Donald Tusk sometimes captures political shifts faster than summit communiqués can. In Nicosia, the Polish prime minister spoke of “huge relief” among European leaders: for the first time in years, he said, there were no Russians in the room. Then Robert Fico walked past, and Tusk winked at reporters.
The episode might have remained a diplomatic anecdote had the timing not been so precise. The European Union is entering a new phase after Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary. The leader who spent years turning the veto into a bargaining tool with Brussels and a shield for Moscow has left the European Council as its most reliable source of obstruction.
Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister, is now the most visible voice of skepticism toward a hard line on Russia. But his political weight has changed. Without Orbán, he no longer looks like part of a durable bloc. He looks more like an isolated player forced to adjust to a new atmosphere around the table of European leaders.
According to Daycom’s analysis, Tusk’s joke landed because it contained more political truth than diplomatic courtesy. He did not accuse Fico directly and quickly called the remark a joke. But the signal was clear: the period in which pro-Russian sympathies in a few capitals could reliably paralyze EU decisions on Ukraine is coming to an end.
That change already has a practical dimension. The EU’s 20th package of sanctions against Russia, long delayed by resistance from Budapest and Bratislava, entered into force on the eve of the summit. It was not merely another set of restrictions. It was a test of the bloc’s ability to act after the political earthquake in Hungary.
For years, Europe’s Russia policy moved in jolts. Formally, the union preserved unity, but every major package of aid to Ukraine, sanctions or enlargement decisions passed through exhausting bargaining. Orbán almost turned that procedure into a political genre: delay, raise the price, extract concessions, agree at the last moment — or block again.
That mechanism has now been disrupted. Péter Magyar’s victory in Hungary not only ended Orbán’s long era; it changed the psychology of European negotiations. Brussels has a chance to return to the Russia debate without the constant expectation that one capital will again use the war as leverage in its domestic conflict with the EU.
Tusk sensed that moment more clearly than most. For Poland, Russia is not an abstract matter of foreign policy. It is historical memory, a security instinct and the practical calculation of a country that has become one of the main rear bases of Ukrainian resistance. His words in Nicosia were therefore not only a jab at Fico. They were a reminder that a European majority willing to name the threat directly is re-emerging.
Yet this new unity does not mean automatic ease. Fico remains in power, and his position reflects more than personal sympathy for Moscow or pragmatic dependence on Russian energy. It rests on a segment of Slovak society for which the war in Ukraine has become a source of fear, economic fatigue and distrust of Western elites.
That is why the isolation of pro-Russian politicians does not remove the problem entirely. It changes its form. If resistance to confronting Moscow inside the EU once operated through vetoes, it may now appear through slow implementation, domestic campaigns, energy exemptions, budget bargaining and repeated appeals for “peace” without a clear answer to the question of the aggressor’s responsibility.
The Cyprus summit was symbolic for another reason: it came amid a broader rise of pro-European forces in the region. Tusk pointed to Warsaw, Bucharest, Chișinău and Budapest as proof that democrats are not doomed to lose. Behind that phrase was an effort to create a new political narrative: Europe is not retreating before populism; it is beginning to push it back.
That matters for an EU that has often looked defensive in recent years. It has responded to war, energy blackmail, migration pressure, disinformation and internal authoritarian revisionism. Now Brussels has a rare sense of initiative. It can do more than contain damage. It can unfreeze decisions that had been locked away for years by political obstruction.
Those decisions include new sanctions, financial support for Ukraine, defense integration, enlargement talks and reform of the EU’s foreign-policy decision-making itself. The question is whether the union will use this window before it closes under the pressure of new elections, economic shocks or another wave of populist revenge.
Tusk’s skepticism about negotiations with Russia also belongs to this context. He is not rejecting diplomacy as such. He is insisting on toughness toward Moscow. This position has been shaped by repeated failures of appeasement: talks without strength behind them often become not a path to peace, but a pause the Kremlin uses to regroup.
For Ukraine, the shift in the EU mood could have concrete consequences. If sanctions packages, defense assistance and financing stop being constantly delayed by one or two capitals, Kyiv will face less political uncertainty. In a war of attrition, that matters no less than individual arms deliveries.
But Europe will need to be careful with its own confidence. Orbán’s defeat does not mean the end of Orbánism as a political style. It lives on in distrust of institutions, contempt for liberal norms and the temptation to trade foreign policy for domestic advantage. Fico may be the most visible remnant of that line, but he is not its only bearer.
That is why Tusk’s wink was more than a joke at the Slovak prime minister’s expense. It was a brief scene about a change in European fear. Not long ago, Brussels worried that a pro-Russian minority would once again derail a decision. Now that minority itself must feel that its room for maneuver is shrinking.
There is political value in this change, but also a risk. Unity built only on the defeat of one obstructionist may prove temporary. Unity anchored in swift decisions, institutional discipline and an honest conversation with voters about the cost of security has a chance to last.
The European Union has not become homogeneous, nor has it escaped its internal contradictions. But after the Hungarian election and the Cyprus summit, it looks less paralyzed than before. This is not yet the victory of a strategy, but it is the end of a period in which Moscow could count on predictable help from its political advocates inside the EU.
Tusk said a line that diplomatic protocol quickly tried to soften. Yet such lines sometimes capture a turn of the age more accurately than formal statements. There is, indeed, less of the Kremlin’s shadow in the room of European leaders. The question now is whether Europe can use that silence before it is filled again by the voices of fear, fatigue and old dependencies.
