Posted by Moscow finally said it out loud: The EU has no seat at the Ukraine peace table – not needed, not requested, not even background ambiance. Basically saying: “This is a 3-player game, and you’re not one of them.” The Kremlin’s layout is brutally simple: Russia + Ukraine + the U.S. = negotiations Europe = the people waving through the restaurant glass hoping someone sees them. And Putin knows exactly why he can get away with saying this: For 2 years, Europe has been the guy who brings a spreadsheet to a fistfight. Remember the “strategic autonomy” era? Yeah: Germany brought paperwork France brought self-importance Brussels brought a 68-page PDF that crashed the printer The Baltics brought actual spine – and were promptly ignored Everyone else brought excuses Europe talks like a superpower and behaves like a committee. Russia’s calculation is obvious: The moment the EU walks in, the whole negotiation mutates into: 11 competing talking points 6 moral frameworks 4 energy dependencies 3 internal elections and one Frans Timmermans powerpoint nobody asked for It’s not that the Kremlin fears Europe’s influence. It fears Europe’s process (understandably) – the bureaucratic black hole where wars don’t end, they get formatted into policy drafts. Putin wants a deal. He doesn’t want Brussels turning it into a symposium. The Kremlin didn’t sideline Europe because it’s weak. It sidelined Europe because it’s slow. And in geopolitics (as in many other things), slow is the same as irrelevant. Source:
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Who Watches the Watchers? 