European Council President Costa Under Heavy Fire for Opening Up Communication With Russia’s Putin * The Gateway Pundit * by Paul Serran
EU Council president Antonio Costa – Wiki Commons
Costa’s Globalist peers have turned on him.
For a few months now, there’s been great disagreement among the EU Globalist ‘leaders’ as to whether it would be wise for them to open up a line of communication with Russia.
Names like Angela Merkel and Helmut Schroeder have been floated as negotiators, but so far, all they managed was to ‘agree to disagree’.
That’s when European Council President, the Portuguese Antonio Costa, surprised everyone by making a move – and now he is under fire from the Euro-Globalist establishment.
France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz were among the first to harshly criticize Costa for opening up communication with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
This reaction is reportedly putting Macron and Merz ‘on a collision course with a large part of the rest of the bloc’.
Scandal in the EU: Head of the European Council António Costa tried to establish a communication channel with Moscow without coordination.
According to Politico, Costa instructed his assistant to contact the Russian side twice without consulting Germany, France, and the Baltic… pic.twitter.com/vD5eTdE9DB
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) June 19, 2026
Politico reported:
“In an unexpectedly discordant late-night summit in Brussels ― the first since 2010 without longtime contrarian ex-Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ― the French president and the German chancellor scorned efforts by European Council President António Costa, who acts on behalf of all 27 governments, to reach out to the Kremlin, according to five EU diplomats and officials briefed on the behind-closed-doors conversation. Significantly, other leaders took Costa’s side.
The clashes bring to light simmering tension at the heart of the EU over its approach to Russia and who should talk on Europe’s behalf.
Leaders from some of the most staunchly anti-Russia countries, as well as Denmark and the Netherlands, rallied behind Macron and Merz, with some displaying unprecedented fury with Costa, three of the officials said.”
European Council President Antonio Costa defended his recent outreach to Russia during a meeting with European Union leaders, arguing he was well-positioned to convey the bloc’s interests despite frustration over his diplomatic overtures https://t.co/VgbRAUOsXu
— Bloomberg (@business) June 18, 2026
Costa’s chief of staff, Pedro Lourtie, contacted Russian officials twice over the past few weeks.
Euronews reported:
“António Costa, the president of the European Council, has defended his surprise decision to open a diplomatic channel with the Kremlin to assess whether conditions exist for peace negotiations — a possibility his team concluded is not currently viable.
[…] No clear explanation emerged as to why Costa, who has made maintaining the unity of the 27 a central theme of his presidency, decided it was the right time to reach out to Moscow. Earlier this week, it emerged that his chief of cabinet, Pedro Lourtie, had held several phone calls with a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It is understood, although his office did not confirm, that the official was Yuri Ushakov.”
Who calls the shots on EU diplomacy?
Some EU leaders are reportedly frustrated at Council President Antonio Costa’s unilateral communications with Russia, raising concerns over not being consulted. @ShonaMurray_ reports live from the EU Council Summit on #EuropeToday. pic.twitter.com/3m3GeGnnTf
— euronews (@euronews) June 19, 2026
Read more:
Ad block users: Some site features may not work correctly while an ad blocker is enabled, because they break scripts and content this website depends on. If you can't see comments below, for example, please disable your ad blocker.