Let’s start with the obvious, which, oddly enough, remains largely unnoticed: If the summit of the European Political Community (EPC), a formally informal gathering that brings together the high and mighty of NATO-EU Europe plus friends, was serious about reflecting Europe, then Russia (and, by the way, Belarus, too) would have been invited.

The fact that Moscow is not present is, once you think about it, a striking anomaly, even if Western mainstream media framing has been quite effective at making the obviously strange appear to be the new normal.

Russia’s longstanding exclusion is, of course, also very telling. At the risk of re-stating the obvious, it reflects NATO-EU Europe’s fundamentally flawed, catastrophically costly (including for Ukraine), and very obstinate policy of waging a proxy war against Russia, while using up Ukraine and Ukrainians.

It’s a shame: Europe could have been the ideal framework for preventing, or at least quickly ending, the Ukraine War by offering honest mediation, facilitating real compromise, and, last but not least, helping review and revise a continental security structure destabilized and, in effect, ruined by a reckless NATO expansion based on brazen Western cheating.

Yet, unsurprisingly, NATO-EU Europe has always done the opposite: from being too arrogant to listen to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s clear warning in Munich in 2007, through the foul compromise of the Bucharest summit one year later........

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