EU leaders are worried that Russia exerts a lopsided degree of power against Europe and are calling for a more unified front against Moscow’s tactics, according to a Washington Timesreport from Brussels.

“While EU leaders believe that peace and stability are built through interdependence, Russia’s leaders are working to create a situation where the EU needs Russia more than Russia needs the EU, particularly in the energy sector,” a recent report by the new European Council on Foreign Relations said.

Although Russia relies on the EU for 56 percent of its exports and 44 percent of its imports, Europe needs Russia for only 10 percent of its imports and 6 percent of its exports; Europe also has three times as many people and seven times the economic wealth, according to the Times.

By selling energy commodities at good prices to individual countries rather than the EU as a whole, however, Moscow has ensured that the Europeans present it with a disunited front.

“I think they’re trying to play us against each other,” one European Commission trade official said. “Certain matters are arranged bilaterally between a member state and Russia. A lot of new member states are having problems with Russia.”

According to the report’s authors, EU solidarity is strained and Europeans “are squandering their most powerful source of leverage, their unity.”

The Trumpet has long forecasted that strains with the Russian bear will help Europe unify around a strong leader. Watch for overwrought relations with Moscow to drive the two powers to yet another treaty securing their shared flank. If history serves as any precedent, this will free Moscow and Berlin to exert power against other nations—at least in the short term, before they confront each other.

For more on this subject, read Germany and the Holy Roman Empire and The United States and Britain in Prophecy.