Volodymyr Zelensky’s polite endorsement of European participation in peace negotiations is an exercise in elementary manners. Ukraine’s president is nothing if not an astute reader of his patrons, and with Kyiv’s long-term future inextricably tied to European Union membership, keeping Brussels inside the tent is sound diplomacy. It is also entirely performative. A seat at the negotiating table must be bought with leverage, and when it comes to dealing with Vladimir Putin’s revanchist Russia, leverage is measured in artillery tubes, interceptor stockpiles, and the political appetite to deploy them. Europe remains critically short on all three.
The instinct to pull European leaders into the room stems from Washington’s growing fatigue and the impending reality of shifting American priorities. Washington wants Europe to take ownership of its own backyard, and European leaders, perpetually anxious about being sidelined in decisions affecting their own continent, are eager to oblige. Yet one must ask an uncomfortable question: what, precisely, does Europe bring to this table? For two years, the continent’s major capitals have treated the greatest land war since 1945 as an urgent crisis to be managed rather than a existential threat to be decisively crushed. They have substituted rhetorical solidarity for industrial throughput, issuing ambitious declarations while their defence procurement bureaucracies operate at peacetime speeds.
In Moscow, where the currency of diplomacy has always been raw force, the prospect of facing European negotiators inspires little dread. The Kremlin does not fear high-minded lectures on the rules-based international order, nor does it lose sleep over European Commission communiqués. What Moscow respects is the logistical capacity to sustain high-intensity warfare over years, and the demonstrable will to use it. When Berlin agonises for months over every incremental weapon system and Paris talks grandly of strategic autonomy while producing ammunition at a fraction of Russia’s domestic output, Vladimir Putin takes notes. He understands that Europe’s political class remains fundamentally allergic to the harsh realities of power politics.
This dynamic poses a severe risk to Ukraine. Zelensky’s calculus is understandable: Kyiv needs European cash to keep its state solvent and European market access to ensure its post-war reconstruction. But confusing economic integration with hard security is the precise error that brought Europe to this precipice in the first place. The European Union was designed to make borders obsolete and war unthinkable through trade. It was never structured to deter a determined autocrat who regards sovereignty as a negotiable concept and borders as lines to be rewritten with armor.
If European leaders genuinely wish to shape the outcome of peace talks, they must immediately abandon the fantasy that diplomacy can proceed without the shadow of credible force. An enduring settlement cannot be underwritten by paper promises or symbolic border missions. It requires ironclad, bilateral security commitments, forward-deployed forces capable of inflicting unacceptable costs on any renewed Russian advance, and an industrial base on a war footing capable of supplying Ukraine for a decade. Reading European defence budgets today does not inspire confidence; too many NATO members still treat the alliance’s two-percent spending threshold as a maximum ceiling rather than a baseline requirement, often padding their figures with pensions and infrastructure to meet the target on paper.
A negotiated peace brokered under current conditions, with an overstretched Ukraine, a distracted United States, and an unarmed Europe, will not be a durable settlement. It will simply be an interlude—a temporary pause allowing the Russian military to replenish its losses, absorb lessons from its tactical failures, and wait for Western resolve to decay further.
If Europe wants a meaningful voice in ending this war, it must first demonstrate the capacity to enforce the peace it seeks to negotiate. That means opening factory floors, signing multi-year munitions contracts, and accepting that European security is no longer an American entitlement. Until the continent’s political leaders are willing to match their diplomatic ambitions with cold, unvarnished military capability, they will not be shaping the peace. They will merely be spectating as others dictate the terms.