ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the European Union's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine from February 2022 to the eve of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, situating it within the longer trajectory of the post-Cold War European order. It traces how, despite the absence of a qualitative leap in political integration, the EU mobilized an unprecedented combination of political, economic, and military instruments to support Ukraine and to reinforce its own strategic posture. The chapter reconstructs the structural roots of the crisis in the EU–Russia relationship, examining two decades of contested attempts to anchor Russia within a liberal continental framework, and the gradual erosion of this project amid diverging geopolitical visions. In exploring the EU's measures after February 2022 – ranging from sanctions and macro-financial assistance to the activation of the European Peace Facility, the deepening of industrial cooperation, and the acceleration of enlargement – the chapter shows that the war acted as a transformative rupture rather than as a catalyst consolidating trends already underway. The Strategic Compass, initiatives in energy security, and renewed debates on institutional reform further illustrate a process of adaptive consolidation rather than systemic re-foundation. While member states have remained divided in their strategic cultures, threat perceptions, and domestic constraints, the Union has nonetheless laid new foundations for meaningful future advancements in security, defence, and enlargement. These developments reveal the resilience of intergovernmental dynamics, the limits of transformative integration in wartime, and the emerging contours of a more geopolitical EU navigating the collapse of the post-Cold War settlement.
