EUROPE–RUSSIA — KEY NOTES

Russia’s Story Helps It Endure.
Europe Has Its Own Story of Values to Put to Work.

A five-minute guide to narrative power, Russian resilience and a European strategic response

R.M. Westerink; 24 August 2026 

Why This Series

Russia’s ability to continue its war against Ukraine despite heavy military losses, sanctions, economic damage and international isolation has repeatedly surprised Western observers. Material explanations matter: repression, state resources, military mobilization and economic adaptation all contribute. But they do not tell the whole story.

Russia has also spent years building an environment in which sacrifice, confrontation and national endurance are given meaning. Television, political language, history, education, culture and state institutions repeatedly reinforce a connected story: Russia is a distinctive civilization; it is surrounded by forces that seek to weaken it; unity is therefore a condition of survival; and resistance to the West is part of defending Russia itself.

This EUROPE–RUSSIA series asks what that narrative achievement means for Europe.[A] Its conclusion is not that Europe should copy Russia’s narrative building approach. It is almost the opposite. As Europe already has a story of its own - grounded in freedom, rights, peaceful coexistence and openness. The strategic question is whether Europe can put that story to work without sacrificing the democratic character that makes it attractive.

1. The Russian Achievement: A Story People Can Live Inside

The first article, How Russia Built the Story Russians Are Asked to Live In, looks beyond individual Kremlin claims. The important phenomenon is the ecosystem in which those claims become mutually reinforcing. Ideas such as historical greatness, the unity of the Russian world, sacrifice, sovereignty, Western hostility and the need for strong leadership are not encountered only in presidential speeches. They are repeated across institutions and over time.

That does not mean every Russian believes every proposition, nor that narrative alone explains Russian behavior. It does mean that the state has created a remarkably durable interpretive environment. Events that Western audiences may see as evidence of failure can be absorbed into a different story: hardship demonstrates sacrifice, sanctions demonstrate Western hostility, battlefield losses demonstrate the seriousness of the national struggle, and isolation can be interpreted as proof that Russia must stand together.

This helps explain something Western analysis can otherwise underestimate: resilience is partly social and psychological. A population does not need to be enthusiastic about every cost to continue accepting costs when those costs have been embedded in a larger account of identity, danger and national purpose.

2. The European Asymmetry: Russia Works on the Political Environment

The second article, Russia Has a Story. Does Europe?, turns the lens toward Europe. The asymmetry is larger than a difference in communications skill. Russia treats the information and political environment as part of strategic competition. Europe has become increasingly capable at identifying disinformation and protecting itself against interference, but remains less comfortable with the idea of sustained narrative power.

That matters because the problem is already inside Europe. Russian narratives can reinforce distrust of European institutions, opposition to support for Ukraine and political movements - particularly parts of the far right - whose domestic agendas overlap with themes useful to Moscow. Meanwhile, the war continues to consume Ukrainian and Russian lives. Europe is investing heavily in military deterrence while the political environment sustaining confrontation receives comparatively less strategic attention.

Yet Europe cannot solve the asymmetry by constructing its own centralized narrative machine. Democratic societies depend on independent media, political competition, open disagreement and citizens who are free to reject what governments tell them. Destroying those qualities in pursuit of narrative strength would amount to weakening the very system Europe is trying to defend.

The real question therefore becomes more interesting: can openness itself become a source of strategic strength?

3. Europe’s Alternative: A Story of Values

Europe does not need to invent a civilizational myth to compete with Russia. Much of its proposition already exists in ordinary European expectations about life: people should be free to live their own lives, have an equal say in government, be equal before the law, be protected against arbitrary power, be free to differ from one another and resolve political disagreements through rules, dialogue and compromise.

The WE ARE EUROPE series explored these values primarily as Europe’s own inheritance and responsibility.[A] In the Russia context they acquire another significance. They can be offered not as instructions Russians must accept, but as possibilities Russian citizens have the same right to consider.

A Russian does not become less Russian by wanting protection against arbitrary power. Russian culture does not disappear because leaders can be replaced. Russian dignity does not require Ukrainian submission. Russian security does not inherently require permanent confrontation with Europe.

This changes the nature of an offensive European approach. Its purpose would not be to tell Russians what to think or to manufacture a European-approved Russia. It would be to prevent one political story from monopolizing the future. Europe can help keep visible the possibility of a Russia that remains Russian while living differently at home and differently with its neighbors.

That is potentially a powerful message because it offers something the narrative of permanent confrontation cannot: choice.

4. Putting the Story to Work

The third article, Europe Has a Story of Its Own to Tell, asks the practical question. Europe already possesses many of the required capabilities: Russian-language journalism, public broadcasting, universities and research institutes, civil-society networks, Russian expatriate communities, technological expertise, diplomatic capabilities and institutions working against foreign information manipulation.

The weakness is fragmentation. Europe does not need a propaganda ministry; it needs an enabling architecture that helps these capabilities add up. At European and national levels, that means mapping what exists, understanding Russian audiences, protecting independent Russian-language voices, maintaining access when censorship closes normal channels and providing continuity beyond individual crises and annual funding cycles.

The democratic rule should remain clear: coordinate capability, not opinion. Political institutions can support infrastructure, research, access and continuity without determining what independent journalists, academics, cultural actors or Russian voices are required to say.

The outward-facing proposition should also look forward. Alongside truthful information about the war and its costs, Russians should be able to encounter credible answers to a question largely absent from a narrative of permanent hostility: what could relations with Europe become if Russia respected the sovereignty of its neighbors? Travel, research, education, cultural exchange, trade, sanctions relief and a different security relationship make a future proposition tangible rather than rhetorical.

Why Act Now?

There are two immediate reasons. The first is European self-protection. Russia is already trying to shape Europe’s information and political environment, while European democratic openness creates vulnerabilities that defensive fact-checking alone cannot remove. Europe needs confidence in what it represents as well as resilience against what attacks it.

The second is human. Ukrainians continue to bear the consequences of Russian aggression, while Russian families also absorb enormous losses in a war presented domestically as historically necessary. Concern for Russian casualties does not dilute responsibility for the invasion. It recognizes that weakening narratives of unavoidable, permanent confrontation may ultimately help reduce the social capacity for continuing sacrifice.

Europe is spending vastly more on defense because hard power is indispensable. Narrative capability cannot replace that expenditure. But journalism, research, translation, digital access, cultural networks and strategic coordination are comparatively inexpensive. If they can strengthen European resilience while preserving alternative futures inside Russian society, they deserve to be treated as part of security strategy rather than as peripheral communication.

A European Strategic Proposition

The three articles lead to a relatively simple proposition. Russia has demonstrated that stories can become strategic capabilities when they are sustained by an ecosystem. Europe should take that lesson seriously without adopting the authoritarian system that produced it.

Europe’s comparative advantage is different. It has many independent sources of credibility, an open information environment and a values proposition that does not require Russians to surrender their identity. What it lacks is sufficient organization, persistence and strategic purpose.

The objective is therefore not to build a European story for Russians to live in. It is to make Europe’s own story visible, credible and reachable - and to keep open the possibility that Russians can choose another future for themselves.

Europe has a story of its own to tell. The strategic opportunity is to put it to work.

Where European Action Could Begin

No single institution should own this effort. EU institutions, member-state governments, national parliaments, independent media, universities, civil society, technology providers and Russian-language actors all have roles. Members of the European Parliament are particularly well placed to act as initiators and guardians: asking whether the capability exists, convening the actors, scrutinizing funding and gaps, and ensuring that democratic guardrails remain part of the design.

A practical beginning would be to map Europe’s existing Russian-language and Russia-facing capabilities; establish sustained knowledge of Russian audiences; protect independent voices with multi-year support and access technologies; develop a credible European proposition for a peaceful future relationship; and measure whether alternative information and alternative futures are actually reaching people.

One question could start the process: who is responsible for ensuring that Europe’s many existing capabilities add up to a coherent strategic capability? If the answer is nobody, Europe already knows where to begin.

EUROPE–RUSSIA — The Series

Article 1 — How Russia Built the Story Russians Are Asked to Live In

How Russia developed a narrative ecosystem that helps give meaning to unity, sacrifice, confrontation and national endurance - and why this matters for understanding Russian resilience.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/europerussia-how-russia-built-story.html

Article 2 — Russia Has a Story. Does Europe?

Why Europe faces a narrative asymmetry with Russia, why copying the Russian model would undermine European democracy, and how Europe’s values and openness could instead become strategic assets.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/europerussia-russia-has-story-does.html

Article 3 — Europe Has a Story of Its Own to Tell

How Europe could organize existing media, research, civil-society, technological and Russian-language capabilities into a sustained democratic ecosystem - coordinating capability without coordinating opinion.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/europerussia-europe-has-story-of-its.html

Related Europe Is Us Work

[A] WE ARE EUROPE — seven-article series and Key Notes, August 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/we-are-europe-key-notes-to-series.html

[B] Beyond Russky Mir, May 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/05/beyond-russky-mir.html

[C] Europe Needs a Strategy of Confidence toward Russia, June 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/06/europe-needs-strategy-of-confidence.html

 

EUROPE–RUSSIA — Europe Has a Story of Its Own to Tell

Turning Europe’s Values and Openness into Strategic Strength

R.M. Westerink; 24 August 2026 

The Problem Is Already Here

Europe does not have the luxury of treating its information relationship with Russia as a problem for some distant post-war future. Russia is already operating inside Europe’s political environment. European institutions have documented sustained Russian information manipulation aimed at weakening trust, dividing societies and undermining support for Ukraine [1][2]. Anti-EU and Russia-sympathetic narratives also find receptive channels among parts of Europe’s far right, where domestic political opposition to European integration can overlap with themes useful to Moscow [3].

At the same time, the war continues to consume Ukrainian and Russian lives. Europe is investing heavily in military deterrence because Russian aggression makes that necessary. But military strength addresses only one part of a confrontation in which Russia also works continuously on what populations believe, fear and are prepared to endure.

That creates an uncomfortable asymmetry. Europe is strengthening its capacity to resist Russia physically while remaining much more hesitant about developing the informational and narrative capability that could help change the political environment sustaining permanent confrontation.

The urgency therefore leads directly to a practical question: how can an open democratic Europe develop such strength without becoming what it is trying to resist?

Don’t Copy Russia — Organize Europe

Russia’s advantage comes partly from centralization. Government, major media, education, culture and historical interpretation can be pushed toward a common political story. Europe cannot reproduce that model without damaging the openness and pluralism it seeks to defend. Nor does it need to.

Most of the required ingredients already exist. EU institutions and national governments possess strategic-communication capabilities. Universities and research institutes study Russia. Independent journalists and public broadcasters produce Russian-language information. Civil-society organizations maintain networks across borders. Technology providers can help preserve access when platforms are blocked. Russian journalists, academics, artists and expatriate communities understand Russian society from within.

Europe’s central weakness is not absence but fragmentation. These capabilities often operate beside one another without adding up to a sustained strategic effort. The task is therefore to connect, protect and sustain them rather than to create a European propaganda ministry.

The European level can help by maintaining the overview: mapping capabilities, identifying gaps, supporting long-term audience research, protecting continuity of funding and ensuring that access technologies and independent Russian-language media do not disappear when political attention moves elsewhere. The objective is an enabling architecture, not centralized editorial control.

Coordinate Capability, Not Opinion

That distinction provides the democratic design principle for the entire approach: Europe can coordinate capability without coordinating opinion.

Defensive work remains necessary: detecting manipulation, protecting elections and exposing covert influence. Europe also needs an explanatory capability directed toward its own citizens, connecting sanctions, support for Ukraine, defense spending and policy toward Russia to a comprehensible strategic purpose. But the outward-facing task is different again. It is to ensure that Russian citizens can encounter credible information and alternative perspectives about Europe, Ukraine, the war and Russia’s possible future.

Those perspectives should remain plural. An independent Russian journalist should not sound like an EU spokesperson, and a historian, economist or cultural institution should not become an instrument of European foreign policy. Their independence is precisely what gives them credibility.

For the same reason, Russian voices will often matter more than European ones. A credible alternative information space must allow Russians to argue about Russia rather than simply reproduce European preferences in Russian. Europe’s role is to help keep that space open.

Give Another Future a Voice

The strongest European contribution may not be another rebuttal of Kremlin claims. It may be to keep another future imaginable.

Russian citizens can be invited to consider questions that permanent-confrontation narratives tend to close down. What has the war cost Russian families and regions? What does long-term isolation mean for economic and technological opportunity? Would European security policy look different if Russia stopped threatening its neighbors? Under what conditions could sanctions eventually be removed? What could restored travel, research, education, trade and cultural exchange mean for ordinary Russians?

The WE ARE EUROPE values explored elsewhere in this project give substance to that alternative.[E] Europeans have gradually come to expect protection against arbitrary power, equality before the law, freedom to live differently and the peaceful resolution of political disagreement. These do not have to be presented as European lessons for Russians. They can be presented as possibilities Russians are equally entitled to consider.

A Russian does not become less Russian by wanting protection against arbitrary power. Russian culture does not disappear because political leaders can be replaced. Russian dignity does not require Ukrainians to surrender theirs. And Russian security does not inherently require permanent hostility toward Europe.

This is where Europe’s openness can become an offensive strategic strength. Europe need not persuade Russians to become European. It can ensure that permanent confrontation is not the only future they are allowed to imagine.

Europe Can Build This

This approach requires persistence rather than a campaign. Russia’s narrative ecosystem was built over years; a European capability cannot be switched on during crises and dismantled when headlines change. Independent media, research, audience knowledge, cultural networks and technologies that preserve information access need continuity.

The financial scale should also be kept in perspective. Narrative capability cannot replace military deterrence, and no serious European strategy should suggest otherwise. But compared with fighter aircraft, missile defense, ammunition production and military formations, the resources required for journalism, research, translation, digital access and strategic coordination are modest. If they can weaken hostile narratives, preserve alternatives inside Russian society and strengthen Europe’s own resilience, their potential strategic return is substantial.

Europe also possesses an advantage Russia cannot easily reproduce. Its information environment is plural and often untidy, but credibility is distributed among thousands of independent sources. A Russian does not have to trust the European Commission to encounter Europe. The trusted source might be a Russian journalist in Riga, a scientist in Berlin, relatives in Prague, an independent newsroom or personal experience of Europe itself.

Most of the pieces therefore already exist. What is missing is the determination to make them add up: sustained organization, political guardianship, audience knowledge and a credible proposition about what a peaceful future relationship could offer.

Russia spent years building a story Russians are asked to live in. Europe does not need to build another one for them. Europe has a story of its own to tell — and it can help keep open the possibility that Russians may someday choose a different story for themselves.

Appendix — Ideas for European Action

No single institution should own this capability. EU institutions, national governments, independent media, universities and research institutes, civil society, technology providers and Russian-language actors all have potential roles. Members of the European Parliament deserve particular mention as possible initiators and guardians: they can ask whether the capability exists, bring actors together, scrutinize gaps and funding, and help keep the effort anchored in the democratic values it is intended to protect. National parliamentarians, governments, the European Commission and the EEAS can exercise comparable responsibility from their own positions.

The responsibility is both strategic and human. Europe must protect its own democratic environment, while the continuing loss of Ukrainian and Russian lives gives political representatives another reason to ask whether Europe is using every legitimate instrument that could make permanent confrontation less sustainable. The following are starting ideas rather than a blueprint.

1. Map what Europe already has.

Create a European inventory of Russian-language journalism, research, cultural and diaspora networks, access technologies and existing EU and national initiatives. Identify gaps before creating new structures.

2. Give the capability political guardians.

Create sustained cross-party attention in the European Parliament and national parliaments. The role is scrutiny, continuity and convening — not editorial direction.

3. Know the Russian audience.

Build long-term research into what different Russian audiences believe, fear and expect, including which alternative futures they themselves find credible.

4. Protect independent voices.

Provide stable multi-year support, legal resilience and access technologies for independent Russian-language media, research and civil society while explicitly protecting editorial independence.

5. Make Europe’s future proposition tangible.

Explore what Europe could credibly offer a Russia that respects its neighbors: security, sanctions relief, travel, trade, research, education and cultural exchange. ‘Europe is not your enemy’ becomes stronger when people can see what that could mean.

6. Measure the right things.

Do not ask whether Russians have become pro-EU. Ask whether access to independent information improves, permanent-enemy assumptions weaken, European intentions are better understood and alternative futures remain visible.

The first step may therefore be the simplest: ask who is responsible for ensuring that Europe’s existing capabilities add up to a coherent strategic capability.
If the answer is nobody, the organizational gap has already been identified.

References

[1] European External Action Service (EEAS), Information Integrity and Countering Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), including reporting on Russian information operations.

[2] European Commission, European Democracy Shield and related measures concerning democratic resilience, information integrity, media freedom and pluralism.

[3] European Parliament materials and European research on Russian interference, disinformation and relationships with political actors and movements inside the European Union.

Earlier Europe Is Us articles informing this argument

[A] EUROPE–RUSSIA — How Russia Built the Story Russians Are Asked to Live In — August 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/europerussia-how-russia-built-story.html

[B] EUROPE–RUSSIA — Russia Has a Story. Does Europe? — August 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/europerussia-russia-has-story-does.html

[C] Beyond Russky Mir — May 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/05/beyond-russky-mir.html

[D] Europe Needs a Strategy of Confidence toward Russia — June 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/06/europe-needs-strategy-of-confidence.html

[E] WE ARE EUROPE — seven-article values series and Key Notes — August 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/we-are-europe-key-notes-to-series.html

 

EUROPE–RUSSIA — Russia Has a Story. Does Europe?

Can an open democratic Europe build narrative strength without sacrificing the openness it exists to defend?

R.M. Westerink; 24 August 2026 

The Question Left by Russia

The first article in this series examined how Russia built an information and meaning environment capable of connecting history, identity, security, sacrifice and national purpose.[A] Its importance is not that every Russian believes every Kremlin claim. It is that the state has developed the capacity to place events inside a persistent story: Russia is a great civilization, repeatedly threatened from outside, entitled to defend its historical space, and strong enough to endure the costs imposed by its enemies.

That helps explain an aspect of the war that has repeatedly surprised Western observers. Military losses, sanctions, economic distortion and international isolation have imposed real costs, but those costs have not automatically translated into political breakdown. Material pressure enters a narrative environment that can reinterpret hardship as evidence of external hostility and endurance as evidence of national strength.

For Europe, this raises an uncomfortable strategic question. We have invested heavily in weapons, sanctions, intelligence, energy security and support for Ukraine. We have also developed increasingly sophisticated capabilities to detect and counter foreign information manipulation and interference. The European External Action Service now describes FIMI as a growing security and foreign-policy threat and has expanded monitoring, early warning and coordinated responses since the first EU efforts against Russian disinformation began in 2015 [1].

Those are necessary defenses. But defense against somebody else's story is not the same thing as possessing a story of our own.

Europe Is Not Without a Story

It would be wrong to conclude that Europe lacks values or a recognizable political identity. The European project is built around a substantial inheritance: personal freedom, democratic participation, equality before the law, protection against arbitrary power, social solidarity, freedom to be different, peaceful resolution of disputes, and the conviction that political power should be constrained by rules.

Our recent WE ARE EUROPE series explored these values from the citizen's perspective.[D] They are not merely institutional slogans. They describe much of the environment Europeans have gradually come to expect: governments can be replaced without violence; courts can rule against the state; citizens may criticize leaders; minorities retain rights; borders between member states are not settled by force; and political disagreement is managed through institutions rather than through permanent existential struggle.

Europe therefore has raw narrative material at least as substantial as Russia's. Its weakness lies elsewhere. We rarely connect these elements into a strategic account of who we are, what we are protecting, what future we are trying to build, and why that future should matter beyond the European Union itself.

Russia has been much more deliberate. Its narrative joins past, present and future. Europe often communicates in fragments: a regulation here, a sanctions package there, a defense initiative, an enlargement decision, a speech about values. Each may be justified on its own terms, yet the larger meaning can remain implicit.

The problem, then, is not that Europe has no story. It is that Europe has not developed comparable narrative capacity.

The Democratic Paradox

At this point the comparison with Russia reaches its limit. Europe cannot simply imitate the Russian model. Nor should it want to.

Russia can centralize narratives because political authority, major media, education, cultural institutions and coercive power can be aligned from above. European democracies are deliberately different. Governments change. Media compete. Universities challenge authority. Citizens are free to reject official interpretations. Twenty-seven member states bring different histories and political cultures into the Union.

That apparent weakness is also the substance of what Europe exists to protect.

The strategic challenge is therefore not: How can Europe manufacture one official story and make people believe it? It is almost the opposite: Can Europe create enough narrative coherence to defend an open society without turning openness into managed opinion?

The answer requires a distinction between narrative control and narrative capacity. Control seeks to determine what people may believe. Capacity ensures that a society can explain itself, expose manipulation, make credible information available, connect policies to purpose and sustain its own account of the future.

Europe does not need a Ministry of Truth. It needs the capacity to make its democratic story visible, intelligible and difficult to drown out.

The Minimum European Approach: Defend the Democratic Information Space

Europe has already begun building parts of this capability. The EEAS has moved from monitoring disinformation toward a more operational response model, including situational awareness, early warning, cooperation with member states and partners, and support for media and societal resilience [1][2]. The European Democracy Shield similarly emphasizes a whole-of-society approach, stronger detection and response, media freedom and pluralism, and citizens' ability to form and express opinions freely [3].

The European Parliament has also explicitly identified Russian historical revisionism and information manipulation as instruments used both to justify aggression against Ukraine and to influence democratic processes abroad. Its response has emphasized media literacy, quality journalism, research, education and coordinated action against foreign interference [4].

These measures point toward a democratic minimum. Europe must be able to identify hostile manipulation, expose the infrastructure behind it, protect elections and independent media, improve citizens' ability to recognize manipulation, and respond quickly when foreign actors deliberately exploit the openness of European societies.

But a defensive architecture has an inherent limitation. If Europe's information policy is defined primarily by what Russia says, Russia continues to choose the subject. Europe becomes the fact-checker of somebody else's strategic narrative.

A durable democratic capability must therefore do more than rebut falsehoods. It must make Europe's own proposition understandable.

From Defense to Confidence

This is where an earlier Europe Is Us argument—Europe needs a strategy of confidence—becomes important.[C] Democratic societies are strongest when they do not communicate as frightened systems permanently reacting to threats. They need to show that the political order they defend is not merely less dangerous than the alternative, but positively worth belonging to.

That does not require pretending that Europe is harmonious, efficient or morally superior. The European Union is slow, argumentative and incomplete. Its governments disagree. Its institutions make mistakes. Citizens are often frustrated with them. A credible European narrative should acknowledge those realities rather than conceal them.

Its confidence can come from a different claim: disagreement does not invalidate the system. It demonstrates what the system permits. Europeans can oppose their governments, organize politically, investigate corruption, change laws, criticize the Union itself and still remain participants in the common political space.

That is a powerful contrast with the Russian proposition. Europe need not tell citizens that history guarantees its success. It can tell them that they retain agency over the future.

The Offensive Question

Once that distinction is made, a more ambitious possibility appears. European strategic communication need not stop at protecting Europeans from Russian narratives.
Europe can also communicate directly to Russians.

The purpose would not be to persuade Russians to become Europeans, to humiliate Russia, or to prescribe a post-Putin political order. Nor should Europe mirror the Kremlin by trying to manipulate another population into obedience.

The proposition can be much simpler: Russian citizens are entitled to encounter alternatives.

They are entitled to know that Europe does not require a weak, fragmented or culturally erased Russia. They are entitled to hear that security does not require permanent confrontation; that national dignity is compatible with peaceful borders; that Russians and Ukrainians do not need to be enemies for either people to possess an independent political future; and that ordinary Russians could eventually have a relationship with Europe based on travel, trade, cultural exchange, security and mutual respect rather than mobilization against an external enemy.

The WE ARE EUROPE values make this proposition more concrete.[D] Freedom to live one's own life, equality before the law, protection against arbitrary power, freedom to be different and the peaceful resolution of political disagreement are not ethnic European possessions. They are choices about how human beings may live together. There is no reason to assume Russian citizens have less claim to encounter or consider them.

This is the central insight behind our earlier Beyond Russky Mir argument.[B] Europe does not need to defeat one civilizational mythology with another. It can widen the horizon beyond the mythology itself.

Why the Offensive Approach May Be Easier

Paradoxically, this outward-facing task may be easier for Europe than constructing a tightly coordinated internal narrative.

Inside the European Union, any common story must coexist with twenty-seven political systems, many languages, national histories, party competition and constant public contestation. That complexity is unavoidable. Toward Russian audiences, however, Europe does not need agreement on every European policy. It needs only a limited and credible proposition about the relationship it is prepared to offer.

That proposition can remain stable even while European governments disagree about taxation, migration, agriculture or institutional reform. Europe can say: we will defend ourselves; we will support the sovereignty of our neighbors; we will resist coercion; but we do not define the Russian people as our permanent enemy. A peaceful Russia respecting the political independence of its neighbors has a place in a future European security and economic order.

Such a message would also attack a vulnerability in the Kremlin narrative.
If Russian resilience depends partly on the belief that the West seeks Russia's defeat, humiliation or dismemberment, a credible European account of a different future complicates that interpretation. It introduces a distinction the Russian system works hard to blur: opposition to Russian aggression is not the same as hostility toward Russians.

This would not produce rapid political change. Narrative competition rarely works that way. Its strategic value lies in keeping another future imaginable.

From Message to Ecosystem

A story becomes strategically relevant only when people can repeatedly encounter it through sources they regard as credible. Europe therefore cannot solve this problem by writing a better slogan in Brussels.

The organizational principle should be deliberately different from Russia's. Europe does not need to organize the story. It needs to organize the conditions under which credible alternative stories can survive, travel and compete.

That means supporting independent Russian-language journalism, access to uncensored information, cultural and academic exchange where possible, credible Russian and European voices, documentation of the real effects of the war, and sustained communication about what a future relationship could look like. It also means technological resilience: helping information remain accessible when censorship, platform restrictions or state pressure attempt to close the space.

The state and EU institutions have roles, but they should not monopolize the message. In a democratic ecosystem, credibility often comes precisely from distance from government. Journalists, researchers, cultural institutions, diaspora networks, civil society, universities and individual citizens can carry different parts of the same broad proposition without reciting identical lines.

That is not a defect to be eliminated. It is how a European ecosystem could turn pluralism into an advantage.

A Strategic Capability, Not a Substitute for Defense

Narrative capability should not be romanticized. It will not stop a missile, defend a border or replace ammunition. Europe still requires military deterrence, economic resilience and credible support for Ukraine.

But the comparison should not be between communication and tanks as though one must replace the other. The relevant question is whether Europe is neglecting a comparatively inexpensive strategic domain that can influence the political environment in which military power has to operate.

Russia's own behavior suggests that Moscow does not regard the information environment as secondary. The EU has documented systematic Russian efforts to influence European and Ukrainian audiences, including campaigns intended to erode support for Ukraine and undermine democratic societies [2][5]. The Council has imposed measures on actors involved in propaganda and information manipulation aimed at European civil society and political processes [6].

If narrative and information operations are worth sustained Russian investment, Europe should at least ask whether leaving that field largely defensive is strategically rational.

The potential return is asymmetric. Europe does not need to convince the Russian population of a single European worldview. Even modest success—preserving access to alternatives, reducing the credibility of permanent-enemy narratives, or keeping a post-confrontation future imaginable—could make coercive mobilization harder to sustain over time.

Guardrails Matter

An offensive democratic approach becomes self-defeating if it abandons the principles it claims to represent.

European communication should therefore remain attributable where governments are speaking, distinguish evidence from advocacy, avoid fabricated identities and covert manipulation, protect editorial independence, and leave audiences free to reject the message. The objective is not psychological domination. It is competitive openness.

This limitation is not merely ethical. It is strategic. Europe's strongest argument is the difference between a system that needs to control interpretation and one confident enough to permit competing interpretations.

The democratic constraint is therefore also part of the message.

Russia Has a Story. Europe Can Offer a Future.

Russia has demonstrated what sustained narrative capability can contribute to national resilience. Europe should learn from that capability without copying the political system that created it.

The European answer cannot be one centrally imposed story. It can be something more compatible with what Europe already is: a strategic narrative environment built around truthful information, democratic confidence, institutional pluralism and a clear proposition about the future.

Internally, that means explaining more coherently what Europeans are defending and why. Externally, it means refusing to leave Russian citizens with only the Kremlin's description of what Europe wants for them.

Europe can say something Russia's present narrative has difficulty accommodating: We will resist aggression without defining Russians as our enemy. We will defend Ukraine's freedom without demanding Russia's humiliation. And we believe Russians, like Europeans, are entitled to imagine a future in which national dignity does not require permanent confrontation.

That is not propaganda. It is a political proposition—and one Europe has barely begun to organize the capacity to communicate.

The remaining objection is practical. Europe is fragmented, slow and institutionally cautious. Even readers persuaded by the argument may reasonably ask whether the European Union could ever organize such an ecosystem in practice.

That is the question for the next article:
How a democratic Europe could actually build it.

References

[1] European External Action Service (EEAS), “Information Integrity and Countering Foreign Information Manipulation & Interference (FIMI),” 17 March 2026.

[2] European External Action Service (EEAS), “2025 Report on EEAS Activities to Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI),” 24 June 2026.

[3] European Commission, European Democracy Shield, 2025: whole-of-society measures to strengthen democratic resilience, information integrity, media freedom and pluralism.

[4] European Parliament, Resolution of 23 January 2025 on Russia’s disinformation and historical falsification to justify its war of aggression against Ukraine, P10_TA(2025)0006.

[5] European External Action Service and Ukraine Center for Countering Disinformation, joint report on Russian FIMI targeting Ukraine’s path toward EU membership, 23 June 2026.

[6] Council of the European Union, “Information manipulation in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine: EU lists two individuals and one entity,” 27 May 2024.

Earlier Europe-Is-Us articles informing this argument

[A] EUROPE–RUSSIA — How Russia Built the Story Russians Are Asked to Live In, August 2026
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/europerussia-how-russia-built-story.html

[B] Beyond Russky Mir — Europe Is Us, May 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/05/beyond-russky-mir.html

[C] Europe Needs a Strategy of Confidence toward Russia — Europe Is Us, June 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/06/europe-needs-strategy-of-confidence.html

[D] WE ARE EUROPE — seven-article values series and Key Notes, August 2026.
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/we-are-europe-key-notes-to-series.html

 

EUROPE–RUSSIA — How Russia Built the Story Russians Are Asked to Live In

How history, identity and state power help explain Russia’s unexpected resilience—and Putin’s confidence

R.M. Westerink; 24 August 2026

A Puzzle Seen from the West

On 22 August, speaking at the United Russia congress, Vladimir Putin offered a compact statement of the worldview that has sustained his political system through more than four years of full-scale war. He described Russia through a vocabulary of continuous history, national unity, sovereignty, democratic legitimacy, external threat and eventual victory.[1] Russian troops, he said, fight for the Motherland and its interests; the country’s strength lies in the unity of the front and home front; elections demonstrate the maturity of the political system; and United Russia has a duty to do everything necessary for victory.

The speech was striking not because every claim was new, but because of the way its elements fitted together. Russia, in Putin’s account, is simultaneously a democracy, a unified multiethnic society, a country defending its legitimate interests, and a civilization forced to protect itself against outside powers seeking to weaken it. The war becomes evidence not only of danger but also of endurance. Continued fighting becomes confirmation that retreat would be more dangerous than resistance.

Seen from Western Europe, there are obvious contradictions here. Russia invaded a sovereign neighboring country and has attempted to impose its will on Ukrainians while simultaneously presenting Russians and Ukrainians as peoples joined by history, culture and civilization. It claims democratic legitimacy while political competition, independent media and public dissent are heavily constrained. Independent assessments describe a political system dominated by the Kremlin, with controlled national media and extensive restrictions on opposition and anti-war expression.

Cataloguing those contradictions is necessary, but it takes us only so far. The more consequential question is how these claims fit together into a recognizable account of Russia’s past, present and place in the world—and how that account has become embedded deeply enough in Russian society to help the country absorb costs that Western observers repeatedly expected to become politically destabilizing.

That leads to a different question from whether Russian propaganda is true or false: How did the Russian state build a story sufficiently powerful that millions of Russians can interpret sacrifice, isolation and war through it? Understanding that process may help explain one of the more surprising features of the war: Russia’s stubborn resilience.

The Story Came Before the Propaganda

It would be tempting to begin with Putin, state television or the propaganda apparatus created around the war in Ukraine. But that would mistake the amplification system for the origins of the story.

Modern Russian state narratives draw on historical materials that long predate Putin: memories of empire, the Orthodox tradition, the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, Russia’s experience of invasion, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and a recurring conception of Russia as both European and somehow more than European—a civilization with its own historical trajectory. Scholarship tracing the evolution from the “Russian idea” to the contemporary “Russian World” shows how older civilizational concepts were gradually incorporated into official state discourse, with the Russkiy Mir Foundation established in 2007 as one institutional expression of that development.[2][3]

These memories do not form one neat ideology. Nor do Russians necessarily interpret them in the same way. What matters politically is that they provide a reservoir from which a coherent national story can be constructed.

Central to that story is the idea of a Russia whose historical significance extends beyond the borders of the contemporary Russian Federation. Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians can be presented as branches of a common historical civilization. Kyiv can therefore simultaneously belong to another internationally recognized state and be described as foundational to Russian history. The Soviet past can be criticized for particular decisions while its victory in the Great Patriotic War remains sacred. Imperial, Orthodox, Soviet and post-Soviet elements that would appear contradictory in a conventional political ideology can coexist when they serve a larger narrative of historical continuity.

This is one reason concepts such as Russky Mir—the “Russian World”—matter. They provide a vocabulary through which language, culture, religion, historical memory and geopolitical space can be connected. Recent scholarship describes Russky Mir as a cultural, religious and geopolitical framework with implications for Russian conceptions of sovereignty and for Moscow’s relationship with Ukraine.[2][4]

Thinkers such as Alexander Dugin have articulated radical versions of this civilizational vision, as discussed in our earlier articles. But it would be misleading to imagine Dugin as the architect of contemporary Russian consciousness. His significance is better understood as part of a much larger intellectual and political environment. The Kremlin did not need to persuade Russians to adopt one philosopher’s doctrine. It could selectively draw on already familiar ideas about Russian greatness, sacrifice, encirclement, sovereignty and historical destiny.

The state’s achievement has been to organize these materials into a politically usable story.

Building the Great Russia Story

The resulting narrative is powerful partly because it connects different periods of Russian history that might otherwise remain disconnected.

Imperial Russia provides the memory of great-power status. The Second World War provides perhaps the most emotionally powerful story of sacrifice, existential threat and ultimate victory. The Soviet collapse provides the experience of loss. The difficulties and disorder of the 1990s provide a more recent memory of weakness and humiliation. Putin’s first decades in power can then be presented as the period in which Russia recovered stability, sovereignty and international standing.

Within this historical sequence, the conflict with the West acquires meaning. NATO enlargement, Western influence in former Soviet states, the color revolutions, Ukraine’s westward orientation and eventually the war itself can be incorporated into a longer story in which Russia repeatedly faces attempts to constrain its natural place in the world.

That changes the perceived structure of the Ukraine conflict. From the Western perspective, the basic sequence is relatively straightforward: Russia → invades → sovereign Ukraine.

Within the Kremlin narrative, however, the sequence is reconstructed:
West → penetrates historical Russian space → through Ukraine → Russia defends itself.

Once this second interpretation is accepted, many otherwise difficult claims become mutually reinforcing. Ukraine can be recognized formally as a state while its complete geopolitical independence from Russia is treated as historically artificial. Russia can be the militarily attacking party while understanding itself as strategically defensive. Territorial expansion can be described as protection or reunification.

This does not make the account historically or legally valid. It explains why pointing out the contradiction may have less persuasive force inside Russia than Western observers expect. The disagreement is not merely about individual facts. It concerns the framework within which those facts acquire meaning.

How a Story Becomes an Environment

A national narrative becomes politically important when people encounter it not occasionally, but repeatedly and through institutions they associate with ordinary life. This is where the Russian state’s organizational capability becomes crucial.

Schools help establish the historical narrative. Since the full-scale invasion, patriotic education, revised textbooks and militarized initiatives have expanded substantially. Research on Russian schooling describes the intertwining of loyalty, patriotism, traditional values and state-defined national unity, while also finding that reception among teachers, pupils and parents is not uniform.[5][6]

Television and other state-aligned media continually reproduce the interpretive framework in relation to current events. Public commemorations, particularly those surrounding the Great Patriotic War, connect present sacrifice with perhaps the most powerful collective memory in Russian society.

The Russian Orthodox Church provides another layer of legitimacy. Scholarship on the Church’s role in the war describes how religious and moral language has been integrated with nationalism, anti-Westernism and the defense of Russian civilization. The Church’s importance is not simply that every Russian follows its teaching; it can also function as a source of cultural and symbolic authority within the broader narrative environment.[7]

At the same time, competing interpretations have progressively less institutional room in which to develop. Independent media have been constrained or forced abroad, internet access to critical sources has been restricted, and anti-war speech can lead to prosecution and imprisonment.

Taken together, these mechanisms create something more substantial than a conventional propaganda apparatus. Schools help establish the historical narrative; media and commemorations continually reproduce it; political, cultural and religious institutions lend it authority; and repression reduces the visibility and organizational reach of competing interpretations.

None of these mechanisms would be sufficient on its own. Their importance lies in the way they reinforce one another. The result is not simply a collection of messages. It is an information and meaning environment.

Russians Do Not Have to Believe Everything

This distinction is important because Russian resilience does not require us to assume that the population has been uniformly persuaded.

Some Russians appear genuinely committed to the Kremlin’s account of the war. Others may support Russia and its armed forces while privately disliking Putin or questioning particular decisions. Some may accept the proposition that Russia is threatened by the West without embracing every official explanation of how the war began. Others may be primarily concerned with protecting their families, careers and ordinary lives. Still others may simply withdraw from politics.

Survey evidence illustrates this complexity. Levada Center polling in 2025 found high declared support for the actions of the Russian armed forces while, at the same time, majorities increasingly favored peace negotiations. Support also varied substantially with age, political attitudes and information sources. These results do not give us a simple measure of genuine belief under authoritarian conditions, but they do warn against treating Russian opinion as a single pro-war bloc.

The Kremlin therefore does not need Russians to believe every element of its account. Political resilience can rest on something considerably less demanding. A citizen may distrust individual politicians or dislike the war while still believing that Russia is fundamentally threatened by the West, that Russian soldiers deserve loyalty, or that defeat would leave the country in a worse position than continuing the struggle. Others may conclude that they have little ability to influence events and retreat into private life.

These attitudes can coexist, and together they leave considerably less space for organized resistance than opinion surveys measuring straightforward “support for the war” might suggest.

Repression matters enormously here, but repression alone is an incomplete explanation. A population held together exclusively by fear would be much more fragile than Russia presently appears to be. The more interesting possibility is that coercion operates alongside genuine patriotism, historical memory, social adaptation, political passivity and varying degrees of acceptance of the state narrative. Russia’s resilience may lie precisely in this mixture.

Turning Cost into Meaning

This helps explain something that has repeatedly surprised Western observers.

Russia has incurred extraordinary costs. Soldiers have been killed and wounded. Families have been disrupted. Sanctions have reduced access to Western goods, technology and finance. Parts of the economy have been reorganized around wartime requirements. International connections built after the Soviet collapse have been damaged or severed.

Western strategic reasoning understandably expects such costs eventually to produce political pressure. As the burden rises, citizens should increasingly question the policy producing it. But the relationship is not automatic.

The Russian system inserts something between cost and policy change: meaning.

If economic difficulty is understood primarily as evidence that government policy has failed, it can weaken political authority. If the same difficulty is understood as the consequence of an external attempt to destroy or subordinate the country, endurance can acquire patriotic meaning. In a February 2025 Levada survey, 56 percent of respondents said Western sanctions would strengthen Russia and stimulate its development, illustrating how economic pressure can be interpreted through a resilience narrative rather than only as evidence of policy failure.

The same mechanism can operate with military losses. A dead soldier can represent evidence of a disastrous policy. But within a different narrative environment, the same death can be interpreted as sacrifice in defense of the Motherland. The loss remains real. What changes is its political meaning.

This is where Russia’s narrative system may contribute directly to national resilience. It cannot eliminate material costs, but it can influence how those costs are interpreted.

And once society has adapted to a new level of hardship, that adaptation itself can reinforce the narrative. Sanctions were supposed to cripple Russia; Russia continued functioning. Western companies departed; alternatives were found. The war was expected to become politically unsustainable; the political system endured. Economic research also shows why the picture is not simply one of collapse: wartime demand, wage growth and very low unemployment supported household incomes even as sanctions, capacity constraints and high borrowing costs accumulated longer-term pressures.

Each survival can then be incorporated into the story as evidence that the story was right.
A feedback loop emerges: pressure demonstrates hostility; survival demonstrates Russian strength; demonstrated strength validates continued resistance.

Why Putin Can Remain Confident

Seen from outside Russia, Putin’s confidence can therefore appear puzzling. Russia has suffered major military losses, economic distortions and increased dependence on non-Western partners. Its relationship with Europe has been profoundly damaged, perhaps for generations.

But Putin does not evaluate his position exclusively through those indicators.

From inside the system he leads, other developments may appear equally important. The state survived sanctions that were expected to be devastating. The economy adapted sufficiently to sustain the war. Political opposition did not generate a systemic challenge. Western governments did not intervene directly with their own forces. Relations with China and much of the non-Western world prevented the comprehensive international isolation Russia might once have feared.

Most importantly, Russian society absorbed the transition from relative normality to prolonged war. That does not demonstrate that Putin’s strategy will succeed. It does help explain why he may believe that time is not necessarily working against him.

His confidence may rest not only on military calculations but on a political judgment: Russia has developed a greater capacity to absorb prolonged confrontation than its adversaries expected.

If that assessment is even partly correct, it has strategic consequences. Moscow can hope that Western governments, operating within competitive democracies and rapidly changing political environments, will eventually experience greater difficulty sustaining a long confrontation than the Russian state experiences sustaining its own population. The contest then becomes partly a contest of endurance.

Resilience Is Not Political Health

There is an important limit to this analysis. Explaining Russian resilience should not be confused with declaring Russia internally healthy or indefinitely stable.

Demographic pressures remain substantial. War expenditure can conceal economic weaknesses as well as stimulate particular sectors. Dependence on China creates its own vulnerabilities. Military losses accumulate. Technological restrictions may impose costs slowly rather than dramatically. Elite cohesion can persist for years and then change unexpectedly.

Current economic evidence already points to that distinction. The World Bank has projected much slower Russian growth than in 2024, citing capacity constraints, higher borrowing costs, tighter sanctions and lower energy prices. BOFIT likewise expects continued fiscal and structural pressure even while noting that wartime labor demand and wage growth have supported many households.

Nor does apparent public compliance tell us precisely what Russians would choose under conditions of unrestricted political competition and information. Resilience is not health.

The Russian system has demonstrated resilience. It has not demonstrated invulnerability. But that distinction makes understanding the sources of resilience more rather than less important. Waiting for material pressure automatically to produce political transformation may be a poor strategy if the Russian political system is unusually capable of converting pressure into narratives of endurance.

The Asymmetry We Should Notice

This brings the analysis back to Europe.

The most consequential asymmetry between Russia and the West may not be military.

Russia has spent years developing the institutional capacity to explain the world to its population in strategic terms. It connects history, identity, security, sacrifice and national purpose. The state actively works to sustain that interpretation across generations and institutions.

European democracies operate differently, and for good reasons. They cannot and should not reproduce Russia’s controlled information environment. Democratic pluralism requires competing interpretations, independent media and the freedom to reject official narratives.

But democratic pluralism does not prevent strategic communication.

Europe can still explain why the confrontation with Russia matters, what kind of future it offers its own citizens, why Ukrainians have the right to determine their own political future, and—perhaps most importantly—what relationship Europe ultimately wants with Russian citizens themselves.

That last dimension may become increasingly important.
Russia’s story tells Russians what the West supposedly wants from them: weakness, submission, fragmentation and the destruction of Russian civilization.
Europe has been much less systematic in telling Russians what it actually envisages instead.

That creates an asymmetry worth examining.

The Question This Leaves for Europe

Understanding this system helps explain something that has repeatedly surprised Western observers: Russia's capacity to absorb military losses, sanctions, economic damage and international isolation without producing the political reaction outsiders often expected.

This resilience does not mean that Russian society is immune to pressure, or that every Russian accepts the Kremlin's account of the world. It means that material pressure operates inside an information and meaning environment that has been built and reinforced over many years. Hardship can therefore be interpreted not simply as evidence that policy has failed, but as confirmation that Russia is under attack and must endure.

That makes the narrative ecosystem more than a communications instrument. It has become part of Russia's strategic resilience.

And that leaves Europe with a question of its own.

Europe has invested enormously in military deterrence, economic sanctions and support for Ukraine. But if Russia has also developed the capacity to shape how its population understands the conflict, sacrifice and Russia's place in the world, what is Europe's corresponding capability?

Russia has a story. Does Europe?

 

References

[1] United Russia party Congress - Vladimir Putin took part in the second stage of the 23^rd Congress of the United Russia party. The President addressed the plenary session held at the Megasport Sports Palace. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/80570

[2] Pasquale Annicchino, “The interaction of the ‘Russian world’ ideology, sovereignty, and human rights amidst the Russia-Ukraine war,” Journal of Law, Religion and State 13, no. 2/3 (2025), 160–183. DOI: 10.5117/JLRS2025.2.3.002.ANNI

[3] “From the ‘Russian idea’ to the ‘Russian World’,” Studies in East European Thought (2025). DOI/article: 10.1007/s11212-024-09692-9.

[4] Taras Kuzio, “Pan-Russian World and Ukraine,” in Russia’s War on Ukraine, Cambridge University Press (2025).

[5] Jonna Alava, “From Patriotic Education to Militarist Indoctrination—Disciplinary Power and Silent Resistance in Russia after the Onset of the War against Ukraine,” Post-Soviet Affairs (2025). DOI: 10.1080/10758216.2024.2444600.

[6] I. Fominykh et al., “Patriotic education in Russia: will it achieve loyalty?” Post-Soviet Affairs (2026). DOI: 10.1080/1060586X.2026.2643798.

[7] Alar Kilp, “The Russian Orthodox Church and Patriarch Kirill Weaponizing Teaching of Human Rights and Ecclesiastical Social Doctrine to Justify the Russian War of Aggression in Ukraine,” Journal of Law, Religion and State 13, no. 2/3 (2025), 131–159. DOI: 10.5117/JLRS2025.2.3.001.KILP.

Where Have the Republican Town Halls Gone?

 

Where Have the Republican Town Halls Gone?

Republicans once met their constituents more often than Democrats. Two years later, their face-to-face town halls have collapsed — just as the political weather is getting worse.

The Disappearing Town Hall

Something curious happened while preparing the August edition of the GOP Representative Stress Index.[1] The index is intended to monitor signs of political stress between Republican members of Congress and the voters they represent. One of its indicators concerns town halls: how often representatives meet constituents, how open those meetings are, and whether those encounters become confrontational.

In August, however, there were remarkably few traditional town halls to observe. Our first concern was methodological. If representatives do not hold town halls, there is less information available for measuring constituency stress. The August RSI report therefore withheld numerical results where the evidence was insufficient.[1] But the scarcity raised a different question. Perhaps the absence of Republican town halls should not be regarded only as missing information. If representatives who previously met voters face-to-face increasingly choose not to do so, the change in behavior may itself tell us something about their political environment.

Axios recently described the congressional town hall as an “endangered species.” When it examined the August recess on August 10, only 11 members of Congress had traditional town halls scheduled for the remainder of the month.[2] The August recess traditionally provides members of Congress with an opportunity to return home, meet voters and explain what Washington has been doing. Those encounters are not necessarily comfortable. Constituents control much of the discussion, difficult questions cannot always be avoided, and an embarrassing exchange can quickly become national news.

The scarcity of meetings in August could therefore have been an isolated consequence of today's highly polarized political environment. Looking back over the previous two years, however, reveals a much more substantial change, particularly among Republicans.

Republicans Changed — Democrats Did Not

The most useful comparison is initially not between Republicans and Democrats, but between Republicans today and Republicans two years ago. In the first half of 2024, Republicans held 309 town halls, of which 229 were in person. Almost three-quarters of their town halls therefore involved direct face-to-face contact. Their overall town-hall activity even exceeded that of Democrats. There is little evidence here of an established Republican preference against traditional public meetings.

By the first half of 2025, however, the Republican in-person share had fallen to 32 percent. A year later it was only 17 percent. The Democratic comparison makes this behavioral change more significant. Over the same three periods, the Democratic share of town halls held in person moved from approximately 58 percent to 64 percent and then 66 percent.[3] Democrats therefore did not experience a comparable retreat from face-to-face meetings.

The two parties do not face identical audiences, so this comparison should not be overstated. Republican meetings may attract more organized opposition, particularly when controversial Trump administration policies are involved. Nevertheless, the contrast provides a useful benchmark. Both parties operate in the same highly polarized political system, and both face the possibility of activists, hostile questions and viral confrontations. Yet only among Republicans do we see such a dramatic reduction in direct public exposure.

The Turning Point in Early 2025

The timing helps explain what changed. During the opening months of the second Trump administration, Republican members encountered difficult town halls concerning DOGE, federal layoffs, spending reductions and other administration policies. Several meetings became confrontational and received substantial media attention.

In March 2025, Republican leaders responded by advising members to move away from traditional in-person town halls and toward telephone, virtual or smaller and more controlled alternatives. The advice was understandable as political risk management: an uncontrolled meeting could generate hostile footage without necessarily providing a representative picture of district opinion.

What followed, however, went well beyond a short tactical adjustment. LegiStorm reports that since the March 2025 intervention, Republicans have held 231 in-person town halls, compared with 1,042 held by Democrats.[3] That amounts to roughly four and a half Democratic face-to-face town halls for every Republican one.

The long-term figures therefore suggest a recognizable sequence. Republicans were still making extensive use of traditional town halls in 2024. Difficult constituent encounters became prominent in early 2025. Party leaders subsequently encouraged safer forms of engagement, after which Republican use of the traditional format fell to historically low levels.

North Carolina: What the National Pattern Looks Like Locally

North Carolina provides a useful example of how this national development appears at constituency level. NC Newsline examined the state's congressional delegation in October 2025. Republicans then outnumbered Democrats 12–4 in the delegation, yet only one Republican House member had held an in-person town hall during the year. Three of the state's four Democratic House members had done so.[4]

In some districts, constituents responded by organizing “empty chair” meetings at which participants directed questions toward a cardboard representation of their absent member of Congress. The symbolism was effective, although it did not establish that those attending represented majority opinion in their districts.

Republicans offered precisely that objection. They argued that organized progressive groups were packing meetings to provoke confrontations and create political theater rather than genuine constituent dialogue. They also pointed to alternative methods of communication, including telephone and virtual meetings, which can reach considerably more people than a physical meeting room.[4]

Those arguments deserve to be taken seriously. A loud town hall is not an opinion poll, and a representative has no obligation to provide opponents with an easily staged media event. But the explanation also clarifies the political calculation involved. As Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper observed in the NC Newsline report, Republicans appeared to conclude that there was relatively little to gain and potentially much to lose from holding such meetings.[4] That calculation — rather than the motives of every individual representative — is what makes the decline politically informative.

A More Difficult Political Environment in 2026

The Republican retreat from traditional town halls began in 2025, so today's political problems cannot be used retrospectively to explain its origin. They can, however, help explain why returning to uncontrolled constituent meetings may now appear even less attractive.

President Trump's political position has weakened.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on August 17 put his approval rating at 33 percent, the lowest level of his presidency in that polling series.[5]
More important for congressional Republicans, the party's previously substantial advantage on immigration had narrowed, while Democrats had moved slightly ahead when voters were asked which party they trusted more on economic management.[5]

The immigration picture remains more complicated than those national figures alone suggest.
AP-NORC found that nearly eight in ten Republicans approved of Trump's handling of immigration, making it one of his strongest issues within his own party.
Nationally, however, his immigration approval had fallen to 39 percent, while majorities said some deportation practices had gone too far.[6]
Economic concerns provide another source of constituency pressure. AP-NORC measured approval of Trump's handling of the economy at only 32 percent.[6]
At the same time, the continuing Iran conflict and its effects on international energy markets have added highly visible household costs, including higher gasoline prices.

None of these developments proves that a particular member of Congress would encounter a hostile town hall. Together, however, they describe an environment in which representatives can expect difficult questions about affordability, immigration enforcement, federal cuts, health-care costs, gasoline prices and the direction of American foreign policy. If an open meeting offers relatively little benefit while creating numerous opportunities for damaging confrontation, avoiding that meeting can appear rational.

What the Empty Town Hall Tells Us

Opinion polls tell us what voters say about presidents, parties and policies. Elections eventually tell us how those voters choose. Town halls offer a different kind of information: they show how willing elected representatives are to enter an environment in which constituents exercise considerable control over the questions, reactions and agenda.

That is what makes the Republican shift from 2024 to 2026 politically interesting. Telephone meetings can be moderated, virtual events controlled and invited roundtables restricted. Traditional open town halls transfer considerably more control to the people in the room. Republicans once made extensive use of that format. Increasingly, they choose alternatives, while Democrats have not shown the same retreat.

This does not mean that every missing town hall demonstrates political stress. Representatives have legitimate scheduling and security concerns, hostile meetings can be organized by opposition activists, and alternative formats can provide meaningful constituent contact. The evidence supports a narrower conclusion: Republican representatives increasingly appear to regard uncontrolled face-to-face constituent contact as carrying more political risk than benefit.

That interpretation also helps explain something encountered in the August GOP Representative Stress Index. The RSI was designed to identify signs of stress between Republican representatives and their constituencies. When there were too few town halls for normal measurement, the August report appropriately withheld numerical results rather than manufacture evidence.[1] Seen against the longer 2024–2026 LegiStorm series, however, that scarcity was not merely a data problem. It was part of a measurable behavioral change.

The timing makes that change particularly relevant as the 2026 midterms approach. Republicans now face weaker presidential polling, economic dissatisfaction, controversial immigration enforcement and other issues likely to generate difficult constituent questions. None proves that an individual representative is electorally endangered. Together, they make the continuing preference for controlled forms of voter contact easier to understand.

Two years ago, Republican members of Congress were quite willing to enter the room. Today, compared both with their own previous behavior and with Democrats, they increasingly are not.

If Republican representatives remain confident that their constituents are behind them, it is reasonable to ask why meeting those constituents face-to-face has become so much less attractive.

References

[1] Monthly GOP Representative Stress Index Report — August 15, 2026;
https://europe-is-us.blogspot.com/2026/08/monthly-gop-representative-stress-index.html

[2] Axios, “Congress’ disappearing town halls,” August 10, 2026.

[3] LegiStorm, “Republicans hit record low for in-person town halls,” June 29, 2026.

[4] NC Newsline, “As Trump opposition grows, North Carolina Republicans duck town halls. Does it matter?”, October 20, 2025.

[5] Reuters/Ipsos, “Trump approval falls to 33%, lowest of his presidency,” August 17, 2026.

[6] AP-NORC/AP, “Why immigration remains strong for Trump among Republicans,” August 2026.