Two weeks into Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the outcome of Vladimir Putin’s war remains in the balance, remarkably so. Uncertainty on this scale was not predicted on either side or by outside observers, all of whom expected a quicker, more decisive conflict. Putin’s miscalculations have instead catalysed new and dynamic factors that are still vigorously playing out – among them more effective Ukrainian resistance and stronger western unity – while exposing significant Russian incompetence.
One factor, though, is as old and indestructible as the continent itself. When the dust of the Ukraine war settles in some way, and it will, the other nations of Europe will need to find an appropriate new form of relationship with Russia. This war, after all, is in large part the result of the failure of the old relationships that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. So it is not too soon to begin to consider what can be put in its place that, at the very least, makes a sustainable European peace between Russia and the liberal democracies more likely than another terrible war.
