Russia's fresh power play over Ukraine marks a potential major turning point for the European Union, its biggest ever since the last one.
The current turning point centers on the EU's diplomatic powers and its positioning vis-a-vis Nato, and presages another potential major turning point as the EU weighs its own strategic defense capabilities, which would put relationships with Nato and the US at a turning point.
Ukraine has also been at the center of EU turning points before, in 2013-14 and during the 2004 enlargement round.
Upcoming turning points for the EU include the French elections, while the German elections last year also marked a turning point following the end of Angela Merkel's longstanding reign.
Whether the EU can assert itself in the policing of digital giants and in the transition to a low-carbon economy will also prove turning points (at least one each), as will the EU's ongoing effort to rein in populist, anti-democratic moves in some member states.
The EU's handling of the covid crisis has also been the source of more than one turning point for the EU, with the vaccine procurement debacle and the subsequent pooling of debt to issue economic recovery bonds turning the EU in two directions at once.
Brexit has been at least three turning points on latest calculations.
As were EU-US relations under Trump and the resulting reversal of the globalist trade orthodoxy.
In fact most years throughout the EU's history have been marked by turning points, to the point where the EU has apparently been in a permanent dizzying pirrouette for several decades.
But this latest turning point over Ukraine, could well be the decisive turning point.
Until the next one.
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