Putin, Trump and the shaking of Europe’s political map
The expansionism of the presidents of Russia and the United States sets a dangerous example for less powerful countries that have open territorial disputes with Ukraine
Vladimir Putin opened Pandora’s box in 2014 by annexing the Crimean peninsula, whose status as an autonomous republic within Ukraine had been repeatedly recognized by Russia since the USSR dissolved in 1991.
Now, the territorial ambitions announced by Donald Trump (buying Greenland, taking over the Panama Canal, and making Canada the 51st U.S. state) confer a new qualitative rank to Russian expansionism and, in a certain way, “normalize” it within the club of countries with special responsibility for the destiny of the world.
Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territories set a dangerous precedent, but the situation could worsen if, in any talks to end the war, Trump were to agree to Putin’s demands. The Russian president does not want “a short pause or a ceasefire,” but full international recognition of his wartime conquests (four Ukrainian provinces plus Crimea), which he has already rushed to preemptively include in the Russian Constitution.
The danger today is not just Putin or Trump, but the example that their actions and bravado set for other less powerful states with territorial disputes that until recently seemed like “extinct volcanoes,” but that today resemble something more like “dormant volcanoes.”
Russia finds in Trump an incentive to justify its annexation of Crimea and to encourage imitators under the banner of “self-determination.” “In cases where a nation, as part of a larger state, feels uncomfortable in that state and seeks self-determination in accordance with the U.N. Charter, the larger state is obligated not to oppose or obstruct this process,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in January. “It’s not what the Spanish did to Catalonia, or the British to Scotland.”
“Self-determination” is fine for others, but not in Russia, where verbally questioning the unity of the state can be punished criminally, according to legislation enacted in 2014. Under Putin, Moscow has fiercely repressed separatists in the Caucasian republic of Chechnya and has dramatically tightened the country’s centralization. In 2018, the superiority of the Russian language in the state education system was guaranteed by law, and the study of national languages of non-Russian peoples was relegated to the rank of voluntary activities with reduced teaching hours, even where they are official languages. Driven by a heightened fear of non-Russian nationalism, the Putin-led system prosecutes activists, bans associations, media, and cultural products.
Since the turn of the century, Russian propagandists have tried to stir up the greed of Ukraine’s western neighbors to question the country’s territorial integrity. “Ten million people” live in Lviv and in territories that “Stalin handed over to Ukraine after World War II,” at the expense of Poland, Romania, and Hungary, and “the people living there — many of them, at least, I know it for certain, 100% — they want to return to their historic homeland,” Putin said in December 2023. He added: “And the countries that lost these territories, they dream about taking these territories back.”
Warsaw denies these claims and rejects the Kremlin’s game. Romania and Hungary also have no official claims, but both countries pursue an active policy of protecting their respective minorities living in Ukraine (the Hungarian minority mainly in the Transcarpathian province, and the Romanian minority in Chernivtsi, the former Northern Bukovina). Hungary also makes its approval of Ukraine’s entry into the EU and NATO conditional on respect for minorities. Romanians and Bulgarians are important communities in the south of the province of Odessa (the former Southern Bessarabia or Budzhak).
At the urging of the European Commission, Kyiv amended its legislation on the rights of national minorities in 2023 (before starting EU accession talks), which had been curtailed in 2017 by education regulations. The rights of minorities, among which Budapest, Bucharest, and Sofia have distributed national passports, are a sensitive issue that becomes more acute during election periods and also depending on the intensity of Kyiv’s assimilation policy.
In Ukraine’s western neighbors, nationalist forces — once marginal — are reviving old territorial ambitions. In Hungary, László Toroczkai, leader of Our Fatherland, stated in 2024 that if Ukraine is defeated by Russia, Kyiv must hand over the territory of Transcarpathia to Hungary. Călin Georgescu, winner of the first round of presidential elections in Romania last November, referred to Ukraine in 2022 as “an invented country.” The election result was annulled, but Georgescu continues his political battle. In Bulgaria, Kostadin Kostadinov, a far-right figure sympathetic to Putin, warned this month that “Ukraine is disintegrating” and that Bulgaria must claim “Bulgarian Bessarabia” (the southern Odessa region) in future peace talks.
Russia’s case with Ukraine since 2014 has shown that even the most solid border recognition agreements are in danger of being eroded if radical nationalist forces come to power in states that seemed comfortable within their recognized borders. And if that were to happen thanks to the double example of Putin and Trump, the political map of Europe could begin to shake like a field of volcanoes awakening from their slumber.
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