The evolving confrontation between Europe and Russia is not a temporary crisis but a long-term condition that must be managed. More than four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, European governments have mobilised substantial military, economic, and political resources. Yet these measures have not coalesced into a coherent strategy for governing a prolonged and adversarial relationship with Moscow beyond the war.
European policy has largely relied on cost imposition: military support for Ukraine, economic sanctions, and strengthened deterrence. While necessary, this approach rests on uncertain assumptions about Russia’s responsiveness to sustained pressure. Moscow has demonstrated resilience, military regeneration capacity, and a willingness to absorb significant costs. At the same time, a multipolar environment and shifting U.S. priorities limit Europe’s ability to rely on systemic isolation or classical containment.
The central task is not to resolve rivalry in the near term, but to shape it deliberately – preserving political control, managing escalation, and sustaining European unity over time. Alexander Graef
This report by ELN Senior Policy Fellow Alexander Graef argues that managing sustained rivalry with Russia requires three interdependent elements:
- Strengthen European political agency
- Institutionalise flexible leadership formats (E3/E5/E6) and anchor them within EU and NATO frameworks to combine speed with legitimacy.
- Establish a permanent EU channel for Russia policy (e.g., Special Envoy or EEAS steering group) to reduce fragmentation and ensure continuity across electoral cycles.
- Design sanctions for leverage, preserving conditional relief options in economically meaningful civilian sectors while excluding renewed strategic dependencies.
- Use the wider geopolitical arena strategically by engaging states in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia whose sovereignty is shaped by Russian power.
- Make deterrence more credible and European-led
- Develop a phased roadmap to reduce reliance on key U.S. enablers, prioritising long-range strike, integrated air and missile defence, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), strategic lift, space assets, and command-and-control.
- Anchor leadership in accountable European coalitions to align force development and burden-sharing.
- Integrate European nuclear deterrence more systematically into alliance planning, consultation, and signalling.
- Build escalation-control capacity
- Compartmentalise deterrence and selective engagement along the border zone.
- Reintroduce structured military-to-military communication for risk reduction.
- Invest in escalation-management infrastructure.
- Promote strategic education to build a durable European strategic culture.
The central task is not to resolve rivalry in the near term, but to shape it deliberately – preserving political control, managing escalation, and sustaining European unity over time.
Read the policy recommendations
The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions articulated in this policy brief represent the views of the author rather than the European Leadership Network or its members. The ELN aims to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time, to further its charitable purposes.
Image: Alamy, ZUMA Press
