Outreach to Russia is a non-starter for the NATO alliance — for now

Olga Oliker, program director for Europe and Central Asia with the International Crisis Group in Brussels, says managing Europe's future with Russia is the biggest challenge in the coming years.

Some NATO allies want to keep arming Ukraine to weaken Russia's military further and frighten Moscow by continuing to build up their own arsenals. Oliker says the problem with that tack is that Russia is already scared of NATO — and it has nuclear weapons.

"The other option," she says, "is that you talk to them and you figure out ways of limiting activities like [military] exercises, weapons deployments and so forth that make it harder to start a new war."

As Russia's invasion grinds into its second year, any such negotiations seem a long way off — but officials across Europe are already thinking about them and how to make sure that when the war in Ukraine finally ends, it's for good.