Editorial|Editorial
At the summit in Prague, a new European grouping is thinking about ways to counter Vladimir Putin and Russia’s military policy. The European Union is also in a hurry to strengthen itself as a geopolitical actor and make new friends.
Before attack on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to offer Europe a new division of interests. Now he gets it. The relationship between Russia and the West no longer exists, and there is also no relationship with the countries that Putin considered underdogs.
Ukraine already dived into the embrace of the European Union and NATO.
All those who can are looking around Russia. At the same time, the European Union is in a hurry to strengthen itself as a geopolitical actor and make new friends. To strengthen the Western alliance, the EU’s traditional enlargement policy is a difficult and wrong tool, and that is partly why French President Emmanuel Macron launched an initiative on the European political community in his Europe Day speech last May.
The new grouping born from Macron’s idea is meeting the EU presidency for the first time today, Thursday, in the Czech capital, Prague. In addition to the leaders of the EU countries, 17 non-EU countries will participate in a kind of anti-Putin summit.
The EU candidate countries and important partners are included, from Liz Truss’s Britain to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey. The West’s conflict with Russia makes the EU’s relationship with Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan strategically important. We don’t agree on everything, but at least the candidate country Serbia should be put behind the EU sanctions against Russia.
Company uniting Europe in support of Ukraine is tough. At least it was successful that only two countries were absent – Russia and Belarus. When Russia returns to the Soviet Union, the EU’s relationship with former Soviet sub-countries changes radically. Within the EU, the mental division into new and old member states is disappearing. Poland and the Baltics have always taken the Union’s hardest line against Russia, but now the political influence of this former Eastern Bloc in the Union is growing.
The European political community has now been established to bring together a Europe without Russia. On Friday, the leaders of the EU countries must show their own unity against Russia, when the meeting season continues with the EU summit.
The editorials are HS’s positions on a current topic. The articles are prepared by HS’s editorial department, and they reflect the journal principle line.
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