Editorial – A spectacle that pleases Putin

While Russia appears to be consolidating its military position in Ukraine, the West is failing to quickly and silently mend internal cracks. What’s more: the differences are played out before the eyes of the public and deliberately staged. This is the current situation in the fight against Vladimir Putin’s aggression when the 27 EU heads of state and government meet on Monday for the third time since the outbreak of the Ukraine war.

The EU has been failing for weeks because of an oil embargo that is to be gradually implemented against Russia. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban likes to play the role of the blocker. However, the EU Commission willingly prepared the stage for it by prematurely announcing such an embargo three weeks ago as a quasi-decided matter, without, however, ensuring the necessary consensus among the member states in advance. Orban could not have received a finer gift, and since then he has never missed an opportunity to voice his concerns and conditions. Especially since he has just been given a solid majority again by the Hungarian voters.

The ever tougher sanctions are supposed to hit Russia, but of course the consequences are also being felt painfully in numerous EU countries – and by no means only in the form of massively increased energy prices and correspondingly high inflation. It would be all the more important that the political elites of the EU speak with one voice and act as one in the face of the challenge they face with the Russian war of aggression.

But the western defense alliance NATO also fails because of this compulsory exercise. Instead of celebrating the accession request of the two decades-long non-aligned Nordic states Sweden and Finland as proof of their own superiority and implementing it as quickly as possible, it is here the ally Turkey, whose domestically on the defensive President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is using the expansion project to raise his profile.

The strong sayings may primarily serve the purpose of playing the strong man at home, but in their political consequences they seem as ordered by Vladimir Putin. Or how else should one interpret interview passages like this: “As long as Tayyip Erdogan is at the head of the Turkish state, we cannot say ‘yes’ to NATO membership for countries that support terrorism.”

The president of NATO member Turkey, a key geostrategic state on Europe’s south-eastern flank, does not appear to share his partners’ conviction that the alliance is facing the greatest security and military challenge in decades. There is no other way to explain the publicly staged dissent, which only serves the interests of the Kremlin.

On its 95th day, the return of war in Europe threatens to become part of a new normal. If that is indeed the case, the most dangerous phase of this war is just beginning.

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