24 February 2026 - Reflections for Pushkin House
Julie Newton, UC Director
Four years into this war, there is a gloomy consensus among many serious scholars and practitioners that a durable negotiated peace is not possible – neither now nor in the foreseeable future. Negotiations may intensify. There may be short-term ceasefires. Documents may even be signed. But negotiations – especially on the Russian side – often appear more tactical than genuine. A ceasefire concluded on that basis would not constitute a settlement, only an intermission – entrenching a protracted conflict that risks further bloodshed in Ukraine and renewed instability across the continent.
The question is how to respond. Bolstering deterrence against Russia is indispensable. Strengthened military capabilities, cyber defence, and strategic resilience are not optional; they are the foundation of European security in the present moment. Without credible deterrence, there is no stability.
But military means alone will not solve this problem. They will not, by themselves, make Russia stop. The sources of this war are more complex and manifold than expansionism or historical nostalgia alone, however real those elements may be. If, at the most obvious level, Ukraine is the target of Russian aggression, rooted (in part) in Moscow’s imperial claims and Russo-Ukrainian history, at the next level Ukraine has become the tragic focal point of a broader architecture of Russian grievances that have accumulated over three decades against the United States and the Euro-Atlantic world. At that level, the war represents Russia’s attempt to secure what it considers a more recognised and authoritative role in Europe’s security order – one commensurate with its self-understood great-power status – and to accelerate the erosion of US primacy in the international order. Moscow has framed this ambition as the advance of genuine multipolarity, a configuration it has long assumed would enhance Russia’s leverage and standing, though that assumption has not borne out as expected over the last four years.
At the deepest – and perhaps most consequential – level, Russian behaviour is driven by entrenched distrust of Western intentions and by a conviction, widely shared across the political class and much of society, that the United States, together with Europe, seeks Russia’s “strategic defeat”. The war is framed not as a discretionary policy choice but as an existential struggle synonymous with the survival of the Russian state itself. Until that perception shifts, any peace will be provisional at best. The origins of this conviction can be traced through three decades of Russian foreign-policy debate, in which grievances toward the United States and the European Union steadily accumulated and narratives of encirclement and exclusion gained traction. Over time, these arguments moved from contested positions to organising assumptions within Russia’s strategic thinking. Whether judged instrumental or sincerely held, these assumptions had hardened into organising principles by 2014 and continue to shape Kremlin policy today, amplifying its most coercive instincts.
That is why deterrence must be accompanied by intellectual and diplomatic engagement – about Russia and with Russia. We need a more complex understanding of the deeper drivers of Russian behaviour and clearer insight into Moscow’s intentions. Such clarity is neither empathy nor sympathy; it is a prerequisite for greater accuracy and, therefore, for informed policies that are effective rather than merely reactive.
Cold War history offers a sobering precedent. The United States and the Soviet Union remained adversaries; deterrence was robust and often perilous. Yet dialogue with Moscow – especially at moments of acute tension – proved essential in clarifying intentions, signalling red lines, and reducing the risk of catastrophic miscalculation. Pressure alone did not produce stability. When strategic competition was coupled with sustained diplomatic engagement and structured negotiation, rivalry did not disappear – but it became more predictable and, crucially, more manageable. Today, however, the appetite for engagement has narrowed sharply. Dialogue with Russia is increasingly equated with appeasement. This reaction is understandable in light of Russia’s aggression and documented atrocities. Yet refusing to engage does not strengthen Europe’s position; it entrenches the cycle of distrust that fuels confrontation.
Deterrence and dialogue are not mutually exclusive. Europe must strengthen its capabilities and credibility. But deterrence without engagement risks hardening the spiral of hostility to a point where miscalculation becomes more likely. During the Cold War, the world was fortunate at moments such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and Able Archer 83. We should not assume we will always be as fortunate. A serious shift in Russian behaviour will require sustained Western pressure, in which the United States remains the indispensable actor. But the question is not pressure alone; it is whether Europe is prepared to exercise strategic agency of its own within that broader framework. That, in turn, presupposes clarity about what “Europe” means as a strategic actor – whether it speaks through the European Union, through NATO’s European members, through ad hoc coalitions, or through a looser and more fragmented configuration. If American reliability can no longer be assumed at previous levels, Europe must take responsibility for strengthening its own defence while also preserving and gradually rebuilding the diplomatic instruments necessary to manage confrontation. To remain a bystander in a US–Russia dynamic is to accept strategic irrelevance. Managed competition demands European initiative alongside American leadership.
Four years on, there are no easy answers. But one lesson is clear: deterrence without dialogue deepens insecurity; dialogue without deterrence invites exploitation. The task is to hold both together. Principled dialogue – among Western partners and with Russia – is not weakness but disciplined statecraft. It remains the most responsible way of reckoning with a nuclear-armed adversary, whoever holds power in Moscow.
