FP - Analysis
Europe Is Getting Ready to Pivot to Putin
In the face of U.S. bullying, European leaders are considering reaching out to Russia’s president.
European officials came to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January thinking they would find time to discuss with their counterparts from the United States the state of Ukrainian peace talks, a senior European official told Foreign Policy. Instead, they were obliged to focus on avoiding a military conflict with their fellow NATO member over Greenland.
Now, in the aftermath, there are murmurs in Europe of the need for a Plan B. French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have both called for direct talks with Russia as the bloc tries to slowly but surely reduce dependence on the United States, especially in matters essential to its security.
Europeans must “find the right framework to talk properly” with the Russians, Macron said in late December, describing the situation—Europeans in the back seat as the United States leads peace talks between Russia and Ukraine—as “not ideal.”
“It will soon be useful again to talk to Vladimir Putin,” he added. Meloni said she believed “the time has come” to speak to the Russian president. “If Europe speaks to only one of the two sides on the field, I fear that the contribution it can make will be limited.”
António Costa, the president of the European Council that manages consensus between the 27 European Union member states over key issues, told a small group of journalists including FP on January 27 that although he didn’t advocate for a parallel process that could impede U.S.-led talks, the Europeans must be ready to negotiate with Russia if needed.
The shift in European strategy is triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump himself, who has not only left Europeans out of the room while drafting a peace that has a direct bearing on European security. Trump’s 28-point peace proposal for the Russia-Ukraine war offered to reintegrate Russia into the global economy and, according to the Wall Street Journal, promised restoration of the flow of Russian energy supplies to Western Europe.
Experts told Foreign Policy that the first Trump plan appeared to promise Moscow the use of frozen Russian assets lying in Europe for projects beneficial to U.S. and Russian companies—all without prior discussions with Paris, Brussels, or Berlin.
Europe finds itself at a crossroads. It can either relinquish dealmaking with Russia to Trump and have no certainty about the results, or it can adopt a pragmatic approach and reach out to Putin itself despite an all-time low in their relationship.
Europeans may not relish the idea of restoring ties to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine and its continued use of drones to threaten NATO territory, but they recognize that this might be an inescapable outcome of any deal. And they have already dangled the possibility. In their first response to Trump’s 28-point plan, a proposal backed by European powers reworded the clause concerning economic ties and said that Russia will be “progressively” reintegrated into the global economy.
The EU’s economic choke hold via sanctions and the billions of dollars of Russian frozen assets lying in its jurisdiction offer the Europeans key leverage—to strike their own deal. But they prefer it to be a phased and limited relief, a reward in increments for better Russian behavior, rather than a Trump giveaway for his own dealings with Putin.
In addition to seeking favorable terms in a potential deal, trade experts have said that many European countries never fully cut off trade ties with Russia, displaying a grave mismatch between public pronouncements and actual economic policy.
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The EU’s strategy so far has reflected “more of a pause” in business relations with Russia “rather than an exit,” Darshak S. Dholakia—who advises corporations and individuals on international trade laws compliance, including sanctions—told Foreign Policy. As negotiations pick up pace, Dholakia added, “there is a lot of hope in the business community in the U.S. and in Europe that trade ties can be resumed.”
Despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, thousands of European companies never left the country. They cited legal barriers, local employment commitments, and profit margins. According to Leave Russia, a project that tracks foreign businesses in the country, more than 2,300 foreign companies decided to stay in some form, while only 547 have completely exited. Among the EU states, German companies formed the biggest contingent of those that chose to remain or have not yet fully exited business in Russia—377—while just 83 exited. France came in a second, with just 39 fully leaving, while 147 are still operating in some form. More than 140 Italian companies are still operating inside Russia, while just eight have completely exited.
Andrii Onopriienko, the deputy development director at the Kyiv School of Economics and the head of the Leave Russia project, told Foreign Policy that many firms still operating in Russia appear to prioritize “economic continuity over reputational or ethical concerns, often framing decisions in terms of contracts, shareholder interests, and legal complexity rather than political alignment with EU sanctions goals.”
“The trend suggests that commercial incentives continue to outweigh the political imperative to fully disengage,” Onopriienko added.
The EU’s limits have long been on display as it granted various exemptions on existing sanctions and has moved at a snail’s pace in targeting Russian businesses. Since the full-scale war began, the EU has come up with 19 sanctions packages, every time adding more names and upping the pressure, but not quite to the hilt.
“The Europeans started with sanctions on Russian banks, then slowly on energy imports, primarily not to exhaust everything and not to turn Russia into a fully embargoed state in the same sense as Iran and North Korea,” Dholakia said. “It is a bad political look, but the idea was to not isolate Russia to become a pariah state, but to keep them integrated in a way that you can continue to exert some sort of pressure.”
However, the fiscal strain inflicted proved to be an insufficient deterrent, perhaps because Europeans kept funneling billions in the Russian economy. According to Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard, the EU has paid Russia 311 billion euros ($366.7 billion) for imports since 2022 while providing 187 billion euros ($220.5 billion) in aid to Ukraine over the same period of time.
The EU has drastically reduced pipeline gas imports, but liquified natural gas (LNG) imports—which dropped from 20 percent in 2021 to 15 percent a year later—picked up again in 2024 to prewar levels. In 2025, the EU still imported 13 percent of its total LNG from Russia.
The EU also remains dependent on Russian fertilizer imports. Even though Russia’s overall share of the bloc’s fertilizer imports had dropped to 13 percent in the third quarter of 2025, Russia remained the bloc’s second-largest supplier. And Russian steel slabs are still being sold in the EU via local subsidiaries.
According to an investigation by Ukrainska Pravda, Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK)—primarily owned by Russian oligarch Vladimir Lisin—continues to export steel slabs to several European countries. The outlet reported that the company is deeply integrated in Russian defense supply chains and has supplied to at least 22 facilities in Russia’s defense sector, including producers of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles. Neither Novolipetsk Steel nor Lisin have been sanctioned by the EU.
“NLMK may not have been classified as meeting sanctions criteria by the council,” Onopriienko, of the Leave Russia campaign, said. “Large steel producers have economic footprints in EU countries that complicate straightforward sanctions without reciprocal impact on employment and European supply chains.”
An insider at the NLMK who spoke on condition of anonymity told Foreign Policy that the EU was under pressure in countries such as Belgium—where its subsidiary operates—at the prospect of job losses.
Moreover, Russian energy giant Lukoil has thus far escaped a blanket EU ban or asset freeze. “While the U.S. has completely sanctioned Lukoil, the EU has only sanctioned one Lukoil subsidiary, not Lukoil itself,” Dholakia said. “A lot of European countries depend on Lukoil for energy needs, and the EU perhaps did not want to put undue pressure on its constituents and members.”
In response to questions about Lukoil and NLMK, an EU spokesperson said sanctions discussions are confidential and fully in the hands of the member states: “They are adopted by 27 Member States in unanimity. The EU cannot comment on them in public.”
On one hand, France is leading a so-called coalition of the willing along with the United Kingdom and has signed a declaration of intent to deploy troops in Ukraine to monitor future peace. But on the other hand, Framatome, a subsidiary of French energy company EDF, is pushing for a joint venture with TVEL, part of Rosatom—Russia’s state-owned nuclear company—to manufacture nuclear fuel rods in Germany.
“Currently, Rosatom is not part of our sanctions list,” the EU spokesperson added, although the EU has restricted Russia’s access to nuclear-related goods and technology, including by Rosatom. “The commission is committed to phasing out Russian nuclear imports in a gradual, orderly, and secure manner,” EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, told the European Parliament on behalf of the European commission in August.
In short, Europeans have tried to cut off Russian imports but remained dependent. They have been disunited in imposing sanctions and created carve-outs to prioritize local economic concerns instead. Many European businesses prefer to stay connected with Moscow and resume ties. The EU’s ties with Russia won’t go back to the more hopeful era before Russia invaded Ukraine, when Europeans believed that trade could curb Putin’s authoritative tendencies. But as things stand, Europe is already connected to its regional bully, and granting economic concessions may soon be an inevitability.
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