US and UK’s rigidity on the Ukrainian issue may bring Russia & the EU closer together

The foreign ministers of the 27 EU countries urge Moscow to continue negotiations on security issues within the framework of the OSCE and the Russia-NATO Council.

This was stated on Monday, January 24, by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell at a press conference following a meeting of the Council of the European Union in Brussels. According to TASS, no decisions were made following the meeting of the EU Council, and Borrell himself "repeated the standard calls to Russia and the position of the European Union on security issues”.

However, something happened behind the scenes. According to the American portal POLITICO, at a meeting in Brussels, which was joined by American Secretary of State Antony Blinken via video link, "some European officials and diplomats expressed irritation with the United States and Great Britain because the latter began to evacuate their diplomatic workers and their family members from Kiev, calling it a premature step that sows panic and worries financial markets”.

It's not just that Washington and London did not coordinate their decision with Brussels, putting it before the fact. There is a growing feeling among Europeans that the "great American ally" is deliberately pushing the EU away from discussing and implementing measures aimed at "preventing tensions between Russia and Ukraine from escalating into conflict”. In other words, Europe finds itself on the sidelines in a situation that directly concerns it.

According to the experts of the analytical company Eurasia Group, "the European Union has not been able to develop a unified strategy to counter Russia's increasingly aggressive position towards Ukraine, and it will be difficult for it to do so in the future. This will lead to the fact that Brussels will be out of deal when the United States and Russia will discuss the future of Europe's security architecture”.

Meanwhile, Europeans see the picture a little differently, complaining that the Americans, along with the Russians, deliberately pushed the EU into the background during discussions on Ukraine between the United States and Russia.

Overseas, they believe that Europe is to blame itself, naming its two "mistakes". Firstly, there are disagreements within the EU about how to behave with Moscow. Some countries take a "dovish" position (France and Germany), others (Poland and the Baltic states) – a “hawkish" one. Secondly: there is no consensus in the EU on the future security architecture of Europe. If France insists on greater strategic autonomy from the United States and NATO, the same Poland and the Baltic states prefer to remain under the "umbrella" of the North Atlantic Alliance.

Russia's "invasion" of Ukraine could unite Europeans, but Moscow does not provide such an opportunity. While the "peaceful dynamics", some analysts say, will hammer another nail into the coffin of the EU's defence integration, aggravate its split into pro-American and pro-European camps on security issues, and “negotiations between the United States and Russia will determine the future of Europe's security architecture, which the European Union will follow”.

At the same time, not only Washington is interested in pushing the EU into the background, London has also become sharply active. As the German newspaper Handelsblatt points out, the UK, which has left the European Union, is trying to "assert itself on the issue of Ukraine”.

According to Sophia Gaston, an expert at the British Foreign Policy Group analytical centre, "London is implementing a comprehensive strategy”. For many years, "the British government has maintained close military relations with Ukraine and the Baltic states, as it considers Russia the biggest security threat in Europe. Now this work is bearing fruit”.

The UK's tough stance is popular in Poland, the Baltic states and Scandinavia. London also aims to strengthen its influence in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition, the British would like to impose their views on the European Union as a whole, stating that by itself it is not able to "develop a common position on Ukraine" and this "underscores the need for the UK's leading participation in any discussions about the security of Europe”.

However, it is unlikely that the leading European continental powers represented by Germany and France will agree with London's annoying desire to control Europe after Brexit. Berlin and Paris have not yet commented on British activity at the official level.

At the same time, Germany is quietly sabotaging the attempts of the US–UK alliance to escalate the situation by drawing European countries into a confrontation with Russia. As for France, according to the French newspaper Le Monde, President Emmanuel Macron "is doing everything in the negotiations between Moscow and Washington to make Europe's voice heard”.

"Both France and Germany continue to be perplexed about the alarmism of the United States and Great Britain regarding the inevitability of an attack on Ukraine, given the deployment of Russian troops on the borders of the country," the publication notes. "We see the same number of trucks, tanks and personnel. We observe the same movements, but from all this we cannot conclude that an offensive is inevitable," the Elysee Palace said. In addition, the intelligence of "our British and American allies" is being questioned.

According to the press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin and Macron will hold a telephone conversation by the end of this week. It is expected that the French leader will offer his Russian counterpart his own version of de-escalation of the crisis in Ukraine. And this may lead to unexpected results for Washington and London, when they will bring the leading European countries closer to Moscow with their own hands.