Fuck Off, Vladimir. Europe Is Not Your Divorce Settlement.

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Putin reportedly wants NATO’s military presence rolled back to its 1997 positions as part of negotiations over his war against Ukraine.

Of course he does.

I would like my knees from 1997, the cost of living from 1997 and the ability to hear a news bulletin without wanting to throw a fucking chair.

We are all dealing with disappointment, Vladimir.

But most of us manage it without invading a neighbouring country and submitting a wishlist for the security arrangements of an entire continent.

According to reporting on a Russian negotiating paper, Moscow is again demanding a sweeping retreat of NATO forces, an end to further enlargement and restrictions on military activity across a vast area beyond Russia’s borders. The document reportedly sets out an opening position, rather than an agreed settlement.

An opening position.

Like walking into your neighbour’s house, setting fire to the curtains and opening negotiations with:

“First, everyone else on the street needs to disconnect their burglar alarms.”

Your neighbours are not collectible Soviet memorabilia

Let’s examine the fucking entitlement.

Poland exists.

Estonia exists.

Latvia and Lithuania exist.

These are countries full of people, with governments, histories and a rather understandable interest in deciding who helps defend them.

They are not accessories that went missing when the Soviet Union fell apart.

You cannot stand in the Kremlin rattling an old biscuit tin and demanding somebody return your satellite states.

And the central obscenity here is the suggestion that Russia’s sense of security should depend on everyone around it becoming less secure.

We have watched what happens when the Kremlin decides somebody else’s sovereignty is inconvenient.

Why the fuck would the appropriate response be to make its neighbours easier to intimidate?

If the large aggressive dog keeps biting people, you do not make the street safer by banning fences.

You deal with the fucking dog.

Apparently Ukraine needs permission to have a future

The reported demands extend beyond NATO deployments. They include ending Western weapons supplies to Ukraine and allowing Ukraine’s EU membership only if it stays outside the bloc’s common defence policy. Moscow also reportedly wants Britain and France to rule out using their nuclear weapons to protect other European allies.

“Allowing.”

That word alone deserves to be picked up with industrial tongs.

Who the fuck appointed Putin the admissions officer for Europe?

Ukraine should not need a permission slip from the country attacking it to decide its future.

And Britain and France being asked to limit whom they can defend?

A man starts a war and then offers to discuss peace if everyone else first agrees to become less capable of stopping him.

You would laugh at the audacity if the consequences were not buried under rubble.

Trump does not own the continent either

And before this becomes another gathering of powerful men discovering that other people’s countries are negotiable:

Europe is not Trump’s property to trade.

Ukraine is not a difficult asset he inherited.

There is no presidential authority to throw Poland into a package deal because the handshake would look tremendous on television.

Friedrich Merz has supplied the sentence that captures Europe’s confidence in the upcoming Trump–Xi–Putin meeting.

“Please, no surprises.”

Speaking in Dublin, he urged Washington to stay alongside Europe and Ukraine ahead of Trump’s expected talks with Putin in China.

“Please, no surprises.”

Something you say to your hairdresser before she picks up the bleach.

Something you say when the mechanic calls and starts with, “Well, we’ve had a look.”

It should not be necessary when the American president meets two other nuclear powers and your continent is within bargaining distance.

Yet here we are. The German chancellor publicly requesting that an ally return Europe in roughly the condition in which he found it.

The plants are in the living room. Emergency numbers are on the fridge. Please don’t fucking negotiate away the Baltic states.

Merz is right to issue the warning.

But what an indictment that it needs saying.

Europe should not be sitting beside the phone like a nervous homeowner whose estate agent has gone drinking with the burglars.

“Donald. Look at me. We are not selling other people’s countries today.”

And Donald might nod.

Which would reassure absolutely fucking nobody.

A peace agreement needs to protect the people expected to live under it. A photograph protects nobody.

No surprises? Fine. Start with a clear boundary:

Nobody gets to trade away another country’s security and call the receipt a peace agreement.

There is an obvious way to make Russia’s neighbours less nervous

Stop invading them.

There you go.

No expensive consultancy required.

Stop treating their independence as a temporary administrative mistake. Stop insisting their defence arrangements require Kremlin approval.

You want neighbours who do not fear you?

Give them a fucking reason.

Until then, demanding a weaker NATO while waging war against Ukraine is an extraordinary advertisement for why countries might want NATO protection.

Putin wants to turn the clock back.

The rest of Europe is entitled to tell him where to shove the batteries.

Today’s sour thought

Amazing how the man who set the house on fire has arrived to negotiate the removal of everyone else’s smoke alarms.