The thing is, the EU and NATO has, over the past twenty years, encroached ever closer on Russias sphere of power. It's a bit like China buying out South America, Russia has little choice but to perceive this as an attempt to push western influence on what has been traditionally Russian territory for the past century.
So really the main tugs of war are going to be, and indeed have been, over the former Pact states, in particular those on the border with Russia, Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, and possibly Latvia and Estonia (although I think that Russia isn't too bothered about letting them slip).
I don't think that it is so much a case of who is going to control Europe, but more a case of who is going to control Eastern Europe, and that's a 'battle' that started in 1989, and this is just another part of it.
Personally though, I don't see the EU has any cards to play in this situation, Russia could roll a legion of T-72s into Kiev in ten hours flat, and there's nothing that NATO or the EU could do to stop him...all the EU has is soft power, and since a Ukrainian civil war would screw most nations around the Ukraine over (the Polish economy is already wobbling because of the Ukrainian chaos) neither side wants it to go that far, and so really, the only thing the EU can do is bleat while Putin conducts his business.
It's a Realpolitik thing, like David Cameron with Syria, there's nothing that you can do, but you have to pretend that you're making the effort otherwise certain pressure groups will be up in arms that "you're not defending democracy (TM)" and so on and so forth.
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