“Putin is not going to stop until he is stopped. Putin only understands strength.” – With this stark sentence, former US Vice-President Mike Pence condensed the meaning of a historical lesson that the West seems to forget in recurring waves. In the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine, it is neither accommodating diplomacy nor downward compromise that guarantees peace, but deterrence, steadfastness, a willingness to resist.

The logic of force

Russian foreign policy over the past twenty years leaves no room for doubt: from Grozny to Tbilisi, from Donetsk to Kyiv, Vladimir Putin has shown that he interprets every Western concession as a sign of weakness. The language he understands – and reacts to – is not that of multilateral conferences or prospectlessly evoked peace talks, but that of force. It is no coincidence that after the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and European ambiguities over energy sanctions, the Kremlin took the opportunity to expand its sphere of influence with a large-scale invasion.

The risk of diplomatic illusion

Pence’s sentence should be engraved on the desks of those in Europe who keep repeating that ‘we need more dialogue with Moscow’. Not because dialogue is in itself to be rejected, but because, in the current context, it only means offering time and margins to an aggressor that has no intention of backing down. Thinking of stopping the war with territorial concessions or the abandonment of Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations is tantamount to handing Putin the prize of his strategy: the demonstration that violence pays.

The Budapest Memorandum betrayed

A particularly bitter warning comes from 1994, when Ukraine, having just emerged from the Soviet orbit, agreed to give up the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees. With the Budapest Memorandum, Russia, the US and the UK solemnly pledged to respect its territorial integrity and sovereignty. Those signatures were supposed to enshrine a new European order based on trust and cooperation. Today we know that that agreement has been completely disregarded: Moscow has not only broken its promise, but has turned Ukraine into a prime target of its own imperial ambitions. Even the other signatories, while supporting Kyiv, were unable to prevent Russian aggression. The Budapest Memorandum affair demonstrates that the force of international guarantees is null and void if not backed by real deterrence: peace, in other words, does not rest on paper but on the concrete commitment of states to defend those who suffer aggression.

The European choice

If the European Union really wants to be a geopolitical player and not just an economic space, it must take note of this reality: Ukraine also resists for us. The freedom, the security of our democracies, the stability of the continent depend on the ability to support Kyiv with adequate military, economic and political means. This is not a duty ‘out of altruism’, but an investment in our own political and strategic survival.

History teaches us that aggressive regimes are not appeased by half-measures. In the 20th century we saw it with Hitler and Stalin; today we see it with Putin. Mike Pence’s words are a warning: the Kremlin knows no pauses, no compromises. It knows only strength. It is up to us to decide whether to exercise it or suffer the consequences.