Why Is Europe So Hostile to Russia?
By now, it’s clear that Europe’s relationship with Russia is not just strained - it’s deeply emotional, it's fear over reason. Even as the war in Ukraine drags on, many European leaders seem more determined than ever to keep up the pressure, refusing serious peace efforts and doubling down on military support. But why? What lies beneath this hardened stance?
Some of it is history. Russia is a very, very big country that throws an enormous shadow over Europe. Russia has loomed large in Europe’s past—sometimes as a saviour (against Napoleon, against Hitler), sometimes as a threat (the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia). For Eastern Europe especially, fear of Moscow runs deep. In the Baltic states and Poland, memories of occupation and repression haven’t faded.
But history doesn’t fully explain the near-religious intensity of modern Russophobia. This feels like more than strategy—it’s ideology. The EU has spent decades building a liberal identity around “values”—human rights, democracy, individual freedoms. Russia, under Putin, offers a different model: sovereignty over globalism, tradition over liberalism, state power over woke identity politics. To many in Brussels, though Russia, since the time of Catherine the Great, has been trying to join Europe, but to Europe, this isn’t just any other membership application, it’s a betrayal of fundamental values, just like Turkey's application.
There’s also denial. Europe knows it can’t fight Russia alone. It relies on America, even as Washington is shifting its focus to to Russia as friend and China as commercial threat only. But Europe admitting that might mean reconsidering this war, even negotiating. And that's unthinkable to leaders who have sold this conflict as a battle of good vs. evil: you cannot sup with the devil.
Not all Europeans buy it. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has called for peace talks. Populist parties across Europe, from Germany to Italy, question the point of endless confrontation. But they’re shouted down as Putin puppets, even when they’re just pointing out that Europe is poorer, weaker, and more divided than it was before.
In truth, Europe’s hostility toward Russia may say more about Europe’s own fears... of irrelevance, of division, of a future it can’t control... than it does about Russia itself.
Until that changes, the war - and the destruction it causes - will go on... until Ukraine's total defeat.
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