President Joe Biden, 78, pushed the European Union [EU] to go it alone, no longer seeking the U.S. to lead in developing relations with Russia and China. Before Biden’s June 16 summit with 68-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden drove U.S.-Russian relations to potential military confrontation, dictating how the EU should follow Biden’s lead. EU officials joined the U.S. in slapping the Russian Federation with sanctions March 4 over Putin’s treatment of 44-year-old Russian dissident Alexi Navalny. Navalny, who’s currently serving out a two-year-eight-month sentence in a Russian penal colony, is of no consequence to the U.S. or EU. But somehow the U.S. talked the EU into a wasteful set of sanctions all because the U.S. accused Russia of meddling in U.S. election, something never proven, used by Democrats and the media to get rid of former President Donald Trump.
EU officials are tired letting the outrageous U.S. paranoia over partisan elections dictate foreign policy toward Russia. Biden told the EU that U.S. is back as the leader of the Free World Feb. 4 but so far the EU no longer wants to be led by the U.S. or anyone else. Biden’s summit with Putin accomplished very little than both superpower leaders deciding to tone down the Cold War rhetoric. Biden and his 57-year-old Secretary of State Antony Blinken have slammed Putin and the Russian Federation for the first six months of his presidency until the June 16 Geneva summit. Things got so bad the EU watched Biden call Putin a “soulless killer” March 16, sending U.S.-Russian relations plunging to confrontational stage. EU’s 63-year-old Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and 44-year-old EU Council President Charles Michel got fed up with Biden driving Russian relations into the tank.
Unlike the U.S., the EU buys about 45% of it energy, both petroleum and natural gas from Moscow. EU officials want a stable and predictable relationship with Putin, not one marred by insults and personal attacks. While Biden did well to tone down the rhetoric at the Geneva summit, the EU fell into the U.S. trap, allowing Biden to speak for the EU. Now the EU says it wants its own separate relationship with Russia and the Russian Federation. “We cannot isolate Russia because Russia is a reality that none of use can escape,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytrom Kuleba told Reuters ahead of meeting in Brussels. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pushed NATO for membership, even though Putin has said that any attempt by NATO to include Ukraine or commit to joint military exercises would be a red line. Zelensky and Kuleba would have NATO and the EU get into a war with Russia.
Zelensky has many complaints about Russia, starting before the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that toppled the duly elected, Kremlin-backed government of Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych was driven from Kiev by a CIA-backed coup that changed the government in Kiev. Putin, who was hosting the Sochi Winter Olympics at the time, responded one week later March 1 invading and annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula Since then, Putin was kicked out the G8 March 24, 2014, retaliating for annexing Crimea. But no one in the EU or the U.S. acknowledges that the CIA backed coup had consequences because it threatened Russia’s warm water fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea. Now Zelensky wants NATO membership for Ukraine, knowing the consequences would mean Putin annexing the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, or, worse yet, starting a NATO war to reclaim Ukraine’s lost territory.
No one in the EU or NATO wants the Ukraine scenario to play out, even though they hear Biden making commitments to Ukraine. “We need to motivate Moscow to cease its aggressive actions,” Kuleba said, saying he supported the EU’s new approach. Zelensky has been frustrated with NATO’s could shoulder, not interested in getting into a regional war with Russia over Ukrainian territory. If Zelensky wants the Crimea back, he needs to mend fences with Putin, giving him a long lease to his navy base in Crimea, along with other security guarantees, including that Ukraine would let Russian handle its regional security, not NATO. But Zelensky has aligned himself more with anti-Kremlin forces in the U.S., something the EU realized was poisoning EU-Russian relations. EU now seeks a summit with Putin, to deal with issues unique to the EU, not the U.S. as Biden plays out his domestic politics.
EU has bigger fish to fry than joining U.S. domestic politics built on Biden’s antagonism toward the Russian Federation. When the EU summit meets in Brussels, they’ll be dealing with the lingering Covid-19 pandemic, new variants, and the lack of widespread vaccines. EU officials also plan to deal with its relation to Turkey and potential sanctions on Belarus for the May 26 force-down of a Ryanair flight carrying 26-year-old dissident Roman Protasevich. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko had enough of Protasevich’s subversive activities, staging nationwide protests seeking oust Lukashenko from power. Protasevich found out the hard way like Navalny what happens when you play pro-Western revolutionary. Von der Leyen and Michel decided not to follow Biden but to seek a new relationship with Putin, asking the Russian leader to meet for a summit in the near future.
