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Between Davos and Munich
In a few weeks, the theme of the 56th World Economic Forum will have slipped off the front pages, though references to “Trump in Davos”, “Carney in Davos”, “Zelenskyy in Davos” and the rest will remain. Attention will increasingly shift to Munich 2026, and in particular the 62nd Munich Security Conference on 13–15 February. As Wolfgang Ischinger, the conference’s long-time leading figure, remarked in Davos, security questions are better answered at a security conference; Davos is, after all, an economic forum. Even so, this year’s Davos was largely about global risks driven by the rapid pace of geopolitical change.
Three features stood out. Geopolitics in “variable geometry” became central, pushing parts of the economic agenda into the background. Speeches by Donald Trump, Mark Carney and Volodymyr Zelenskyy set the tone and shaped the content of discussion. And Ukraine and European security remained priority themes, discussed as one interconnected problem: without Ukraine, there is no security for Europe.
There were also substantial debates on AI, labour and new technologies, which visibly edged out the more familiar Davos topics of sustainable development and climate policy. Judgements about WEF 2026 are, and will remain, polarised — as usual. It is hard to find a single phrase that captures what happened in the Swiss Alps. Events of this kind, including the Munich gathering in three weeks, are annual mirrors in which those seen as the global elite come to take stock of themselves.
Everyone doing the splits
When I first heard the Davos 2026 slogan — “The Spirit of Dialogue” — I thought the organisers, not only Putin or Trump, had their own problems of perception. Imagine the scene. A European home is broken into: on one side, a killer; on the other, a robber. What does the homeowner need to do? Defend the house, with force if necessary. What does he actually do? He holds up the Criminal Code in one hand and the Bible in the other, showing each intruder a different text, convinced — wrongly — that this will change their intention to kill and to steal. The outcome of such “defence” is obvious.
Some may believe the Bible has had an effect on Donald Trump, and that he settled for NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s suggestion of taking small patches of Greenland for new military bases rather than the entire “chunk of ice”. That is wishful thinking. Trump has paused, perhaps deciding that salami can be sliced thinly, prolonging the spectacle of European leaders forced into an impossible posture: how to protect Denmark from the United States, while avoiding retaliation — in the form of tariffs — from the US president.
One participant at the forum, Carlo Masala of the Bundeswehr University in Munich, put it starkly: nobody expected NATO might fall apart not because Russia attacked a member state, but because the Alliance’s leading power — the United States — acted in a way that tore it from within. Claims on Greenland, in this reading, already encourage Russia to be bolder in NATO’s “soft underbelly”: the eastern Baltic Sea. And as Davos drew to a close, Russia staged a demonstrative five-hour flight over the Baltic by two Tu-22M3 long-range bombers escorted by fighters — over what is, in effect, an EU and NATO sea. The Kremlin is signalling that after “unknown drones”, whose Russian origin states in the region have struggled to identify clearly, there could come fully identifiable strategic aircraft carrying weapons — openly, without concealment — if the moment arrives. The subtext is also clear: do not interfere with our tankers and our oil; do not follow the example set by the United States. More on that below.
During Davos, the Ukrainian House showed a tightly produced two-minute video, made in the style of a Hollywood blockbuster, imagining a Shahed drone strike on the quiet Swiss resort town itself. It made a strong impression on European visitors. Shaheds are unlikely to reach Switzerland, but reaching parts of the nearer euro area is not hard to imagine.
Mark Carney’s speech, as Canada’s prime minister, was widely welcomed as a direct rebuttal of Trumpism. Yet there was also pointed criticism of the practical steps his government has taken. A deal with China, one speaker said, was “idiotic and unreasonable”. That critique is heard inside Canada as well. Ariana Gic, a prominent Canadian analyst of Ukrainian background, put it this way: economic diversification and growth should not come at the price of partnering with a “devil” that harms Canada and the order it values. She argued that Germany learned this lesson painfully through the consequences of Angela Merkel’s Wandel durch Handel — “change through trade” — in relation to buying Russian gas.
Carney may nevertheless be operating on a Chinese maxim: to confront the near adversary, align with the distant one. If Trump has shown aggressive intent towards Canada, Carney may see closer engagement with China as a manoeuvre. In this reading, it is not so much a deliberate choice of alliance with an authoritarian power as an action taken under pressure, against the backdrop of Europe’s hesitancy in transatlantic affairs. The transatlantic relationship is not only Europe and the US; it is also Europe and Canada. Here, the point is that Europe is not acting with sufficient agency.
Inside the EU, member states are pulling in different directions. One group is oriented towards building a European defence alliance — effectively those who describe themselves as a “coalition of the determined”, yet still cannot cross a threshold of hesitation to demonstrate genuine leadership in Europe. The countries in that category include major European states inside the EU (Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark) and also the UK and Norway outside it. Another set prefers to remain under the American umbrella and avoid sudden moves, hoping matters will somehow settle. Italy, Romania, Poland and Finland are described as trying to steady an increasingly unstable transatlantic relationship. In this picture, Mark Rutte personifies the approach: by flattering Trump, he seeks to preserve an Allied unity that, in this view, no longer truly exists. And there are also those who continue to call for “dialogue with Putin” and a return to Russia — cheap oil, cheap gas, and business as usual; the behaviour of Viktor Orbán, Robert Fico and Andrej Babiš is left as self-explanatory.
Watching such a picture, the Kremlin scarcely needs to stop celebrating. Europe’s prize is walking into traps that Moscow has laid over recent years: not only the lure of cheap energy, but also the largest trap of all — “peace in Europe”, as defined by the Kremlin’s template and the December 2021 ultimatum to NATO: pack up and go back to the 1997 lines. The first step, in that logic, is a “peace settlement in Ukraine” — meaning stopping support for Ukraine and helping the aggressor end the war on its own terms.
The so-called “Ukrainian question”
Europe, awakened in the 12th year of Russian aggression yet still half-asleep, continues to use softened language. Many analysts, however, state plainly that the real task is to curb Russia’s aggression — not only its war against Ukraine, but its war against Europe — and that this must be done from within Europe. Russia has, like in the Hollywood thriller Alien, grown a parasitic monster inside Europe, paralysing Europe’s will from within. European politicians still speak and act within narratives promoted by Moscow and Beijing: the “Ukrainian question”, “peace settlement” — rather than focusing on imposing a military defeat on the aggressor so as to immobilise it and strip it of the ability to continue armed aggression.
In substance, the “Ukrainian question” has already become a European one. This is acknowledged at political level; the right words are spoken, but action is missing. Where are the Tauruses? Germany can supply as many interceptor missiles as it likes, but Russia increases production and use. It is not enough to shoot down the arrows as they multiply; the archer must be stopped, and the stockpile destroyed.
The list of shortcomings could go on. The central point, however, is this: if full support is impossible because of fear of a direct clash with Russia, then at least what is within reach should be done. Zelenskyy’s point in Davos was clear: the aggressor continues to earn oil revenues despite sanctions.
Sanctions
Unlike Davos 2024 — where there was extensive talk of tightening economic pressure on Russia, up to and including ideas of full economic isolation — this year that topic surfaced far less often. The US position, which treats the threat of severe sanctions as leverage, may have influenced the organisers. Behind closed doors, however, the issue was discussed. On oil, a possible step would be to bar the import into G7 countries of refined products from states that import even small quantities of Russian crude. Another would be to impose tariffs on such imports in a Trump-style manner. This would hit India and Turkey particularly hard, because they supply the EU with refined products made from Russian oil, which in turn amounts to indirect subsidisation of Russia’s war.
Despite Russian official bravado that everything is fine in the oil sector, the reality is different: Russia is struggling to sustain the budgetary demands of the war. A conditional coefficient measuring how far oil revenues cover defence spending has, for the first time in modern Russian history, exceeded 100 per cent. A comparative analysis for 2012–2025 by the Strategy XXI Centre shows that in 2012–2022 this coefficient was between 27.9 and 56.8 per cent, while in 2023–2025 it rose steadily. This reflects a scissors effect: shrinking oil revenues alongside sharply rising war expenditure. For 2025, the averaged estimates are $157bn in oil and petroleum export revenues and $160bn in military spending, yielding a ratio of 102 per cent.
Oil is not the only source of war finance, but it remains the locomotive with a perpetual motion machine inside. The outlook for 2026 is that revenues will either stay close to last year’s level or, more likely, fall further as oil prices trend down. At the same time, Western experts estimate Russian military spending at at least $167bn. The scissors therefore open wider — and this should be exploited.
What can be done? Baltic and North Sea states can act decisively to remove sanctioned tankers from the oil circulation, by denying them access to the Danish Straits zone for further loading of Russian oil. The US and the UK, and in recent days France, show that such steps are feasible. In parallel, Ukraine’s Defence Forces should continue their own “sanctions actions” at sea, as they have already demonstrated. The combined effect could turn the “coalition of the determined” into something real — not through statements and memoranda, but through actions that cut the perpetuum mobile of Russian aggression.
Back to security
Expert discussion in Davos increasingly pointed to the need for Europe to form a new alliance — not within NATO, and not within the EU — because member-state interests are diverging and these structures lose effectiveness in crises. Greenland illustrates the point. Yet the practical problem remains: Europe’s dependence on US-origin systems — missiles for Patriot air defence, ballistic missile capabilities, and other tools for which European equivalents are absent or still embryonic.
At the same time, Trump is bargaining with Putin while using both Ukraine and Europe as leverage. The Davos meeting between the presidents of Ukraine and the US was another attempt to push Kyiv towards accepting what it cannot accept. This time the inducement was $800bn for post-war reconstruction. The demand is that Zelenskyy hands over a “small piece of Donbas” in the name of Ukraine’s “peace and prosperity”. It is no coincidence that Trump again repeated claims about Putin’s readiness for peace. In reality, Russia does not need that piece of Donbas as such; it needs a breach in Ukraine’s defensive lines created by an ordered withdrawal, opening the way after an operational pause of a few months. Russia would then be able to accuse the other side of violating any “peace agreement” and use that as a pretext. The $800bn is money that does not exist; the promise is a con trick.
A similar logic applies to Trump’s “Peace Council”. This is a commercial project in US interests dressed up as an international organisation, almost as though it were a new UN.
Security guarantees are equally ambiguous. Those involved in the process claim the draft contains “hard wording” to make it difficult for the US to walk away from commitments. The question is what leverage exists over the US under Trump.
Putin once said the streets of Leningrad taught him the principle “strike first”. That logic needs to be turned against Russia. It should be done asymmetrically: act preventively and quietly, striking where Russia does not expect it. Peacetime for Europe has ended; wartime has arrived. Europe must act proactively rather than reactively, together with Ukraine. There must be readiness to “chop off the predator’s paws” before it attacks. Self-restraint within a false anti-escalation model leads to self-destruction.
Ukrainian officers and soldiers who spoke in Davos were among the most persuasive voices — men who have been through the war and remain in it. They were thanked not only by Ukrainians in Davos but also by Europeans and Americans, including General Keith Kellogg and a group of members of Congress.
Finally: before Trump’s arrival, large English slogans appeared on the mountain slopes, trampled into the snow: “No king!” and “No imperialism!” Europe is trying to assert itself while Ukraine bleeds, holding back the onslaught from the east. Lieutenant Colonel Kyrylo Berkal, an Azov serviceman whose speeches were among the strongest, used the word “onslaught” as description, not decoration.
Whether Europe’s political class has genuinely rethought reality over the past year will become clear soon in Munich.
This opinion piece was first published by zn.ua.
