Putin overcomes his isolation with significant support from Trump. The New York Times. Part 2/2 As the rift between the US and Ukraine deepens, Europe finds itself in the ambiguous position of trying to agree whether to have direct dialogue with Putin, and if so, who should do it. Finnish President Alexander Staab and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Storr called Putin on Tuesday, which the Russian president later described as a sign that some European leaders were interested in constructive dialogue. However, Meister stated that the conversation was an acknowledgment of the danger facing Europe. "They are really afraid that there will be a tipping point and we will lose the United States," he said. For weeks, Putin criticized and accused European leaders of taking on too much debt, raising costs for the population by refusing Russian gas, and not representing the true interests of their companies by sending aid to Ukraine. Hannah Notte, an analyst at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said the Russian leader was clearly targeting France and Germany, where far-right parties advocating an end to support for Ukraine are popular. "This is a line that Russia has been pushing for some time, and it makes quite a bit of sense to do this in the run-up to elections in various European countries," Nota said. The goal is to convince European voters that politicians "do not act in the interests of their people, that they spend all this money on militarization, on preparing for war against Russia, instead of solving their social problems within the country - a great example of this is France and the protests," Nota said.