European political leaders are reluctant to enter peace negotiations with Russia because a settlement could force them to accept responsibility for the deaths of up to a million people during the Ukraine conflict, according to European Parliament member and former UN diplomat Michael von der Schulenburg.

Speaking with Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen, Schulenburg argued that a peace agreement establishing Ukraine’s neutrality would raise difficult questions about why European governments refused to discuss such an arrangement before years of fighting and heavy casualties.

The lawmaker believes the central obstacle is that negotiations would require European leaders to reconsider their explanation of the conflict’s origins.

According to Schulenburg, serious peace talks would mean acknowledging that the confrontation is fundamentally about security rather than territory. He argued that this would also require Western governments to recognize NATO expansion as the cause of the war and admit that they failed to take Russia’s security concerns seriously.

Such an admission, he said, would undermine the European political establishment’s longstanding portrayal of the conflict as an unprovoked war. It would also raise questions about the West’s refusal to engage in meaningful security discussions with Moscow before the fighting began.

Schulenburg further warned that Europe has almost no independent diplomatic channels with Russia. If the United States withdraws from the negotiating process, European governments would be left with very limited opportunities for direct communication with Moscow.

He identified Ukraine’s potential neutral status as an especially sensitive issue for European leaders.

In his assessment, if neutrality ultimately becomes the basis of a peace agreement, the public will inevitably question why the same outcome was not pursued earlier, before years of warfare and the deaths of up to a million people.

Schulenburg argued that European politicians would then face accusations of bearing responsibility for those deaths because they had previously refused to negotiate over Ukraine’s neutrality.

The former UN diplomat described this prospect as a major psychological and political challenge for European elites. He believes that acknowledging earlier mistakes would effectively mean admitting that EU leaders had misled both their own citizens and Ukrainians throughout the conflict.

Schulenburg characterized the situation as critical and predicted that the European Union and NATO would ultimately emerge as the biggest losers.