO nations – tasked with securing Europe from the Russian threat – are merely waiting for the decisions of policymakers while the Russian army kills the family members of Ukrainian soldiers in their beds, by air-strike, hundreds of kilometres away from the frontline.
• Weaponry restrictions: Western countries continue to withhold from Ukraine the long-range weapons critical for downgrading Russia’s capabilities to launch air-strikes against Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure. Many Western countries continue to impose unjustifiable restrictions on the use of their weapons against legitimate targets inside Russian territory, effectively protecting Russia’s military production and storage facilities and enabling Moscow to grow its military capacity.
• Limits on Russia’s isolation: Russia’s rights and entitlements in various international organisations remain out of limit, notably in the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations General Assembly (despite the 1974 South African precedent paving the way for such suspension).
• Travel bans not introduced: No Western country has introduced a ban on the travel of Russians, with only Estonia banning Russian combatants who fought in the war against Ukraine from entering the Schengen zone.
• Limited sanctions on Belarus: Belarus is an important ally to Russia. Recently, the Trump administration lifted some existing sanctions, undermining the economic isolation of the regime participating in Russia’s war on Ukraine and continuing to facilitate evasion of sanctions against Russia.
• Unanswered Russian ‘hybrid war’ against the EU: European governments have effectively allowed Russia to wage a ‘hybrid war’ on EU nations by creating a conceptual ‘grey zone’ between support for terrorism and acts of aggression – a space in which Moscow can operate with impunity and which does not demand any immediate actionable response from EU governments but building deterrence.

This incomplete list highlights that the Western response to Russian aggression, especially European nations, has been incommensurate with the gravity of Moscow's atrocities in Ukraine and the global threat it presents.

Years of the compromised policy of staying out of the way of Russia’s criminal pursuits have gravely weakened the EU and NATO, placing Europe’s ‘freedom at stake’. Only Ukraine’s continued, unbreakable and defiant resistance shields the continent from falling under Russian subjugation.

Western Inability to Uphold the Rules-Based Order has Signalled its Weakness

The lack of political resolve to counter Russia manifested as a Western weakness for upholding the liberal international order, the source of its authority in intentional relations. The American attacks on Venezuela and Iran may have demonstrated that the White House is able to use the great US military power to pursue its interests, but they have shown that Washington is not committed to upholding international law. Instead, the US further undermined the idea of the universal rules that apply to all. The power to use violence or the threat of violence to achieve objectives in international relations as unilaterally defined by a political leader of one major global power can hardly be seen as sustainable.

The return to great power competition is a degeneration of the international order bound to bring greater global suffering through the spread of inequality and disparity.

The West’s failure to uphold the rules-based order, severely aggravated by Trump-driven divisions, has accelerated global geopolitical rebalancing. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s recent declaration of the death of this order is an admission on the global stage that the West is retreating from defending the principles of an equitable world. But this is the wrong approach. While the American ‘rupture’ with Trans-Atlantic allies has ended the Western-led world order, it is premature to abandon the foundational rule book – one in the writing long before the power architecture underpinning the post-WWII order.

Destruction of the good – forged from the sacrifices of millions during World War II and the efforts of subsequent generations – is not leadership; it is a failure of responsibility. Europe must heed the devastating lessons of the 20th century to avoid the reckless path currently pursued by the US administration. To accept a new era of unchecked great-power rivalry is to gamble with human lives on a catastrophic scale. Instead of devolving toward a 19th-century imperial order, 21st-century humanity requires an evolutionary upgrade of our post-war architecture to meet contemporary challenges.

Moscow and Washington Want to Rewind History

For two decades, Vladimir Putin has been seeking Yalta 2.0 – to bring the world back to the power balance of 1945 when Russia was instituted as a world hegemon. Russia, which lost its global power status after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been stubbornly pursuing revanche. Russia’s main tools of regaining influence have been aggression, force, weaponization of everything that gives it leverage – from energy to media, hijacking international organisations, corrupting foreign political actors and compromising businesses. Moscow feels so emboldened, that today Russian intelligence is running an online supermarket of terror on social media, recruiting people to commit acts of terror across Europe.

With each passing day of Trump’s administration, it grows more apparent that the US administration wants to do away with the international rules and institutions which have grown over the last eight decades to constrain the major powers. The American administration wants the UN to ‘return to basics’, stripping away all international mechanisms and institutions – like the International Criminal Court – that limit power of states to behave unilaterally with disregard for interests of other nations. The repeated statements by the US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissing the ‘stupid rules of engagement’ to ‘untie the hands’ of the American military puts the aggressive objectives of the US administration into sharp focus.

The American policy talking point of ‘returning to the UN's core mission’ is code for ‘Yalta 2.0.’ Trump’s administration and Putin’s regime pursue a common interest of unwinding the international rules which they deem threatening to their interests. They want to bring back the world where they can decide for all and coerce the rest of the world to accept their will. The US wants full exclusive control over the Americas and its influence in other parts of the world over energy and trade which are crucial to the American interests, respected and unchallenged by other powers. Russia, as it made very clear in its 2021 ultimatum to NATO, wants its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Moscow also wants to keep its influence over Central Asia, despite the growing weight of China and Turkey in the region and parts of Africa.

While the Russian and American ruling elites want to turn back time, betting on the devolution of humanity, Europe does not need to repeat historic blunders. Europe’s modern prosperity has been built on the back of the rules-based order, peace, human rights, democracy and free trade. These should not be traded for uncertainty, coercion and violence. Europe should bet on the progress of humanity and align with those who are willing to build a future cooperatively. Abandoning the rules-based order without a fight is doomed to make Europe a pawn in the game of larger powers.

Western decades-long support for the rules-based order has offered a positive vision of the future for humanity. It made the liberal ideology appealing to many parts of the world and helped promote democracy, making the world safer. The return to power competition between major global actors pursuing their self-interest above common rules is a vision of the ruinous future attractive to autocrats and dictators. Europe must not follow the Trump administration on this destructive path. Instead, Europe must be heavily invested in saving American democracy to help protect the idea of the rules-based order and to work in partnership on upgrading the system.

The End of Western-Led World Order is Russia’s Achievement, But it Should not Become Russia’s Strategic Victory

Order is the defining boundary between legitimate power and rogue regimes. We distinguish between international actors by the side of the law they choose. Should Europe abandon its role in upholding this rules-based order, it would mark a historic failing with dire consequences for humanity’s future. Such a retreat would not only destabilise global security making the world unsafe for all but also alienate the majority of the world that wants the rules-based order to persist and trigger deep domestic instability across the continent.

Placing the will of authoritarian leaders above global peace and security leads inevitably to conflict, chaos and suffering. Europeans embracing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s claim – that the supremacy of the rules-based international order is a 'dangerous delusion' – need only look at Russia’s war of annihilation against Ukraine to see the grim reality of a world without rules.

Russia has utilised its war on Ukraine as a battering ram against the rules-based international order; Ukraine’s defence has always been a fight for its preservation. While many argue that Russia has strategically lost due to NATO’s growth and Ukraine’s enduring resistance, we cannot ignore Moscow’s significant success in undoing the rules-based order. This subversion was facilitated in part by successive American administrations – from Obama to Trump – whose policies treated Russia as a power entitled to operate above international law.

While the erosion of the Western-led world order is, in many respects, a Russian achievement, we must not allow it to become a Russian strategic victory. Europe must not abdicate its leadership in international relations, nor should it voluntarily surrender its authority and interests.

American claims over Canada and Greenland serve as a stark reminder to Europe that upholding the rules-based order is a matter of urgent self-interest. Either the international community collectively defends these norms against attacks of aggressive regimes, or we return to an era where unabated violence is once again an accepted tool of international affairs.

The defence of the rules-based order is a collective responsibility; Ukraine should not carry this burden alone. Had Ukraine fallen, Russia would have emerged as a global power unrestrained by international law, positioned to dictate its will to other nations. Europe’s entire political and security landscape would have been fundamentally transformed by now.

Power ‘In Waiting’

Europe’s future as a global power hinges on the outcome of Russia’s war on Ukraine, yet European leaders remain reluctant to accept that only a Ukrainian victory can secure the continent's security. As Russia destabilises the whole continent, European nations avoid their responsibilities, hiding inside the panic room of NATO and waiting for decisions made in the White House.

Europe’s refusal to escalate its response to a level commensurate with the threat Russia poses effectively shields Moscow, while enabling it to continue waging a war of annihilation on Ukraine, entirely unrestrained. Every day of ‘hesitation’ to confront Russia militarily allows Moscow to act with the kind of disregard for humanitarian law that erodes the rules-based order and causes endless suffering.

Rather than take forceful measures to help Ukrainians defend against Russian genocide, European governments hide their inaction behind the excuse of ‘peace’ process. Some quietly, and others not so quietly, support Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to make concessions to Russia through a ‘peace’ deal. While European governments and officials play along the farce of ending Russia’s war at the negotiating table, Moscow uses the ‘peace’ talks as a tool of war and pursues relentless destruction of Ukraine.

Pretending that a settlement based on Ukrainian concessions will abate Moscow’s aggression is a dangerous delusion. It will neither quench Moscow’s revanchism nor grant Europe a reprieve to build ‘impervious’ deterrence. By clinging to inaction to avoid risk, Europe is guaranteeing future conflict by dismantling the very deterrence it needs to survive.

Ukrainians remain strongly opposed to making concessions to Russia. They will not trade territory for elusive security guarantees. They see that the ‘peace deal’ on the negotiating table will not bring a just and sustainable peace. After 12 years of war, 65% of Ukrainians are prepared to endure war for as long as necessary. They are prepared to fight for victory. In fact, a mathematical modelling based on a social poll of Ukrainian men who are not currently serving in the army suggested that Ukraine could mobilise as many as one million soldiers to join the Armed Forces voluntarily, under certain conditions. Critically, 40% of Ukrainian men said they would join the army ranks if confident that they will be fighting for the pursuit of Ukraine’s victory. 27% of respondents said that an increase of Western support would motivate them to join the army and 13% will be persuaded to join by a Western ally entering the war to fight on Ukraine’s side. (The last number likely reflects the devaluation of the Western military power in the eyes of Ukrainians – as long as Western actions are constricted by fear of military confrontation with Russia, Western attempts to project military power are met with major scepticism.)

Ukrainians will trust the West’s actions, but they have grown disillusioned with Western rhetoric. When NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte promises a ‘devastating reaction’ should Russia violate a future ceasefire with Ukraine, Ukrainians recall the hollow Western promises of ‘sanctions from hell’.

A policy response to Russia’s war and genocide that relies on extorting concessions – including territorial ones – from Ukraine is doomed to disaster. Instead of promising the ‘reassurance measures’ of the Coalition of the Willing tomorrow, Ukraine needs the Coalition of the Resolute protecting Ukrainian skies today. The main reason Russia has no plans to cease its war is because Ukraine is alone on the battlefield defending itself. Putin’s calculations are simple: Ukraine has fewer resources than Russia at its disposal, so sooner or later Ukraine can be quashed because no one will come to its side. As long as Russian cities are sheltered from war by Western refusal to provide long-range missiles to Ukraine and Ukrainian cities are razed by Russian air-strikes, Putin will believe his calculations will prove right.

European nations must urgently revise their policy and implement a humanitarian military mission in Ukraine to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure – and critically, to safeguard Ukrainian nuclear power plants – from Russian air attacks. Shooting down Russian missiles and UAVs in Ukrainian airspace does not risk direct confrontation with Russia, nor is it an act of war; it is a humanitarian act to save innocent lives from genocide. A humanitarian military mission can establish Europe as a global geopolitical actor, projecting effective military deterrence to prevent Russia from testing NATO’s resolve in the Nordic and Baltic states.

Europe Must Take Responsibility for its Future

Moscow's criminal ambitions in Ukraine go well beyond territorial conquest. Russia is intent on destroying Ukrainian statehood and systematically erasing the Ukrainian people as a distinct ethnic and national group. Russia seeks to re-establish its sphere of influence in Europe and dismantle the EU and NATO, which makes it the primary threat to peace in Europe. By leveraging unrestrained military force to assert itself as a global power, Russia has become a true rogue state posing a danger to humanity.

Ukraine is part of Europe – not a shield, nor a buffer. Only one policy should be on the table: full restoration of international law, which was grossly violated by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and its genocide against Ukrainians. Russia must repair all its breaches of international law. This plan requires defeating Russia, and this objective is achievable. After 12 years of aggression, Russia is nowhere close to defeating the Ukrainian Army. In fact, just recently, Ukraine liberated over 400 sq. km of territory in a number of small counterattacks across the frontline.

It is thanks to Ukraine's resilient resistance that Europe is enjoying the benefits of security stemming from the lingering projection of the existence of the rules-based order. Ukraine’s resistance has given Europe a place and strength in global power politics. It is Ukraine seriously downgrading Russia that has made the Iranian regime more vulnerable. And it is Ukraine that amidst war has turned itself into a contributor of security in the region.

But Ukrainians should not be treated as half-human and half-robotic characters from a science fiction film, fighting evil forces on a distant planet. The war is in Europe, and Europe must respond with action. Launching a humanitarian military mission focused on helping Ukraine defend against air threats is one of many steps that could turn the tide of this war and make Europe safe again.

Europe must also take the initiative and work tirelessly to drive the international agenda to upgrade the rules-based system so that the application of its rules is not dependent on the will of global powers. We need strong international institutions and effective mechanisms to safeguard the principles.

Instead of competing for headlines with pronouncements of doom, European leaders must mobilise their countries to leave the comfort zone of inaction and take responsibility for their future. To survive a perfect geopolitical storm, Europe must stop being hostage to Putin and Trump; it must act. We do not need to accept the world as Russia and the US want it to be. By joining forces with Ukraine, Europe can find the lacking resolve to wake the sleeping giant.

© Ariana Gic, Gabrielius Landsbergis and Roman Sohn, 2026, published by RUSI with permission of the authors.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the authors', and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

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