THE VISEGRAD GROUP AND THE WAR IN UKRAINE: FROM VETO BLOC TO VOID

Abstract

This article asks why Russia’s 2022 invasion fractured the Visegrád Group and answers by showing that the cohesion once visible during the 2015 migration crisis rested on a model of negative integration that could resist supranational pressure yet could not be translated into the demands of war. When faced with a proximate conflict that required convergent threat perception, collective risk-sharing and credible military capacity, the four states moved along divergent paths: Poland recast sovereignty as survival and bound itself more deeply to NATO and United States’ guarantees, Hungary treated sovereignty as autonomy and used veto power while maintaining energy ties with Moscow, Slovakia balanced cooperation and restraint within a polarised domestic arena, and Czechia consolidated an Atlanticist line alongside Poland. These trajectories produced a structural split that removed the V4 from the centre of Europe’s security debates and revealed a deeper mechanism: coalitions forged in opposition can endure in institutional disputes but falter once coercive shocks demand common strategy. What remains of the Visegrád format is protocol and symbol only, while effective agency has shifted to NATO, to coalitions of the willing within the EU, and to minilateral formats that reflect the real distribution of threat, capacity and political will across the continent.