Europe has spent more than four years insisting it would not negotiate with Vladimir Putin over the heads of Ukraine. Now the most senior figure in the European Union's own institutional architecture is quietly testing whether that line still holds. António Costa, the president of the European Council, has opened a discreet channel to the Kremlin in an attempt to draw the Russian leader into talks about ending the war, according to people familiar with the contacts.
Costa's most senior adviser has held at least two phone calls with a counterpart close to Putin, with the limited aim of preparing the ground for more substantive discussions later. One EU official characterised the exchanges as deliberately modest — brief contacts at diplomatic level to open a line of communication, with nothing of substance yet on the table. Costa's office declined to comment, and Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, did not respond to questions.
What Costa has built is a back channel: an informal, deniable line that lets two sides talk without either committing to anything. It is not a negotiation, and it is certainly not a ceasefire. But the symbolism is heavy. For most of the war, formal contact between the EU's central institutions and Moscow has been frozen, with engagement left to individual leaders and to Washington. The European Council president reaching for the phone to the Kremlin, even at one remove, marks a shift in how Brussels is thinking about how the war ends.
Costa is not acting in a vacuum. Germany, France and the United Kingdom — Europe's three largest military and economic powers — have separately discussed how to engage Putin, in coordination with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The result is several diplomatic tracks running at once, not yet fully aligned, each feeling for the same thing: a way to test Moscow's willingness to talk without conceding anything in advance. The risk is plain. Multiple European channels, opened in parallel, can just as easily send Moscow mixed messages as a single, unified one.
European officials see a narrow opening. Russian forces are struggling to convert relentless pressure into meaningful territorial gains. Ukraine has intensified long-range strikes inside Russia, carrying the cost of the war deeper into Russian territory. And the economic toll keeps mounting on both sides. Taken together, that has convinced some in Brussels that Putin may be more reachable now than at any point since the full-scale invasion — and that Europe should not be caught flat-footed if a diplomatic phase begins. The timing is pointed: the contacts surfaced as EU leaders convened for a European Council summit on 18-19 June.
Every back channel carries the same hazard — that the act of talking is itself treated as a concession. There is also the unresolved question of who, exactly, speaks for Europe. Costa holds a convening and coordinating role; he has no mandate to negotiate on behalf of 27 governments, and any hint that Brussels is freelancing toward a deal would alarm member states that take a harder line on Moscow. Above all there is the principle Europe has repeated for years: nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. A channel that runs through Brussels rather than Kyiv, however preliminary, will test how durable that pledge really is.
Costa's outreach is a signal that parts of the EU establishment have begun to plan not just for how the war is fought, but for how it might be brought to a close. Handled well, it could earn Europe a seat at a table from which it has often been excluded, while Washington and Moscow do the talking. Handled badly — leaked at the wrong moment, or moving faster than Kyiv is comfortable with — it hands the Kremlin a propaganda victory and unsettles Ukraine and Europe's eastern flank. What is no longer in doubt is that the taboo on engaging the Kremlin is cracking. And for now, it is the European Council's own president holding the phone.
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