The behavior will continue until a consequence is imposed.
Not on regular Russians, mind. Their ruling class. They're still free to move about the continent, make investments, do whatever. Currently Europe seems to be more interested in breaking away from the US than dealing with the power that has killed hundreds of thousands on their own continent.
Maybe there are reasons Europe is pulling away from the US?
The current US president has threatened to invade European territory, is attempting to impose Russia's preferred "peace" plan on Ukraine, and has recently relaxed sanctions on Russia. He also consistently denigrates the military support Europe's given to the US in the recent past. The US has basically cut aid to Ukraine to zero, while Europe continues to supply them, which is currently the best way of dealing with Russia, sucking their military power into a war their not going to win.
When the Russians invaded Georgia in 2008, Europeans inked a deal for a second gas pipeline with them, Nordstream 2. When they annexed Crimea in 2014, Europeans went to the Sochi Olympics (which happened that same year) and went to the World Cup in 2018. And this is before you take into account the dozens of smaller incidents.
Those aren't "threats to invade European territory", not even ones that were ignored by the military. Those were shooting wars that got people killed and redrew the map in Eurasia. Europeans continued to do business with Russia more-or-less unimpeded until 2022. Many Russians still live, work, and do business in the Schengen area.
The US Congress passed a bill to fund Ukraine this week. [0]
The funding bill is never getting past the Senate, and even if it were the money is unlikely to reach Ukraine unless the current admin has a fundamental change of heart.
The (misguided IMO) idea was that buying their gas and integrating them into world markets would strengthen ties and liberalize them in the medium term.
I don't think it was misguided; Nuland-Pyatt leak and the tapping of Merkel's phone made it pretty clear to me that like in the Yeltsin years the problem was that the US didn't want Russia/Europe ties to succeed.
EU had that weird idea that if we just be nice to Russia and tolerate their bullshit for long enough they will warm up to us. Turns out that doesn't really work for country that entire foreign policy could be summed up as "bullying and lying"
I'm sorry but bullshit is what you're talking about. UK took money from Russian oligarchs (that they stole from my pocket) while being perfectly aware of the source, and later pretended they're "fighting" it when the potato got too hot to handle, never returning the invested money and essentially blaming me by proxy, someone who attempted to bring it under control. Germany was happy building pipelines and providing the high precision machines under the corrupt leader colluding with Russia, only breaking ties after the war and making said leader a scapegoat. It was all about your wealth at the cost of my wealth and freedom, you provided most money for the war and Russian elites' superyachts, and profited from it greatly with full awareness of what you're doing, and you were OK with that as long as the costs were externalized. Now you're pretending it was noble peacemaking, an honest mistake, and someone else is to blame. What's worse, you don't seem to learn from either our or your mistakes, willingly building a cage for yourself with a lag of just a few years.
It's not completely true, but there are hundreds of thousands of visas given to Russian tourists each year by European countries, something that's hopefully will get corrected soon.
> According to data cited in Wednesday's letter, which was seen by Reuters, 477,878 Schengen visas were issued to Russian citizens for tourism in 2025, up from 440,558 in 2024.
> Currently Europe seems to be more interested in breaking away from the US
The efforts taken to move away from Russia in the past 5 years clearly dwarf any de-Americanisation efforts to the point that it's difficult to take your comment seriously after this sentence.
US has got itself compromised by Russia. US president is a Russian asset. Breaking away from unreliable former ally is the logical thing to do for Europe's security.
Funny how Ukraine situation started improving once they have severly limited sharing information with the US.
Europe seems to be interested in neither. As a rule, elites in any country are not concerned about hundreds of thousands of their citizens being killed. I have yet to be proven wrong.
The behavior will continue until a consequence is imposed.
Not on regular Russians, mind. Their ruling class. They're still free to move about the continent, make investments, do whatever. Currently Europe seems to be more interested in breaking away from the US than dealing with the power that has killed hundreds of thousands on their own continent.