Russia and Europe

Russia and the European states of NATO and the European Union are in a confrontation short of war. It is fought with sanctions and counter-sanctions, with soldiers moved to the border on both sides, with sabotage and drones that each side attributes to the other, and with the near-complete end of a trade in energy that had bound them for fifty years. The war in Ukraine is its centre, but it would not end with that war. Each side now plans on the assumption that the other may attack it within a few years.

Where it stands · September 2026

The European Union has blamed Russia for a drone attack at Leipzig and is preparing new sanctions. Norway has seized a Russian ship against a Ukrainian compensation claim. Germany is ordering soldiers to its new brigade in Lithuania, and Finland has joined France's offer to extend its nuclear deterrent to European partners. The American Congress has passed a sweeping sanctions bill. The Kremlin says there are no grounds for better relations with the European Union for now.

What the dispute is about

The order of 1991. The Soviet Union dissolved, its allies and then three of its own republics joined NATO and the European Union, and the alliance's border moved a thousand kilometres east. Europeans regard that as the free choice of free nations. Russia regards it as a settlement imposed in its moment of weakness, and says so.

Whose security. Each side says its own measures are defensive and reads the other's as preparation. The Europeans rearm because Russia invaded a neighbour. Russia points to the rearmament as proof of what it said all along.

Whether there is anything left to trade. Gas, oil, banking and travel tied the two together and were meant to make war unthinkable. Almost all of it has been cut, by sanctions and by sabotage, and neither side now has much to lose from the other's displeasure.

How each side explains it

Moscow's account

When Germany was reunited, Russia was told NATO would not move one inch east. It then moved to Russia's border, bombed Yugoslavia without a UN mandate, tore up the arms control treaties, and promised membership to Ukraine and Georgia. Russia proposed a common security treaty in 2008 and again in 2021 and was ignored both times. Europe has since cut itself off from Russian energy on Washington's orders and is ruining its own industry to do it; it has frozen and now means to seize Russia's reserves, which is theft. With America looking for peace, Europe has become the war party. It is rearming Germany, of all countries, and talks openly of striking Kaliningrad. Russia has no plan and no reason to attack NATO. Tales of Russian sabotage are produced without evidence to justify the spending.

In our coverage

NATO encirclement/provocation is the aggressor; Russia responds defensively →613 headlines
Covered by:TASS (EN) · Lenta.ru · TASS · Gazeta.ru · Izvestia · RT
Sanctions on Russia are ineffective and backfire on the West →844 headlines
Covered by:TASS (EN) · RT · Kommersant · OilPrice · TASS · Gazeta.ru

What each account leaves out

Moscow's leaves out that its neighbours asked to join NATO because they feared exactly what happened to Ukraine; that Finland and Sweden gave up generations of neutrality because of the invasion; and that European courts have convicted people of sabotage on evidence of Russian handlers.

The European governments' leaves out the assurances of 1990 and the warnings they heard for thirty years; their own part in the wars in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya, which Russia cites; that their combined military spending was several times Russia's before the rearmament began; and that the largest act of sabotage against European infrastructure, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, is attributed by German prosecutors to Ukrainians.

The dissenters' leaves out the discounted Russian oil and gas their own countries still receive.

The ledger

Russia

Wanted: a say over the security of the states on its western border, and its old place in Europe's economy.
Did: used force in Ukraine and pressure everywhere else.
Gained: a Europe that takes it seriously as a danger.
Paid: its best market, its reserves, a NATO twice as long on its border, and a Europe united against it as it had not been since 1949.

The European states

Not one Europe: the east wanted this firmness for twenty years, the west came to it in 2022, and a minority still rejects it.

Did: sanctioned, armed Ukraine, began to rearm.
Gained: unity and a purpose.
Paid: cheap energy, part of their industry, and a security bill their budgets were not built for.

Words in dispute

Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.

enlargement / expansion, encirclement
sanctions / illegal restrictions
frozen assets / stolen assets
hybrid war / unproven accusations
deterrence / militarisation
the collective West
Russophobia
appeasement