Europe | Teetering at the summit

Russia and the West meet for a crucial week of diplomacy

Even as they talk, both sides are preparing for war

AS RUSSIAN TANKS poured west, heading from Vladivostok on the Pacific coast to the border with Ukraine, American diplomats headed east. Not since the Balkan wars of the 1990s has Europe seen a week of such crucial security summitry. On January 10th American diplomats met Russian ones in Geneva. Two days later the NATO-Russia Council convened in Brussels. On January 13th the diplomats headed to Vienna for a gathering of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), a group of 57 countries.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Teetering at the summit”

Beware the bossy state

From the January 15th 2022 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Europe

Friedrich Merz

Germans are growing cold on the debt brake

Expect changes after the election

Pope Francis in Rome, Italy

The Pope and Italy’s prime minister tussle over Donald Trump

Giorgia Meloni was the only European leader at the inauguration


A knight on a horse facing the barel of a gun with electronic pattern on it.

Europe faces a new age of gunboat digital diplomacy

Can the EU regulate Donald Trump’s big tech bros?


Ukrainian scientists are studying downed Russian missiles

And learning a lot about sanctions-busting

Russian pilots appear to be hunting Ukrainian civilians

Residents of Kherson are dodging murderous drones