Security at a crossroads: how the US and Russia are pushing for a new European order through "peace" in Ukraine
For the first time in more than 25 years, a NATO ministerial meeting has taken place without the US Secretary of State attending. Washington’s decision was a clear diplomatic message – one the Alliance would rather not spell out.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is currently meeting in Vienna – also without US State Secretary Marco Rubio. This has happened a few times over the past century, and on each occasion it has been a sign of an American démarche. Washington’s official explanations about "scheduling" appear clearly manufactured this time. Everyone has interpreted this decision as a signal from the US.
But there’s another major OSCE member that will also be absent at the ministerial level.
Russia. And its boycott is even more telling.
A multistage special operation was conducted for more than a year to ensure he would be invited to the OSCE meeting. For that purpose, the meeting was even moved, going against tradition, from the more radical Finland, which could have barred entry to Putin’s minister, to the more accommodating Austria.
But despite all these efforts, Moscow announced just a few days before the meeting that Lavrov would not be flying to Vienna and would be sending his deputy instead. Rubio did exactly the same.
The likely significance of these steps does not bode well for Europe. They indicate that the US and Russia are now preparing for a "peaceful settlement" that will destroy the post-war order in Europe and, more broadly, in the world.
They also imply the potential recognition of the occupied Ukrainian territories as "Russian", fulfilling a Kremlin demand that many in Washington are prepared to accept.
Understanding this danger, European ministers in Brussels have made statement after statement about the inadmissibility of such a step. They have also emphasised the need to boost support for Ukraine. And at the same time, so as not to offend Donald Trump, they have refrained from even the slightest criticism of the United States.
An era of wars and redrawn borders in Europe?
"We will not accept any new Yalta."
This was how Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide opened his remarks to journalists at NATO headquarters, without waiting for questions.
Just a few years ago, the reference to "Yalta" would probably have required an explanation for audiences in many countries. Today, the subject is debated so widely, even in the "old Europe" countries, that there is no need to explain that this refers to the conference between the leaders of the USSR, the United States and Great Britain – Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill – who met at Yalta on 4-11 February 1945 to divide up post-war European spheres of influence.
Back in 1945, no one at the meeting was bothered by the fact that five and a half years earlier, it was Stalin, together with Hitler, who had started the Second World War, counting on the division of Europe under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
"Victors’ justice" was the prevailing principle back then.
The result was that not only Germany but post-war Europe as a whole remained divided for over 40 years. Moscow received even more than had been previously agreed with Hitler.
With this in mind, many NATO members are already sounding the alarm. This is exactly what the Norwegian minister was warning about.
Wars always end, but the post-war era that follows often lasts longer than the fighting itself, he explained. The security architecture is shaped not only afterwards but also during a war's closing stages. Europe's task is to keep Ukraine strong, as the continent's security framework is being forged by the war in Ukraine.
His fellow ministers share a similar logic.
And almost everyone at the meeting agrees that one of the most dangerous scenarios would be one in which Russia and other aggressive states feel that Putin, having launched the aggression, will ultimately come out of the war with a "bonus". Particularly dangerous are those outcomes that would completely destroy the current, already fragile remnants of the international security rules that have been formed in the decades since WWII.
"If we recognise Russia’s territorial gains, that will immediately kill international law," Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys emphasised in a conversation with journalists. "And it will mean even more aggression, more threats to Russia’s neighbours – actually, everywhere."
Ukrainian diplomats say this was the position held by everyone who spoke at a recent joint meeting with Ukrainians at the Ukraine-NATO Council. "Our approach and our principles have been supported at every meeting," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said as he left the meeting. "There can be no compromises when it comes to Ukraine's sovereignty, and no border changes by force."
And what about NATO membership for Ukraine?
In fact, there is some good news there too.
Sybiha’s mention of "sovereignty" as a non-negotiable principle includes a "NATO component" as well.
When Steve Witkoff discussed the "peace plan" directly with the Kremlin without even informing the US Department of State, the United States was prepared to promise the Kremlin almost anything, including amending NATO’s statutes and a legal renunciation by Ukraine of the Euro-Atlantic course enshrined in its Constitution.
But as soon as talks began, those ideas ended up in the bin.
There were at least two reasons for this: they were impossible to implement in that form, and the US approach contradicted itself. Trump’s team decided that they would sacrifice Ukraine’s territorial integrity but would defend its sovereignty (in other words, its independence) to save face. So both Kyiv and its partners have been actively communicating to the Americans that Ukraine’s NATO aspirations are part of Ukraine’s sovereignty. And Washington is listening for now. But for how long? No one knows the answer to that.
Especially when you consider the US’s willingness to abandon other principles.
An "unnecessary" alliance for America
The media learned last week that the December meeting of NATO foreign ministers would break a long-standing tradition. The United States of America, the country around which the Alliance has been built over the past decades, would not be sending its minister – Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
NATO officials were quick to downplay the significance of this development.
"Secretary Rubio has already attended dozens of meetings with NATO allies, and it would be completely impractical to expect him at every meeting," Reuters quoted an official NATO representative as saying after news of the US plans broke.
Everything in that statement is untrue.
First, NATO foreign ministerial meetings are far from numerous. They are held only three times a year: in spring (March or early April), early summer (May or June) and early December.
Second, a situation in which the US Secretary of State ignores a ministerial meeting is not merely unusual. It is a real alarm bell, a sign of problems in US-NATO relations.
Remember, the last time this happened was back in December 1999 when Madeleine Albright failed to travel to Brussels for a meeting with other ministers. European Pravda does not know why that was, but it is certain that since then, NATO has done everything possible to prevent such situations from recurring.
(A number of European media outlets recently reported that a ministerial meeting was held without the US in March 2003 due to the US invasion of Iraq. This is incorrect, since the spring meeting that year took place in April 2003, and Secretary of State Colin Powell attended.)
The closest the Alliance came to such a situation again was in 2017, after Donald Trump was elected for his first term. The new Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, suddenly informed the Allies in mid-March that he would miss the April meeting because he was "busy".
Tellingly, instead of meeting the NATO foreign ministers, he had scheduled a visit to Moscow and meetings with the Chinese.
The US denied that this was a "démarche" or anything of the sort, claiming that it was merely a scheduling issue, but the signal was blatantly clear.
Eventually Tillerson conceded and agreed to come, but set a new date just one week later, on 31 March. The rest of the NATO ministers demonstrated unprecedented flexibility, cancelled their plans, and flew to Brussels, where Tillerson delivered a lecture demanding increased defence spending. So the message the US wanted to send to its allies was more than clear.
In 2025, however, there was no talk of concessions.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio firmly notified NATO headquarters that he wouldn’t be attending, but the Alliance would not be left entirely without US participation. Instead of Rubio, his deputy at the State Department, Christopher Landau, travelled to Brussels (although he had no previous dealings with NATO and his diplomatic experience is limited to Mexico).
The agenda was shortened to just half a day, although the December ministerial is usually a two-day event, and Landau attended the North Atlantic Council session only briefly, US media outlets have reported.
But what signal was this meant to send to the Allies?
European ministers, seeking explanations and justification for Rubio’s actions, told journalists that he was "very busy with the peace negotiations", but this is not true. In fact, in Brussels he would have had even more opportunities to discuss what "peace" should look like as the European Allies understand it.
On the contrary, it is far more likely that he had nothing to say regarding the peace talks that Washington is promoting with great enthusiasm and bravado despite lacking confidence they will succeed.
The only signal about which there can be no doubt is that the US is paying less and less attention to NATO. And not only NATO.
Destroying "Helsinki" from Vienna
Of the three annual meetings of NATO foreign ministers, the December one is special, and not only because the ministers take stock of the summit for the first time. It is also important because the Alliance’s meeting is "paired" with the meeting of foreign ministers of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
This security forum was founded back in Soviet times as a platform for dialogue between the US and its allies and the Soviet bloc. Over the past 10 years, since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, it has remained perhaps the only such platform.
US attendance at the OSCE ministerial has been pretty much a given, although there have been exceptions. For example, in 2023 Antony Blinken deliberately left Skopje before Lavrov arrived. However, at the meeting in Malta in 2024, such principled behaviour was no longer observed. Both ministers were present at the same time.
Another example from the not-so-distant past when the US ignored the OSCE was in 2013 – the ministerial meeting in Kyiv, held during the Revolution of Dignity. John Kerry refused to travel to Kyiv. He was replaced by Victoria Nuland, who made a particular point of going out to see the protesters on the Maidan.
In 2025, the OSCE will meet without the US Secretary of State once more, but for a completely different reason.
Both the US and Russian foreign ministers have refused to travel to Vienna, where the meeting is being held.
Lavrov’s absence is a major event in itself.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has been making strenuous efforts to ensure that Lavrov could attend the OSCE meeting and break out of international isolation.
After all, Russia remembers the experience of 2022, when Lavrov was barred from the meeting: Poland was chairing the OSCE that year and refused to issue a visa to the sanctioned leader of Russian propaganda and "diplomacy".
Lavrov was permitted to enter North Macedonia in 2023 and Malta in 2024, but 2025 could have caused issues once again. This year, the chair is Russia’s neighbour, Finland, which understands the danger of Putin’s regime perfectly, and where public opinion could have demanded that the Russian delegation be barred entry to the country.
A "multi-stage special operation" to secure Lavrov’s invitation to the OSCE gathering had been going on for more than a year. The early decision to move the meeting from the capital of Finland – which would otherwise have had to issue Lavrov a visa – to the more "accommodating" Austria was likely linked to this, although Helsinki said there were organisational reasons.
Despite these efforts, a few days before the meeting, Moscow announced that Lavrov would not be flying to Vienna and would send his deputy instead. Lavrov also published a lengthy article in Rossiyskaya Gazeta claiming that the OSCE in its current form is no longer of interest to Russia, that the organisation has allegedly degenerated and turned into an instrument of the West, and that "there is no light at the end of the tunnel".
Moreover, Lavrov publicly mooted the possibility that the OSCE is "collapsing", although he blamed the West for this, of course, not Russia.
In the context of current events, this is more than just an alarm bell.
And this was one of the topics discussed on the sidelines of the NATO meeting.
The OSCE is an organisation that raises countless questions and whose effectiveness is doubtful, but the foundation on which it was created has always justified preserving it. That foundation is the Helsinki Final Act, in which Western and Soviet bloc states agreed on the principle of the inviolability of borders. It is this principle that Ukraine constantly invokes when defending the inadmissibility of recognising Russian-occupied territories as "Russian".
But now it’s not just Russia that’s questioning the principle of the inviolability of borders. It’s also the United States.
Is this the real reason why both countries are "ignoring" the meeting?
The answer to this question will remain open until the peace agreements that Washington and Moscow are working on have been finalised. But the fact that the new security architecture of Europe and the world may not, in the view of some negotiators, include respect for the borders drawn after the Second World War, is a fait accompli.
That is what most worries European ministers, and they openly stated as much in Brussels – albeit unheeded by the US Secretary of State.
Sergiy Sydorenko,
Editor, European Pravda, from Brussels