Should Europe Start Talking to Russia?

Should European countries resume dialogue with Putin? Some European leaders support the idea; others are opposed. The reasons for this split are fundamental, and reflect underlying questions about Europe’s security. As Putin’s war drags on into its fifth year, this article sets out key considerations for European governments deliberating their interests.

It is often said that all wars end in a negotiation. That is not quite true. Some wars end with the capitulation of one side and victory for the other – this is what Putin wants from his war against Ukraine and his negotiations with Trump. Some wars do not end cleanly but drag on for years. This is what we are likely to get: maybe some kind of ceasefire but one that leads (intentionally on Putin’s part) to a situation of neither war nor peace.

There is no negotiable final settlement to the conflict while Putin is in power since its underlying cause is Putin’s view of Russia, which is not going to change and is incompatible with the security of Russia’s European neighbours. Even so, a negotiated ceasefire may be an acceptable outcome for Ukraine, if one can be agreed on terms that do not fatally compromise Ukraine’s statehood or ability to defend itself against Russia. What happens after a ceasefire is every bit as important as what happens before. A ceasefire with Putin, unless it amounts to Ukraine’s capitulation, will not mean the permanent ceasing of fire and will not mean the end of the conflict. For this reason, it is crucial that the circumstances of a ceasefire strengthen rather than weaken Ukraine’s – or its allies’ – ability to deter future Russian aggression. There is, by definition, zero prospect of Putin agreeing to measures whose purpose is to deter Putin.

Why are Putin and Trump negotiating with each other over Europe’s security, without the Europeans or the UK in the room? It is not because Putin intends to compromise on his goals: the elimination of Ukraine; the reshaping of the post-Cold War European security architecture according to Putin’s wishes; and the realisation of Putin’s Russia as a Great Power equal to the United States and China.

In pursuing these goals, Putin has read Trump’s motivations correctly and is playing him accordingly. Hence the prospect of business deals worth multiples of Russia’s entire GDP, dangled by Kirill Dmitriev. Trump, for his part, appears to have no such understanding of Putin, apparently believing him to be a man rather like Donald Trump, who sees the world in similar ways. Trump wants a deal, preferably before the mid-term elections, on things that matter to Trump. Ukraine is not one of them.

It is increasingly clear that Ukraine and its European allies will be left bearing the costs and risks of whatever deal Trump might reach with Putin, or of his failure to do so.

Before Even Thinking About Talking About Discussions

Where does this leave the Europeans, and the UK? Should we seek to negotiate with Putin, if only to prevent a bad deal being imposed on Ukraine by the US? There is not a straightforward answer.

Some questions to consider:

First, who would a European envoy represent? The EU? The E3? European NATO? A coalition of the willing? That is a solvable problem. What may be less solvable at present is the risk of deepening divisions within the West – within Europe and with the US – particularly if the goal is to prevent a bad deal being imposed on Ukraine.

Second, what would the Europeans be seeking to achieve? Surely not a rerun of the Minsk Agreements, which did not achieve a full ceasefire in 2014-15 and did not prevent Russia from launching a full-scale invasion in 2022.

Putin sees the path to a ceasefire on terms favourable to him to run through Washington. For that to change, would require either a fundamental change in Trump’s understanding of US interests in this war, or for Trump to walk away, as he did with Afghanistan in his 2020 Doha Agreement with the Taliban. That would hand the problem over to the Europeans.

Either way, the path to a genuine lasting ceasefire requires creating and sustaining conditions in which Putin concludes that he cannot win – militarily or at the negotiating table – and that his least bad option is to agree a ceasefire.

Third, would Putin negotiate with the Europeans? He sees war and peace as matters to be resolved between the leaders of Great Powers. That means Russia, the US and China. ‘The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must.’ The evidence suggests that he and Trump see eye-to-eye on this.

A European seat at the table with the US, Russia and Ukraine would suit Ukraine. But Putin would not see this as being in Russia’s interests in current circumstances, since the purpose would be to dissuade the Trump Administration from forcing Ukraine into a bad deal. Putin is not looking for a balanced deal that respects the interests of all concerned. He wants to split NATO, by presenting the Europeans and Ukraine as the obstacle to Trump’s wished-for deal.

Russia will try to exact a price even for talking with a European envoy. Trump gave Putin this for free, inviting him to Alaska and greeting him with a red carpet – at no cost to Putin and against a background of intense pressure on Ukraine to make concessions. If the Alaska summit was intended as a down-payment to secure cooperation from Putin, it failed abjectly and entirely predictably. This matters in a world where everyone calculates who is setting the agenda and who is demandeur.

Fourth, efforts by the Europeans to stymie a Trump Deal would be unwelcome to the US, no matter how damaging such a deal would be for Europe or Ukraine.

The Incentives

So, is there any point in even talking to the Kremlin? There are two very good reasons to have even a limited dialogue with a hostile state. One is to send clear, unambiguous signals to your opponents. The other is to read your opponent’s intentions towards you. Without these, it is much harder to manage risks, especially during a long stand-off, which is what we will have until Russia fundamentally changes. Change will not come to Russia while Putin is alive and maybe not for some time afterwards, with what promises to be a turbulent leadership transition when the time comes.

Managing and containing the risks to Europe’s security will be the heart of the matter for the foreseeable future. Russia represents a first-order threat to our security, probably for many years to come. This requires us at a bare minimum to have effective channels of communication with the Kremlin, to avoid catastrophic misreadings by either side.

But we need to put aside the idea that there is a deal to be done with Putin that returns our continent to a stable equilibrium.

The differences between Putin and the West are ones that cannot be resolved through dialogue. As with the USSR, the best that can be achieved may be a kind of détente, where the risks are better managed, possibly over a very long time.

That is still a worthy objective for dialogue with Russia. But entering into dialogue presupposes that this is what Putin wants too. So, the timing and circumstances of an offer of dialogue need to be right if we are to avoid playing Putin’s game, which is to force others to accommodate his understanding of Russia’s interests at the cost of their own interests. A dialogue with Putin will only produce meaningful results if he too is prepared to contribute to security by reducing tensions.

That is clearly not on the cards at present. But as with the possibility of a ceasefire with Ukraine, it is worth considering what would need to be true for this to change.

There are three key elements. The first is the outlook for Russia’s economy, which as Alexandra Prokopenko has shown, is now entering what mountaineers call the death zone (The Economist, 16 February 2026). That alone will not cause Putin to change his strategic goals; but it will over time make them harder and costlier to achieve. The second involves Putin receiving clear signals from the real world that however many Russians he sends to their deaths in Ukraine, he cannot achieve his goals by military force. The third involves Putin receiving clear and consistent signals that he will not achieve them at the negotiating table either.

These require a serious and coordinated approach from both the Trump Administration and from the Europeans. It only makes sense to negotiate if you create the conditions for a successful negotiation.

The real negotiation is between the Europeans, the UK and the current and future US Administrations about how to do this. With the Americans if possible; without them, if necessary. Above all, we must not do Putin’s work for him.

© RUSI, 2026.

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