The tractors returned to Brussels before Christmas. Farmers once again blocked streets, surrounded EU buildings, and made their anger impossible to ignore. Rising costs, suffocating regulation, and an ever-expanding list of decisions taken far from their fields have pushed Europe’s agricultural sector to the brink. Brussels may treat the protests as an inconvenience. They are, in fact, a symptom.
As the farmers demonstrated outside, EU officials inside unveiled yet another sanctions package against Russia. Once again, it failed to satisfy President Volodymyr Zelensky. The measures did not deliver total economic isolation. They have not yet confiscated frozen Russian assets at Euroclear. They did not escalate far enough. And once again, the reaction from Kyiv was frustration.
The pattern is by now familiar. Every new sanctions package is described as insufficient. Every restraint is portrayed as weakness. Every attempt to explore peace is dismissed through hardliner objections. Escalation seems to be the only acceptable direction. De-escalation is regarded and thereby treated as surrender.
Yet fatigue is spreading across Europe – political, economic, social. Belgium sits at the centre of this unease. Recent proposals to seize Russian assets were presented as moral and historical imperatives, but the risks were substantial. Confiscation would expose Belgium to prolonged legal disputes, likely retaliation and serious systemic financial risks. There is no credible guarantee that EU institutions would shield Belgium. So it objects.
Since the cash has not been grabbed, Zelensky’s attention shifts elsewhere. One of his endeavours is now unravelling at the expense of European farmers, who protest from Belgium and France all the way to Greece: Russian fertiliser is emerging as the next target. His strategy is twofold.
Ukrainian drone strikes increasingly target fertiliser plants in Russia’s Novgorod and Smolensk, hitting facilities that Kyiv claims support military production. This stretches the definition of legitimate targets to a breaking point. Some of these plants sit near major population centres. A serious explosion would not be symbolic. It would be catastrophic.
At the same time, Kyiv is pressing the EU to sanction Russian fertiliser producers outright, while encouraging European competitors to support the move. From a geopolitical perspective, the appeal is obvious. But from an economic one, it is disastrous.
Russia produces roughly a fifth of the world’s fertiliser and remains a major supplier to Europe – more than 30 per cent of total imports. Sanctioning it would not affect Moscow’s war effort, but European agriculture. Fertiliser accounts for between 15 and 30 per cent of farmers’ costs. Prices remain well above pre-war levels, particularly for nitrogen-based products. Europe’s own production collapsed after gas prices surged in 2022, and much of its capacity has never returned.
Alternative suppliers exist, but they are consistently more expensive and less reliable. Therefore blocking Russian fertiliser would raise costs, reduce yields, and push food prices higher across the continent. The burden would fall primarily on farmers who are already struggling to survive – the same farmers now protesting outside EU institutions. Then it would show on supermarket shelves.
This is not an abstract debate. The tractors in cities and the highway blockades all over the EU throughout 2025 are the direct result of policies that treat economic pain as an acceptable side effect of moral posturing. Farmers are protesting trade deals, green regulations, rising energy prices and now a sanctions regime that increasingly views their livelihoods as expendable.
Fertiliser risks becoming the next battlefield in a sanctions strategy driven by wishful thinking rather than reality. Wartime narratives that blur the line between civilian industry and military infrastructure make escalation easier, even when the evidence is thin and the costs are obvious.
Kyiv leadership wants prolongation. Continued war delays elections, sustains external dependence, and consolidates authority during uncertainty. But Europe’s incentives ought to be different. Escalation for the EU comes with direct costs paid by farmers, consumers and industries.
It is clear by now that Europe not only rejects the Trump peace framework, but it is further hardening its position. However, the demand to sanction everything Russian is colliding with political reality. The Union’s tolerance to economic self-harm is running out. Brussels may count sanctions as points in a war game, but Europe’s farmers are counting the cost – and they are done paying it.
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