EDITORIAL: The Netherlands reaches for the chequebook while Europe fights over Putin’s phone

The Netherlands pays. Europe fights over the telephone receiver.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanks The Hague for €500 million in military aid. The sum is heavy.

Winter is coming. The Hague does not wait.

Two announcements on one day

In Kyiv, the Dutch government announces €1.2 billion in non-military aid, spread over the next three years.

The money is dated. It has an address.

Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma is blunt: “there cannot be business as usual with Russia.”

The line is dry. His government pays for it.

Two Nordic leaders called Putin. Their neighbours scolded them.

One capital pays. Two others dial.

The chequebook against the receiver

We hold the Dutch chequebook more useful than every telephone receiver in Europe.

A call repairs nothing. A transfer repairs.

The difference has a number.

The package is being prepared “right now, this fall,” Zelensky wrote after meeting Rob Jetten.

Autumn slips away. The cold arrives.

The sky comes first

“Truly significant,” Zelensky said, especially for repelling Russian air attacks.

The sky comes first. The rest follows.

Bliksem was also on the agenda. It is a pan-European effort.

Bliksem aims at an exo-atmospheric interceptor. Its target: medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

A telephone will not do that.

PURL, or Europe paying

The Netherlands was among the first to promise F-16s to Kyiv, the Kyiv Independent recalls.

The Dutch were ahead.

The Hague also funds PURL. The scheme is simple.

Allies buy American. Ukraine receives the equipment.

Europe pays. America delivers.

Kyiv needs it.

“Ukraine is under heavy fire and faces a very harsh winter,” Sjoerdsma said.

The verdict is brutal. He says it as a minister.

His government names the targets: energy and water networks, increasingly hit by Russian air strikes.

The target is civilian.

Sjoerdsma goes further. Russian strategy, he says, aims “to literally put you in the cold.”

Cold becomes a weapon.

Forty million before the year is out

The Netherlands answers.

€40 million goes out this year.

The money goes to the Ukraine Energy Support Fund. It pays for urgent repairs. It is fast-tracked.

Speed is a choice.

Add €55 million in energy equipment from Dutch companies.

No phone line delivers that.

“Whether it’s Kyiv or small villages”

Sjoerdsma wants places to remain livable, “whether it’s Kyiv or small villages in the east.”

The word is modest. It weighs heavily in January.

Winter does not wait for someone in Moscow to pick up.

At 1:20 p.m. on October 27, the Kremlin published its readout of the call.

The text is short. It says everything.

Putin brings out his “root causes” again. The tune is familiar.

According to Moscow, a “just and lasting” peace requires Russian interests to count “in full and without any conditions attached.”

Putin does not negotiate. He bills.

Europe in the dock

The same readout accuses the EU and NATO of prolonging hostilities through their “confrontational policies.”

Europe pays. Moscow accuses it.

A history lesson on the line

According to the Financial Times, cited by the Guardian, Putin lectured on medieval Slavic history during the call.

The receiver becomes a podium.

Sjoerdsma recalls that this war “can end today” if Russia decides to stop its aggression.

One country decides.

The key is in Moscow.

“Ending the war requires direct discussions,” said Alexander Stubb, Finland’s president.

The argument holds. It carries weight.

Finland and Norway border Russia and call themselves firm supporters of Ukraine.

Helsinki puts it in writing.

A call prepared with Kyiv

According to Helsinki, the call followed the Oslo meeting of October 20 and was held “in consultation with Ukraine.”

The detail has weight.

The two leaders say they did not speak for Europe as a whole. Each spoke for his country.

Stubb describes a “frank and substantive” discussion.

Jonas Gahr Støre, Norway’s prime minister, speaks of the war’s “enormous human and material costs.” Nobody disputes that.

Støre urges de-escalation. He also thinks about fish.

The Guardian notes he cited shared fish stocks in the Barents Sea and border security.

These are concrete interests.

Stubb says the call was also meant to prevent misunderstandings with Moscow.

These reasons are real.

Even a Dutchman believes in it

Dutch MEP Reinier van Lanschot says it “makes perfect sense,” under conditions, for Europe to engage in talks. His country pays.

He sets two conditions: the EU speaks with one voice, and Ukraine is always involved.

Those conditions hold.

An anonymous European diplomat sums up the mood: everyone agrees on the need to talk to Putin.

The principle is settled. The method is not.

The call lasted 90 minutes, according to the Guardian, and earned both leaders a rare rebuke from their neighbours.

The call was long. The reply was quick.

Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, says she is “very sceptical” and cannot see what her neighbours hoped to achieve.

The reproach is public.

Sweden’s Ulf Kristersson says he was not informed beforehand.

Copenhagen grumbles. Stockholm too.

Who knew what

The two Nordic leaders insist, though, that allies had been informed in advance.

The accounts diverge.

A rift at the heart of the North

Nordic countries rarely fall out in public. This time, they did.

Arkady Moshes, of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, says he sees “a rift” instead of a united group.

By Nordic standards, it is “pretty serious,” he adds. The word is not excessive.

A former Finnish diplomat, Joel Linnainmäki, sums it up: “If it looks messy, it probably is.”

The disorder shows.

The North picked up. The North split.

This year, British, French and German ambassadors have held talks with Russian officials, the Guardian reports.

Emmanuel Macron’s senior diplomatic adviser travelled to Moscow, and António Costa’s office opened its own channel.

Paris goes. Brussels too.

Everyone dials. Nobody coordinates.

The same diplomat describes a “free-for-all,” where “too many leaders believe they can be the one” to get Putin to negotiate.

Candidates abound. Putin chooses.

The right of small countries

Luxembourg’s Xavier Bettel kept telephone contact with Putin after the full-scale invasion began. He was one of the few.

Colleagues told him, he recalls: “You are such a small country.”

Size guarantees nothing. The Hague pays big.

Twenty-seven capitals, no mandate

No one has a clear mandate to negotiate for the 27 member states, the Guardian writes. The Union has no negotiator.

Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, could take it on in theory.

Moscow has her on a wanted list. That road is blocked.

And any appointment, van Lanschot concedes, can run into a veto from a single member state.

One veto is enough.

This billion is not new.

The Dutch government says so itself. It gives substance to sums “already pledged” for this period.

€878 million comes from the coalition agreement, and €327 million from Prinsjesdag, on September 15.

The government does not cheat. The money was promised. Now it is earmarked.

Promising costs little. Earmarking commits.

Where the millions go

€136 million goes to the Ukraine Partnership Facility, among others. Dutch companies benefit.

Export credit insurance gains €19.5 million, on top of the existing €60 million. Exporting becomes less risky.

And €10 million goes to Zelensky’s Industrial Ramstein, through a letter of intent with Ukrainian minister Kravchenko.

Kyiv rebuilds its factories.

Coen van Oostrom, who chairs the Dutch employers’ federation VNO-NCW, joined the minister in Kyiv. Business follows.

The aid serves The Hague too.

Bakers and Philips

Sjoerdsma makes no secret of it: it is “both a sign of solidarity and a business opportunity.”

Such candour is rare.

He cites Philips and its medical supplies, but also small firms that equip bakers.

Bread is vital too.

The Hague also helps trace abducted Ukrainian children, through the UN agency UNDP. It does not forget them.

Much of the money flows through the EBRD, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank.

Every euro has its counter.

In 2022, after the full-scale invasion, most European leaders shunned direct contact with the Kremlin. Contact was taboo.

Stubb himself promised, campaigning in 2024, not to pick up if Putin called. He ended up calling.

The taboo of 2022

The Kremlin, for its part, notes that the three leaders agreed to keep direct telephone contact.

The line stays open. The taboo has fallen.

You may have thought Putin’s isolation was a red line. It was not. It was a delay.

A representative nowhere to be found

Since the summer, European leaders have debated, without much progress, appointing a representative to negotiate with Moscow.

Nothing is decided. Nobody is appointed.

The vacuum helps Moscow.

The number is the same. Europe changed its mind.

Before the call, Putin had met U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg, on October 21, the Kremlin recalls.

The Kremlin links the two.

According to the Russian readout, the parties welcomed the agreement to resume trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi, in early to mid-November.

The mediation is American. Washington gets the credit.

The diesel that angers The Hague

Sjoerdsma does not condone the U.S.-Russia diesel deal, which he says legitimizes Moscow and reinforces its position. He is right.

Trump, one act at a time

The Guardian writes that Donald Trump has moved closer to Moscow in recent weeks, at Ukraine’s expense.

The table is good. The diesel hurts. Both are true.

According to Arkady Moshes, Moscow is tiring of Trump’s unpredictability and betting the midterms could weaken him. The bet is legible.

Kyiv lacks that luxury.

European capitals fear being sidelined in negotiations that could shape the continent’s security for decades.

The fear is founded.

Kristi Raik, of the Estonian centre ICDS, worries that the Kremlin reads it this way: “the Europeans are in trouble, the Ukrainians are in trouble.”

A scattered Europe looks hurried.

Putin’s plan A

The Kremlin’s readout, the Guardian notes, shows almost no change in Putin’s maximalist demands.

Moscow repeats itself.

Arkady Moshes says it plainly: “Putin’s plan A is a military defeat of Ukraine.”

Plan A holds. The telephone changes nothing.

Ukraine in the driver’s seat

For Sjoerdsma, there is “no talk about Ukraine without Ukraine in the driver’s seat.”

Kyiv drives.

He adds that the EU, which provides the bulk of Ukraine’s aid, must also be a political player.

The rule is simple. Whoever pays speaks.

Sjoerdsma asks other Europeans to increase their aid “as soon as possible, before winter sets in.”

The calendar is clear. Winter does not negotiate.

“Your security is our security,” he said in the interview. The phrase is right.

He calls it “ridiculous” to leave Ukraine to handle that security alone.

The reader in the warm

You may be reading this somewhere warm.

Europe is still looking for the receiver. A receiver warms nobody.

A rule in two steps

We ask European capitals to pay before calling Moscow, then to speak with one voice alongside Kyiv.

Order matters. The Hague pays. The rest waits.

Kyiv first

Sjoerdsma said it: if the Dutch power grid ever has problems, his country will “call Kyiv first.”

Kyiv knows how to repair. The pupil becomes the master.

The line that counts

The Hague calls Kyiv. The direction reverses. The rest is noise.

The right number starts with a transfer.

The Netherlands reaches for the chequebook, and Europe still fights over Putin’s phone.

How many capitals will pay before dialling the Kremlin’s number?

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a critical, contextual synthesis based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

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