If Europe’s leaders don’t commit fully to Ukraine, the Kremlin won’t stop at Kyiv. But with our backing the despot can be defeated

Garry Kasparov

Published 03 June 2026

Recently we have been hearing talk, from European quarters, of a desire to sideline Donald Trump in the ongoing negotiations with Putin over the war in Ukraine. I have heard no corresponding talk, however, of how the goals of said negotiations will change in turn.

For Trump, negotiations have always been about extracting financial gains from adversaries, even when it has meant forcing concessions from allies. What will European leaders be trying to achieve from negotiations with Putin? What is the point of taking over talks being led by a thoroughly corrupt and morally bankrupt administration, being conducted with a bloodthirsty authoritarian regime?

Europe has long understood that the war that continues to rage in Ukraine is not a war just for Ukrainian territory; it is a war with all of Europe. A war to decide whether we live in a world where freedom and democracy are the reigning values, or a world in which might makes right. There can be no compromise, no negotiated settlement, in such a war.

Moreover, this kind of war is not decided on narrow, technical parameters. Conceding any amount of land in Ukraine will just abate the war-hungry machine of Putin’s Russia for some period of time, before it keeps chugging on, past the boundaries of Nato, into the Baltics, and closer yet to the doors of Europe’s Western democracies.

Where do we think the one million young Russian soldiers deployed to Ukraine will go when that engagement ends? Do we think, angry, disillusioned, and traumatised by war, they stand a chance of being assimilated back into Russian society?

Of course not. They will be sent to the next battlefield. Putin’s regime can no longer survive except by being mobilised for war; he has turned the country’s entire economic, political, and cultural apparatus toward that purpose. Without war as a justification, Putin has no basis for staying in power (or for staying alive).

In addition to this longstanding conceptual impossibility of negotiations, the tide is turning, practically, on the battlefield. All recent indicators show that Putin is in a bad position, that Ukraine now has the advantage. Putin’s recent visit to China was not a success; Xi seems unwilling to continue paying it forward for Russian gas and thereby partially footing the bill for Putin’s military adventures.

Despite the best efforts of Russia’s propaganda machine, the continued economic and social toll of the war continues to mount with every passing month; and that toll gets harder and harder to conceal from residents of the cosmopolitan city centres of the country, who have so far largely been shielded from the sacrifices that the distant, rural districts have had to make.

Putin is not on a trajectory to win. Ukraine has demonstrated an astonishing resilience. Instead of caving under a brutal campaign to wear it down, it has shifted the momentum so that now, it is a matter of waiting Putin out. Restarting negotiations now only helps the prospective loser. And it’s not just a matter of buying him time. Engaging in talks with Putin sends a clear signal of Europe’s fear, and only gives him impetus to harden his position further.

Many European leaders have already acknowledged these basic realities. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, has explicitly warned that the EU must take Moscow’s multiple provocations against Nato states seriously. Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has openly acknowledged that any talks with Putin are bound to end in failure.

And yet, European politicians continue to act in ways that I imagine must create severe cognitive dissonance. They continue to plan for negotiations, as though such talks will lead to a real diplomatic solution. They continue to maintain diplomatic relations with a regime that has annexed sovereign territory and committed war crimes, instead of taking the obvious first step of recalling their ambassadors from Moscow.

They look the other way as the regime evades sanctions – we are now on the 21st tranche, and counting – allowing Russian rockets made virtually entirely of sanctioned components to rain down on Ukrainian cities. Europe is apparently not ready to stop conducting business as usual, politically or financially. Many of its leaders are now talking the talk but decidedly not walking the walk.

I have said before and I will say again – Ukraine must win. There is simply no other option for the future of Europe, and for the future of the free world. More than ever, the fate of Europe is a proxy for the future of democracy, as America is coopted by alternately corrupt or impotent administrations.

Europe’s leaders have a real opportunity – for which Ukrainians have paved the way with their incredible bravery and resilience – to intervene on the right side of history. Not to advance party interests narrowly, or the national good, but to take action in defence of the ideas that define the European experiment.

It takes courage to do the right thing instead of passing the buck to a political successor. But even if they can get away with it for a little while longer, at a point not long in the future, the political costs of inaction will become sharply steeper than the alternatives. War always has a cost, including a human cost, and Europe has been afraid to pay it. But the numbers on the bill keep going up.

Imagine the reality that Ukrainians have long since accepted as the price they must pay for freedom: daily rocket and drone attacks, living in a perpetual state of high alert. I doubt this reality will be so readily taken on by the residents of Berlin, Prague, and Vienna, or that they will reward the political leaders who brought them to that point.

If thinking about their future place in history does not spur action, I encourage European lawmakers instead to consider the very immediate political calculations that are imminent. The way to avoid such unsavoury choices is by committing to Ukrainian victory – calling off negotiations, squeezing Russia’s military machine, and giving Ukraine everything it needs to push it over the finish line – today.

Glory to Ukraine!

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Garry Kasparov is a campaigner for democracy in Russia. He is a chess grandmaster who was ranked the world’s number one player for a record 255 months