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The European Union’s (EU) reaction to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine of February 2022 marked a paradigm shift in its external action. To unpack this change and the geopoliticisation of EU policies, this article focuses on the different discourses that have competed in representing the stakes in Ukraine and on the actors who have articulated them, relying in particular on the notion of discourse coalitions. Contrary to the traditional explanation embodied by the metaphor of the EU’s sudden and brutal “geopolitical awakening” to the sound of gunfire, this article shows that the invasion came to reinforce a geopolitical story line that was already present and influential in the European discursive field. This invites us rethinking the articulation between exogenous shocks and endogenous processes in explaining policy change.