To be a great power: Russia’s quest to destroy the post-1991 order in Europe
Executive summary
- Russia’s long-term objective is to restore itself as a great power in Europe. For policymakers in Moscow, this means that it is entitled to build its system of governance as it chooses; to have a sphere of influence centred on Ukraine and Belarus; to occupy a special place in the wider European order (with a veto over all security issues); and to be recognised as a great power according to these criteria.
- This goal is incompatible with the notion of sovereignty that has guided Western thinking about European security for years. A core component of the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris, this version of state order champions the principle of the equality of European states and views democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms as essential elements of continental security.
- From 2000 to 2022 Russia failed to reclaim its position as a great power in Europe, on its terms. But while its objective remained constant, its methods changed profoundly, becoming more confrontational, aggressive and violent as its vision of state order clashed with that advocated by Western leaders. The culmination of this escalatory process was Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
- From February 2022 to the end of 2024 Russia sought to restore its ‘place in Europe’ by peeling Europe from the US. Instead, Western unity began to fracture in early 2025 because of a seismic shift in US policy: under Trump, the US is undermining Western unity over Ukraine and the credibility of NATO. Seen from Moscow, this is creating fresh opportunities for Russia to realise its revanchist agenda in Europe.
- The underlying driver of today’s security crisis in Europe is a longstanding conflict between two irreconcilable understandings of state order. The Kremlin is as determined as ever to realise its conception. Europeans will now have to take the lead in defending theirs: the Trump administration is not a reliable partner in this project.
Introduction
In 2000 Vladimir Putin, Russia’s acting president, lamented his country’s diminished standing in Europe after the Cold War and the dissolution of the USSR:
‘Honestly, I only regretted that the Soviet Union had lost its place in Europe, although intellectually I understood that a position based on walls and dividers cannot last forever. But I wanted something different to replace it. And nothing different was proposed. And that’s what hurts. We simply abandoned everything and left1.’
This paper contends that Russia is a revanchist state intent on rebuilding its ‘place in Europe’ – restoring itself as a great power on the continent, a position that it has occupied for periods since the 18th century, most recently from 1945 to 1991. The latter experience moulds the outlook of Russia’s current leaders, who grew up in the postwar USSR and take it for granted that, to quote Sergei Lavrov (Russia’s foreign minister), ‘no serious European question can be resolved without regard for Russia’s opinion.’
The first section of this paper analyses Russia’s understanding of the term ‘great power’, arguing that this cannot be reconciled with the view of state order that for decades Western capitals have seen as the foundation of European security. The second section traces Russia’s growing anti-Western disposition, increasingly violent attempts to re-establish itself as a great power in Europe and the forces that took it down this path from 2000 to early 2022. The third section examines the period since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, noting that Russia remains determined to overturn the existing order in Europe. The conclusions rebut several arguments that purport to explain today’s security crisis in Europe and sketch the main policy priorities facing European governments.
To be a great power in Europe
On 30 December 1999 then prime minister Putin stated that, despite the tribulations of the preceding decade, Russia would continue to be a great power:
‘Russia was and will remain a great country. This is conditioned by inalienable characteristics of its geopolitical, economic and cultural existence. They have determined the frame of mind of Russians and the policy of the state during Russia’s entire history. They cannot but do so now as well.’
Putin’s words were – indeed, still are – an article of faith for many if not most Russians. But what does it mean to be a great power? This paper argues that the answer lies in the notion of derzhavnost [державность]. This term – roughly translated as ‘great powerness’ or, slightly more elegantly, ‘the fact or quality of being a great power’ – encapsulates a specific and inflexible view of sovereignty. As a great power, Russia has certain absolute rights.
First, the entitlement to build its system of governance as it decides. In 2000 Putin saw his main task as the reimposition of order after central authority had melted in Russia during the 1990s. For him, this was the precondition for political stability, economic reform and the conduct of an effective foreign policy. ‘Russia needs a strong state system of power’, he wrote. It would be ‘democratic’ and ‘law-based’, but Russia would not be ‘a second edition of, let’s say, the USA or Britain, where liberal values have deep historical traditions.’ This state system would be ‘the source and guarantor of order, the initiator of, and the main driving force behind, change.’ References to democracy and rule of law notwithstanding, Putin’s words dovetailed with Russia’s authoritarian trajectory from the mid-1990s.
Second, the right to strategic control of the post-Soviet space, a viewpoint rooted in Russia’s imperial past2. Since the dissolution of the USSR, Russia has considered this region to be its sphere of influence, where its interests take precedence over those of the adjacent states, whose sovereignty is limited3, and of third countries. Following the breakup of the USSR, Russia sought to ‘reintegrate’ the post-Soviet space under its leadership via its domination of regional organisations and bilateral ties with weaker neighbours, although during the 1990s it was hampered by its own internal problems and the neighbours’ nation-building projects. In the context of Russia’s policy towards Europe, it is Ukraine, Belarus and, to a lesser extent, Moldova that stand out in importance – with Ukraine the jewel in the crown4.
Third, the entitlement to a decisive say over the wider European order, a privilege that Russia’s leaders allude to when talking about ‘indivisible and equal security5’. This requires, ideally, a treaty-based ‘pan-European security system’ or, failing that, an arrangement granting Russia influence over Western-led organisations, particularly NATO. The bottom line is that Russia must be able to block security initiatives that it dislikes. In the early 1990s Russia called for the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) to be transformed into a Europe-wide security organisation. The hub would be an Executive Committee, mirroring the UN Security Council; Russia would be a permanent member with a veto. Western capitals rejected this idea, envisioning an enlarged NATO at the centre of the post-Cold War system. NATO enlargement threatened Russia’s geopolitical pretensions in Europe, but President Boris Yeltsin grudgingly went along with it, downgrading the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)6 in importance and demanding participation in NATO’s decision-making processes. Seen from Moscow, the Permanent Joint Council (PJC), created by the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, signified progress in that respect, although NATO actions during the Kosovo crisis two years later underlined its limited effectiveness. Meanwhile, in 1999 Russia assented to an Adapted Conventional Forces in Europe (A/CFE) Treaty, which it judged would mitigate the impact of NATO enlargement by containing the Alliance’s military deployments in three ex-Warsaw Pact countries (Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary7). In 2000 ties with the EU, based on the 1997 Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA), were a lesser priority for the Kremlin, which saw them primarily as economic in content.
Lastly, the right to be accepted as a great power, according to the above criteria. For Russia, in 2000 this was partly about salving wounded pride after its loss of status during the preceding decade. Demanding acknowledgement as a great power also deflected domestic critics, who had accused Yeltsin of weakness abroad. More importantly, Russia equated recognition as a great power with legitimation of, and respect for, its interests – and, consequently, security in a dangerous world8. Acceptance as a great power meant, above all, recognition as such by the leading Western powers, particularly the US, reflecting the consensus in Moscow that Russia’s interests were concentrated in the West. This also complemented Russia’s self-identification with ‘Europe’ and ‘European civilization9’.
These attributes of ‘great powerness’ are interlinked in Russian thinking. A centralised state is deemed essential to preserve internal order and drive economic development, laying the foundation on which to command respect from other countries. A sphere of influence screens Russia from outside interference and is a platform from which to project power into Europe (and further afield in a ‘multipolar’ global system). If Russia does not shape Europe’s geopolitics, its system of governance and sphere of influence are thought to be at risk from malign outside forces. And if others do not acknowledge its legitimacy as a great power, Russia cannot consider itself safe at home, in its borderlands or in Europe more widely.
Yet from the early 1990s Russia’s goal of resurrecting itself as a great power in Europe on these terms ran into a diametrically opposed understanding of sovereignty that had guided Western thinking about European security for many years. One of the central components of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act and the 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe, this version attaches primacy to the principle of the sovereign equality of European states (including their right to choose alliances, thus rejecting notions of great power privileges and spheres of influence) and regards democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms as bedrocks of continental security10. The underlying proposition is that states enjoy ‘prerogatives of security’ while being ‘constrained by the imperatives of human rights11’. Or, to quote another observer, ‘“Realpolitik” may sometimes demand that public opinion be ignored but the Cold War showed that a security system built on that basis was neither just nor stable12.’
Western decision-makers did not voice their understanding of state order in Europe as clearly and consistently as they could have. This was partly because they also wanted to build a cooperative relationship with Russia, which viewed the foundations of European security altogether differently, as already noted. As a result, Western leaders sometimes played down the differences between their and Russia’s approaches13, assuming that discrepancies could be ironed out, papered over or, at least, put aside. Nor did the Western powers always live by their words, inviting charges of disingenuousness and hypocrisy when they challenged Russian actions that they could not accept.
Russia had signed up to the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris but was never at ease with this competing view of sovereignty, which was irreconcilable with its self-image as a great power possessing inalienable rights. Russia’s accession to the Council of Europe (CoE) in 1996 provided an example of this conflict. Membership of the CoE required it to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which could review alleged violations by Russia of the ECHR, and allow the CoE to scrutinise the performance of its justice system14. These obligations cut across Russia’s claim to be entitled to build its system of governance free from external monitoring and scrutiny.
By the time that Putin was elected president in 2000, the tensions caused by these incompatible visions of sovereignty were increasingly defining Russia’s relations with the West. There was palpable friction between authoritarian trends in Russia and Russia’s membership of the OSCE and the CoE15. Russia’s record in engineering and perpetuating ‘protracted conflicts’ in Moldova and Georgia, and its menacing rhetoric about protecting ‘compatriots’ in adjacent states, highlighted its neo-imperial view of its neighbours16. And, as noted above, ties with NATO were vexed. Russia reluctantly accepted the first wave of enlargement, but the Alliance’s air operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia poisoned Russian views of NATO for years17. These strains explain why, despite Russia’s self-conception as ‘European’, in 2000 attitudes in Moscow towards the West were more ambivalent than in the early 1990s, when some Russian policymakers had imagined their country’s integration into a Western-led international order. Nevertheless, Russia remained guardedly optimistic that pragmatic engagement with the West would allow it to reclaim its ‘place in Europe18’.
To be a great power in Europe: 2000-2022
From 2000 to 2022 Russia sought to recover its position as a great power in Europe, as it defined the term. Yet that sentence obscures as much as it illuminates. Russia’s goal remained constant, but its methods changed profoundly, becoming significantly more adversarial, assertive and coercive. By 2014, Russia had stopped seeking Western acknowledgement of its great power credentials via negotiation and accommodation; it now took the path of unilateral action, threats and ultimatums, aiming to compel the Western powers to acquiesce in the resurrection of its ‘place in Europe’. And, from having identified overtly with ‘Europe’ at the start of Putin’s first presidential term, Russia had become deeply and self-consciously hostile towards the West by early 2022.
Russia’s slide into autocracy
The priority attached to top-down stability and control saw Russia’s political system become steadily more authoritarian after 200019. By 2008, when Putin’s second presidential term ended, a centralised regime founded on the fusion of political and economic power had entrenched itself20. Following a tentative push for reform under Dmitry Medvedev (2008-12), Putin was re-elected president in 2012. His return heralded a renewed crackdown on opponents whom he believed were sponsored by the West, headed by the US. This effort to neutralise the development of counter-elites included a ‘cultural turn’ and the propagation of ‘traditional’ values, portending the emergence of a conservative autocracy by the end of the decade21. In 2020 a referendum amended the constitution, enshrining certain ‘traditional’ and ‘patriotic’ norms, and reset presidential terms, allowing Putin to run again in 202422. As the regime tried to revitalise its internal legitimacy after the 2008 financial crisis, it cast Russia’s system of governance in opposition to the West and Western values. Putin broke new ground in 2013, describing Russia as a ‘state civilization’ distinct from other global centres of power, including Europe. The 2021 National Security Strategy branded the Western powers a threat not just to Russia’s national interests but also to its spiritual and moral cohesion.
The descent into autocracy triggered condemnation in Western capitals and sent Russia’s relations with the OSCE and the CoE tumbling downhill23. As it rejected widely accepted European norms of governance, Russia grew more defiant and combative in its dealings with both organisations. It reiterated its right to build a ‘sovereign democracy’. It shielded itself from the OSCE and CoE; as examples, it restricted election monitoring missions by the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, and in 2015 its constitutional court ruled that ECtHR judgements contrary to the constitution could not be implemented. Russia also became a disruptive presence at the OSCE and CoE: accusing them of ‘double standards’ and acting as tools of the West; and withholding budgetary dues24. By 2022 there was speculation that Russia might leave both organisations.
Russia’s abortive attempt to dominate its western borderlands
Between 2000 and 2022 Russia failed to subjugate the ‘Western flank’ of the post-Soviet space. It made the greatest progress in Belarus, which settled into a junior if scratchy relationship within the bilateral Union State. By the start of 2022, with President Alyaksandr Lukashenka isolated from the West and reliant on Russia for security and economic survival, the sovereignty of Belarus was more notional than real. Moldova proved more elusive. In 2003 it rejected a proposal to settle the Transnistria conflict that would have embedded Russian influence in its political system, although for most of the next two decades Moldova’s weaknesses, exploited by Russia, mired it in corruption, poverty and division. Finally, in 2020 Maia Sandu’s election as president on a manifesto of EU integration indicated that Moldova had resolved to orient itself westwards.
Meanwhile, Russia’s attempts to make Ukraine the nucleus of its sphere of influence backfired spectacularly. In 2004 and 2014 popular unrest swept to power Ukrainian leaders committed to Western integration, each time partly in reaction to Russian pressure and interference25. The second occasion sparked Russia’s invasion of Crimea and war in eastern Ukraine. From 2015 Russia tried to browbeat Presidents Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelenskyy into accepting its reading of the Minsk-2 agreement, which would have crippled Ukraine’s sovereignty. Unable to subdue Ukraine, Russia held huge military manoeuvres along the Russia-Ukraine border in 2021 – evidence that it was planning a full-scale invasion, as some Western governments warned that autumn.
Russia never came to terms with its neighbours’ determined defence of their sovereignty. Blindingly obvious in Ukraine and (slightly less so) in Moldova, this was apparent even in the case of Belarus and explains why, despite being subordinated to Russia, Lukashenka was a prickly and unreliable partner. Viewing these states as the pawns of bigger powers, not countries in their own right, Russia interpreted opposition to its regional goals as proof of a proxy struggle with Western powers allegedly trying to pull the neighbours out of its orbit, a suspicion seemingly confirmed by Ukraine and Moldova’s growing enthusiasm for EU integration (and, in Ukraine’s case, closer ties with NATO). It was, therefore, no surprise that the ‘colour’ revolutions, particularly the ‘orange’ revolution in Ukraine in 2004, caused consternation in Moscow26. Russia’s leaders construed these upheavals as Western plots to create bridgeheads from which to engineer regime change in Russia itself. This incentivised Putin (and other autocrats in the region) to intensify internal repression27.
The wider European order: from partnership to confrontation with the West
From 2000 to 2022 Russia was also unable to redraw the wider European order. Its attempts to do so evolved through three phases. Phase one, lasting for most of Putin’s first two presidential terms, saw Russia pursue a partnership with the West based on joint decision-making mechanisms, regular consultations and some cooperation with NATO, the EU and leading Western powers, in particular the US28. Russia’s intention was to establish itself as an essential participant in European affairs by moulding Western actions from the inside. Most notably, the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), set up in May 2002, involved Russia more directly in Alliance deliberations than had the PJC. In May 2003 Russia and the EU agreed four ‘common spaces’, which envisioned cooperation beyond the economic sphere, in areas such as external security. Cautious optimism in Moscow was, however, giving way to disillusionment by the middle of the decade as it became clear that collaboration was not giving Russia the special influence, benefits and status that it believed it deserved. As relations curdled, Russia became more active in its efforts to weaken the West by dividing the US from Europe29. Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, ‘a list of unvarnished complaints about the structure and major institutions of the post-Cold War international order30’, showed that this broadly cooperative phase was ending.
In phase two, covering Medvedev’s presidency and the first two years of Putin’s third presidential term (2012-14), Russia decoupled geopolitically from the West. Its priority now was to insulate the post-Soviet space as its zone of ‘privileged interests’ – rolling back growing NATO and EU influence there and effectively dividing Europe into blocs. In August 2008 Russia invaded and dismembered Georgia to prevent it (and Ukraine) from joining NATO (both had been offered eventual membership of the Alliance at the NATO Summit in Bucharest that April). In November 2009 Russia unveiled a draft European Security Treaty modelled on its earlier proposals to reform the CSCE/OSCE. This document would have given Russia a veto over the European order by allowing a signatory to invoke a dispute procedure if it judged its security to be threatened by another’s actions. Tellingly, the draft Treaty did not mention the right of states to join alliances of their choosing; indeed, Article 2.3 would have enabled Russia to exclude NATO (and, possibly, the EU) from the post-Soviet space31. Finally, to counter the EU’s growing regional presence, Russia championed the Eurasian Economic Union (EaEU32). Putin envisaged this as part of a ‘Greater Europe’ comprising the EaEU and the EU. ‘Greater Europe’ would foster trade and political cooperation but would fix the EaEU and the EU as separate jurisdictions33. In trying to force Ukraine into the EaEU, Russia inadvertently detonated the Euromaidan crisis, which toppled the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. Russia then invaded and annexed Crimea, the second time in less than six years that it had altered the borders of an adjacent state by force and the first conquest of territory in Europe since World War II.
Confrontation was the watchword of phase three, from 2014 to 2022. For Russia, the onus was on the Western powers to mend fences; if they would not acknowledge Russia’s ‘place in Europe’, it would wait until they did. Accordingly, Russia let many of its ties to Western organisations fall into desuetude34. It put renewed emphasis on relations with individual EU member states, with whom it had a panoply of commercial, especially energy, ties; and differentiated between the US, UK and Canada, on the one hand, and the more ‘constructive’ West Europeans, on the other. It also resorted to coercive methods (e.g. sabotage, assassinations of Russian dissidents and exiles, cyber-enabled attacks) to instil fear in Western capitals. Third, Russia intensified its engagement with non-Western states and organisations, launching the ‘Greater Eurasia’ initiative in 2015. Although nebulous, this was intended to show that Russia had an array of non-Western strategic partners, particularly China. It also marked a conceptual break in Russian thinking, reflecting an assessment that power in the global system was moving from the West to Asia. Lastly, Russia’s response to Western sanctions after the annexation of Crimea included a pivot towards non-Western markets, with China again a priority35.
Russia returned to the issue of the wider European order in late 2021. That December it delivered a draft treaty to the US and a draft agreement to NATO: the US must not allow more ex-Soviet countries to join NATO and must rule out military cooperation with them; allied forces deployed on the territory of other NATO member states after 1997 must be withdrawn; and NATO member states must not conduct military activities in eastern Europe (including Ukraine), the South Caucasus and Central Asia. These diktats would have destroyed NATO’s credibility and left Central and Eastern Europe vulnerable to further Russian pressure. Predictably, the US and NATO rejected them out of hand.
Drivers of confrontation
From 2000 to 2022 Russia’s attempts to reclaim its ‘place in Europe’ ended in failure. The reason was straightforward: its objective – restoring itself as a great power, according to its own rigid formula – was unacceptable to Western governments that envisaged a European order built on a wholly different understanding of sovereignty. As this clash of worldviews sharpened36, three factors drove Russia’s increasingly aggressive outlook and actions.
The first of these was creeping authoritarianism. By the mid-2000s this was empowering those sections of the elite – notably, the security services37 – that were most anti-Western and predisposed to use force to consolidate power at home and advance Russia’s interests abroad38. In addition, the growing personalisation of Russia’s system of governance after 2012 underscored Putin’s own smouldering grievances against the West, ressentiment radicalised by his brooding isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. An increasingly adversarial regime interpreted opposition to Russia’s ambitions in Europe, and disagreements with the West (particularly, the US) elsewhere39, in an unforgiving light.
Yet Russian views of the West also became more and more disdainful, summed up by Putin’s sweeping claim in 2019 that ‘the liberal idea’ had ‘outlived its purpose’. As power flowed eastwards in a ‘multipolar’ world, ‘Europe’ ceased to be Russia’s main external point of orientation. Decision-makers in Moscow also perceived the Western countries to be divided among and within themselves, irresolute, lacking confidence, even morally decadent. Reinforcing the sense of a West in crisis was a string of foreign policy disasters for which Western governments were culpable.
Furthermore, Western leaders did not always articulate their vision of European security, and their readiness to defend it, with clarity. Rather, their flaccid response to the invasion of Georgia conveyed a message that Russia could act with impunity in its borderlands40. And as they watched the divide between themselves and Russia widen during the next six years, most Western governments recoiled from the unwelcome thought that their and Russia’s objectives in Europe might be irreconcilable; some continued, almost reflexively, to hanker after a ‘partnership’ with Russia even though Russia had by now discounted such a relationship (and had understood it in a very different way in the first place).
The annexation of Crimea in 2014 did force a reappraisal of Western policy. But Western capitals still sent out mixed signals. For example, European states continued to expand energy ties with Russia despite the hardening geopolitical confrontation, feeding a perception that their top priority was commercial gain. Western leaders concluded that they had to respond robustly to certain Russian actions (e.g., the mass expulsions from Russian embassies following the Novichok poisonings in the UK in 2018). Yet even then most of them would not, or could not, acknowledge that Russian and Western conceptions of security in Europe were based on incompatible premises41.
Lastly, Russia’s hard power capabilities strengthened appreciably. Crucially, its economy recovered after the crisis of 1998 (although it stagnated again after 2008, and its long-term outlook remained mediocre42). In particular, a decade of rapid GDP growth funded an ambitious modernisation of Russia’s armed forces after their unimpressive performance in the short war with Georgia in 200843. Greater military power added to the self-assurance of Russian decision-makers, led them to think more expansively and enabled them to act more assertively, primarily on Russia’s doorstep but further afield, too44.
Consequently, Russia increasingly resorted to coercion to restore its great power position in Europe. A watershed was its decision in November 2007 to suspend implementation of the A/CFE Treaty, having failed to secure Western ratification45. No longer considering itself bound by the ‘flank limits’ and transparency provisions in the Treaty, Russia had greater freedom to deploy its armed forces along its borders, enhancing its ability to bully neighbours such as Georgia and Ukraine. In March 2015 it suspended participation in the Treaty’s Joint Consultative Group – for practical purposes, killing the Treaty46. In addition, Russia engaged in military posturing to intimidate Western capitals: building up its forces in western Russia and Kaliningrad; and deepening its military footprint in Belarus, with whom it conducted large-scale exercises.
An autocracy hostile to the West yet scornful of the West’s standing and purpose; renewed military capabilities that Russia was increasingly ready to use; and an unfulfilled revanchist agenda in Europe; this was a combustible mix – which Putin ignited on 24 February 2022.
Russia’s assault on the post-Cold War order in Europe (2022 – )
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was not just an act of aggression against a neighbour; it was effectively a declaration of war on the post-1991 order in Europe. The immediate goal was to install a pliant regime in Kyiv within days, cementing Ukraine in Russia’s sphere of influence47. But a related assumption was that Ukraine’s alleged puppet masters in the West would be so humiliated and demoralised by this coup that they would be shocked into accepting Russia’s vision for the wider European order, spelled out in the diplomatic notes of December 2021. Events rapidly exposed this to be an epic miscalculation: Ukraine did not capitulate, Russia’s army was caught in a bloodbath, and relations with the West cratered as the Western powers rallied behind Ukraine.
This debacle had a double-edged effect on thinking in Moscow. Russia remained set on restoring itself as a great power in Europe, on its terms. And it construed Ukraine’s resistance as confirmation of its long-held view that its supposedly ‘fraternal’ neighbour was a tool of the ‘collective West’; seen from Moscow, the proxy struggle for Ukraine, underway before 2022, had simply escalated into a proxy war. Yet the reality of a long war required decision-makers in Moscow to work out a more convoluted theory of success. Now, instead of quickly crushing Ukraine and impelling a chastened West to agree to rewrite the European order, they judged that undermining Western support for Ukraine would be necessary to get Ukraine to surrender; then, with Ukraine subdued and the West’s credibility ruined, Russia would be well placed to reclaim its ‘place in Europe’.
‘Military Putinism’
After 24 February 2022, as Russia mobilised to prevail in what the Kremlin portrayed as an existential struggle with the West, the Putin regime morphed from autocracy to dictatorship. Putin was unassailable: aloof, unaccountable and isolated from other leaders, government and society. His entourage shrivelled to an opaque clique. Regime mouthpieces portrayed him as indispensable: keystone of the state, guardian of stability and protector of the Russian people from their Western foes. In March 2024 an orchestrated election, akin to a coronation, gave Putin 88% of the vote, a fifth presidential term and, potentially (under the amended constitution), 12 more years in power. By the end of 2024 the dictatorship rested on three pillars: repression, anti-Westernism and a militarised economy.
The ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine was accompanied by repression of an intensity not seen in Russia since Soviet times. More than 15,000 people were detained in the four weeks after the start of the full-scale invasion. The authorities made extensive use of draconian ‘extremist’ and ‘terrorist’ legislation. Over 600 new laws and amendments to the Criminal Code, many repressive, were adopted in 2022 alone. Censorship tightened further; dozens of media outlets were closed and various Western media platforms blocked. Official lists of ‘foreign agents’ and ‘undesirable organisations’ lengthened. Record numbers of people were charged with ‘treason’. Using language redolent of the Stalin era, in March 2022 Putin excoriated ‘scum and traitors’ supposedly working on behalf of the West and urged Russian society to ‘cleanse itself’.
By late 2024 vitriolic anti-Westernism had become the Putin regime’s ‘organising principle’. Official narratives accused a US-led ‘Russophobic’ West of trying to subvert the Russian state, divide Russian society and destroy the Russian Federation48. Anti-Westernism fused with two other staples of regime propaganda. One of these was hyper-patriotism. Having initially focused on crushing anti-war opposition, the authorities increasingly concentrated on building active support for the war following the announcement of ‘partial mobilisation’ in September 2022. A central message was the vital importance of protecting Russian sovereignty from Western attack. Anti-Westernism also meshed with ‘traditional’ values. In another iteration of the ‘cultural turn’ taken a decade earlier, in September 2022 Putin approved a state policy for ‘the preservation and strengthening of traditional Russian spiritual-moral values49’.
Finally, by the end of 2024 the war in Ukraine had spurred the militarisation of the economy. A key driver of growth was defence spending, which exceeded six per cent of GDP in 2024 (and, by one estimate, exceeded the total for Europe, measured in dollar purchasing-power-parity terms). The strains were real: a tightening labour market, rising inflation, fragile business confidence and a long-term economic outlook as gloomy as ever. Moreover, Russia remained dependent on global oil prices. Yet forecasts of an impending crisis were overblown50. GDP grew by up to four per cent in 2024 compared with 2023. Russia had adapted to unprecedented Western sanctions, deepening ties with China and other non-Western countries51, and was keeping its army supplied. At the end of 2024 the economy seemed able to sustain its current war-related intensity for at least another 12 to 24 months.
The dictatorship therefore appeared secure. If Russia’s elites were privately unhappy, they were publicly cowed and obedient. There was no ‘party of peace’ in the leadership, rather a ‘party of war’ (the security establishment) and a ‘party of silence’ (officials managing the economy); as a result, the state apparatus was ‘involved in running the war machine’. The business class, well aware that property rights depended on the goodwill of the state, had become even more reliant on the authorities because of sanctions. Many in the elites had anyway absorbed anti-Western propaganda and rallied around the flag. Society, too, was largely quiescent. Polls indicated broad support for the war (‘the new normal’), Russia’s war aims and Putin. Reasons included repression, regime control of the mass media, patriotism, apathy, a sense of powerlessness and peer pressure. Up to 900,000 people had left Russia after the start of the full-scale invasion, thinning the ranks of would-be critics. And many Russians were benefiting from the war, including the estimated 3.8 million working in the defence sector and the families of contract soldiers receiving hefty monetary payments.
The ‘Prigozhin Mutiny’ in June 2023 was a reminder that the dictatorship was potentially brittle in a crisis. But, having weathered that brief storm, the authorities reacted ruthlessly in subsequent months: purging sections of the elite, launching the ‘Time of Heroes’ programme (appointing loyal veterans of the war in Ukraine to official posts, particularly in the regions) and authorising property redistributions in favour of pro-Kremlin businesses. According to one analysis, by the end of 2024 these measures were gradually leading to the solidification of a regime even more viscerally hostile towards the West52.
Russia had already definitively broken with any idea of a norms-based order in Europe. On 15 March 2022 it informed the Secretary General of the CoE that it would withdraw from the organisation and the ECHR53. In early 2023 the State Duma adopted a draft law confirming the cessation of Russia’s membership of the CoE; Putin signed it into force on 28 February. Soon after, the 2023 Foreign Policy Concept identified the CoE (alongside ‘unfriendly’ European states, NATO and the EU) as a threat to Russia’s ‘security, territorial integrity, sovereignty, traditional spiritual-moral values and socio-economic development’. In July 2024 Russia’s foreign ministry ruled out a return to the CoE as ‘impossible’.
In parallel, Russia’s war in Ukraine reduced the OSCE to ‘survival mode’. Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, most participating states backed a policy of ‘no business as usual’ with Russia. Its response gridlocked the organisation. After 2022 Russia blocked an agreed budget (limiting the activities of OSCE executive bodies); forced OSCE missions in Ukraine to close; and vetoed Estonia’s bid for the 2024 chair. Addressing the State Duma in February 2024, Lavrov alluded to Russia’s possible departure from the OSCE, noting that, although the issue had not been discussed, it was ‘hanging in the air’. Russia inched closer to the departure lounge, when the Parliamentary Assembly (PA) of the OSCE passed a resolution suggesting that Russia’s actions in Ukraine might be considered genocidal. The Duma and the Federation Council duly suspended Russia’s participation in the PA. Unsurprisingly, the OSCE ministerial council meeting at the end of 2024 achieved little of note. If Russia remains a participating state of the OSCE, it will continue to attack the notion of norms-based security in Europe – echoing those doctrinaire Soviet leaders who opposed the human rights sections of the Helsinki Final Act in the 1970s54.
The post-Soviet space: still aspiring to pre-eminence
According to the 2023 Foreign Policy Concept, the post-Soviet space remains Russian decision-makers’ top regional priority55. Yet dynamics there have proved increasingly complex, fluid and beyond Russia’s control. Certain trends – the crystallisation of neighbouring countries’ national and sovereign identities, and the growing influence of external powers – had been working against its interests for three decades. The war in Ukraine accelerated these processes by distracting Russia’s leaders; incentivising the adjacent states to reduce their dependence on Russia where possible; and creating more room for third countries. By the end of 2024 Russia’s regional profile was still considerable, but the war had reduced it across the post-Soviet space as a whole, as the Kremlin was aware56. Indeed, in the ‘western flank’ countries (and the South Caucasus) Russia’s influence was weaker and more contested than at any time since 1991.
As 2024 closed there was no evidence that Putin’s war aim – the vassalisation of Ukraine – had changed despite Russia’s staggering military casualties and the inability of its army to achieve victory on the battlefield. Indeed, following Ukraine’s counterattack in Kharkiv and Kherson regions in the autumn of 2022, Putin doubled down, declaring ‘partial mobilisation’ and the annexation of more Ukrainian land. He still judged that Russia would outlast the West, which (he thought) lacked the stamina for a protracted struggle. Then, deprived of its lifeline, Ukraine would succumb to Russia’s demands for what, in a keynote speech to Russia’s foreign ministry in June 2024, he termed a ‘final end’ of the war. This would entail Ukraine’s permanent dismemberment; the removal of Zelenskyy (whom Putin portrayed as an illegitimate leader); neutrality; controls on Ukraine’s armed forces and defence industries; and ‘denazification’ (code for political purges). As two observers concluded in early 2024, ‘Russia still maintains the strategic objective of bringing about the subjugation of Ukraine.’ Equally, Ukraine refused to capitulate even after its counteroffensive in 2023 petered out and the military tide turned against it again in 2024.
Putin’s faith in eventual victory also jarred with the reality that by the end of 2024 Ukraine was more deeply integrated with the West than ever. It had received Western military and economic assistance totalling almost $250 billion. In December 2023 the EU announced that accession talks with Ukraine would begin57. True, Ukraine had not been invited to join NATO (the NATO summit in June 2024 declared it to be on an ‘irreversible’ path to accession, but ongoing differences among member states ruled this out for the foreseeable future). That said, 28 countries had signed bilateral security agreements with Ukraine by early 2025. In brief, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine had led directly to the emergence of a deeply hostile and heavily armed Ukraine closely aligned with the Western powers – the opposite of what Putin had intended.
Russian influence in Moldova, too, had weakened markedly by the end of 2024. Led by Sandu and the Party of Action and Solidarity, Moldova was awarded EU member-candidate status in June 2023; accession negotiations opened in June 2024. Revealingly, the 2023 edition of the National Security Strategy identified Russia as the main threat to the country. Internal weaknesses still left Moldova vulnerable. There was continuing friction between the central authorities, on the one hand, and the breakaway region of Transnistria and the autonomous region of Gagauzia, on the other. And domestic divisions were on show once more during the presidential election and referendum on EU accession in October 2024 (supporters of Western integration narrowly won both). Moreover, Moldova’s security still hinged on the war in Ukraine; defeat for Ukraine would herald renewed Russian pressure on Moldova. In 2024 Russian officials reportedly (albeit unrealistically) still envisioned an eventual settlement of the Transnistria dispute similar to the one that they almost forced on Moldova in 2003 and which would torpedo Moldova’s westward integration.
Belarus, ‘Moscow’s only ally’ on its western border, therefore assumed even greater significance for Russia. By the end of 2024 the situation there was much more favourable from the Kremlin’s viewpoint. As noted above, Russia and Belarus were already deeply integrated. Putin and Lukashenka shared an interest in maintaining autocratic rule in their countries. And Belarus was cut off from the West because of the repression that followed the parliamentary elections of 2020; the migration crisis that it manufactured along EU borders in 2021; and its role as a base for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s goal was to press Belarus into accepting even deeper economic, political and security integration58. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia reportedly deployed tactical nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and air defence systems in Belarus. In December 2024 Putin and Lukashenka signed a treaty providing Russian security guarantees and placing Belarus under Russia’s nuclear umbrella. Lukashenka may have been anxious about the impact on Belarusian sovereignty, but he was trapped – isolated from the West and held tight by the giant in the East.
It was a decidedly mixed picture, yet by the end of 2024 Russia remained confident that it could establish its pre-eminence across the European part of the post-Soviet space. Its hold over Belarus appeared firm although a sudden regime crisis in Minsk could not be ruled out59. Russia was much less favourably placed in Ukraine, in particular, and Moldova, but judged that it would eventually prevail there, too. Ukraine, as ever, held the key. As noted above, Putin judged that Ukraine’s fate, which would ultimately decide Moldova’s60, depended on whether it continued to receive Western political, economic and military assistance. By weakening the ‘collective West’, Russia sought to sever this umbilical cord.
Waiting for Europe to break with the US
The 2023 Foreign Policy Concept was explicit that undermining the ‘collective West’ meant dividing the Western powers, a longstanding goal of Russian (and Soviet) policy, not least since 2014, as already noted. Distinguishing between Europe, on the one hand, and the US (and ‘the other Anglo-Saxon states’), on the other, it accused most European powers of pursuing an ‘aggressive policy’ towards Russia, which urged them to adopt a ‘long-term policy of good neighbourliness and mutually beneficial cooperation’. Based on ‘objective conditions’, such as geographical proximity and economic pragmatism, a ‘new model of coexistence with the European states’ and a ‘durable peace in the European part of Eurasia’ were possible:
‘The realisation by the states of Europe that there is no alternative to peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial, equal cooperation with Russia, greater foreign policy self-dependence [состоятельность] and a policy of good-neighbourliness with the Russian Federation will have a favourable influence on the security and welfare of the European region, and help the states of Europe occupy a fitting place in the Greater Eurasia partnership and in a multipolar world.’
The Foreign Policy Concept claimed that the main impediment was the US, which sought to curb the sovereignty of European countries as part of a quest for global domination and was ‘the source of fundamental threats [риски] to the security of the Russian Federation61’.
Putin’s speech to the foreign ministry in June 2024 covered similar ground. Echoing the 2023 Foreign Policy Concept, he argued that a new security system, based on the precept of ‘equal and indivisible security’, should include all countries and multilateral organisations in Eurasia. The main threat to Europe was not Russia but Europe’s own ‘critical and ever-growing, already almost total, dependence on the USA in the military, political, technological, ideological and information spheres’. To be ‘one of the independent centres of world development and one of the cultural-civilisational poles of the planet’, Europe needed good relations with Russia ‘and we … are ready for this.’ Putin claimed that ‘a system of Eurasian security’ required ‘the gradual removal of the military presence of external powers [i.e. the US] from Eurasia’. Again: ‘if a reliable system of security could be built, there will be simply no need for the presence of military contingents from outside the region ... if we’re honest, there’s no need for them today – this is occupation, nothing more.’ It was a pitch to Europe to reject supposed US tutelage62.
Between February 2022 and the end of 2024 Russian decision-makers sought to draw Europe away from the US. To do so, they took a three-pronged approach.
First, as noted above, Russia battened down the hatches at home: insulating its domestic system from external influence and preparing to outlast the West. In the meantime, it pressed on in Ukraine, insisting on the destruction of Ukrainian sovereignty. In both cases the intended message to Europe was stark: pressure on Russia was futile.
Second, Russia bet even more heavily on its ties with non-Western states and organisations, showing Europeans that it had geopolitical and economic alternatives and could not be isolated. Two noteworthy developments were Russia’s use of ‘anti-colonial’ propaganda crafted to appeal to opinion in the ‘Global South’ and its closer relations with radical anti-Western powers such as Iran and North Korea.
Third, Russia made liberal use of intimidation and subterfuge to break Europe’s resolve, warning of the risks that, it claimed, further confrontation would bring. It withdrew ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and executed a full withdrawal from the A/CFE Treaty in November 2023. It threatened to provide long-range weapons to other anti-Western countries and non-state actors. Russia repeatedly alluded to the possibility that the war in Ukraine might lead to nuclear escalation and in November 2024 advertised revisions to its nuclear doctrine. And it continued subversion and sabotage operations across Europe. Lastly, Russian information campaigns sought to widen Europe’s internal faultlines.
Trump’s re-election: Russia’s lucky break?
If Russia hoped to detach Europe from the US, by the end of 2024 it was disappointed. The Western powers remained largely in lockstep, reiterating their support for Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’ (although that elliptical phrase begged as many questions as it answered). Yet Western unity did start to splinter in early 2025 – because of a seismic shift in US policy. Following his inauguration, President Trump plunged transatlantic relations into crisis.
First, in an attempt to bring the war in Ukraine to a rapid close, Trump effectively sided with Russia. He and members of his team seemingly envisaged a settlement that would see Russia keep land seized from Ukraine (even including de jure recognition of the annexation of Crimea) and deny any meaningful security guarantee for Ukraine, including NATO membership. The US therefore turned the screws on Ukraine, temporarily suspending intelligence and military assistance63. As if to underline Ukraine’s isolation, Trump repeatedly bragged about his supposed friendship with Putin, whereas his relationship with Zelenskyy oscillated between the cool and the awful. Under pressure, in March 2025 Ukraine agreed to reopen ceasefire negotiations in Istanbul.
Second, the US significantly undermined the credibility of NATO deterrence and wider transatlantic unity. Trump threatened the territorial integrity of NATO allies, publicly musing about annexing Canada and Greenland, while senior members of his entourage berated European countries and interfered in their internal affairs, although the NATO summit in June did manage a show of solidarity. Meanwhile, Trump’s tariff policies threatened to inflict major damage on European economies, further weakening confidence in the US as a partner.
Finally, the US moved to normalise US-Russia bilateral relations. Although Russia has never been a major trading and investment partner of the US, Trump likes to tout the commercial potential of a rapprochement. He chose not to impose economic sanctions on Russia, despite threatening them several times when Russia ignored his calls for a ceasefire (indeed, shortly after returning to the White House, his administration reportedly considered lifting certain US restrictive measures). This put further distance between the US and Europe, which continued to expand sanctions on Russia.
Russia seized on these developments, sensing a fresh opportunity to realise its objectives in Ukraine and Europe. Addressing the Federal Security Service (FSB) on 27 February, Putin said that early exchanges with the Trump administration inspired ‘certain hopes’. The US was ‘demonstrating pragmatism, a realistic view of things and rejecting the many stereotypes, so-called rules, and messianic ideological clichés of their predecessors’. According to Putin, a ‘serious dialogue’ about Ukraine and ‘a system of indivisible European and global security’ was now possible to ensure that ‘the security of some cannot be ensured at the expense of, or by damaging, the security of others, and not at our expense, not at the expense of Russia’ – in other words, the war in Ukraine was part of a wider attempt to overturn the post-1991 European order. In a similar vein, following his summit with Trump in Alaska in August, Putin linked the resolution of the ‘root causes’ of the war in Ukraine with the creation of a ‘just balance in the sphere of European security’.
As already noted, Putin judged that Russia was slowly winning the war in Ukraine and saw no reason to dilute his aims. He felt vindicated once Trump had assented to some of Russia’s core demands without asking for anything in return. Russia therefore began a new spring offensive in eastern Ukraine, launched massive missile and drone strikes at targets across Ukraine and refused to engage substantively with Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul64. Instead, Putin insisted that the ‘root causes’ of the conflict be resolved first – that Ukraine must capitulate – signalling his readiness to wait until Ukraine did so. Still, however, Russia’s army appeared incapable of forcing Ukraine to surrender.
Russia has concerns. One is that the US ‘deep state’ and traditional anti-Russia ‘hawks’ in the US political class will oppose Trump. Speaking to the FSB, Putin warned that ‘the renewal of Russia-American contacts does not suit everyone. As before, part of the Western elite is inclined towards the preservation of instability in the world, and these forces will try to undermine or compromise the dialogue that has begun65.’ Decision-makers in Moscow also accuse European leaders of trying to sabotage Trump’s attempts to end the war. Second, like everyone else, Russian policymakers have to make sense of the confusion and schizophrenia that characterise policymaking under Trump.
At the time of writing, the direction of US policy is highly uncertain. During the summer of 2025 Trump vented frustration at Putin’s refusal to countenance a ceasefire and, according to one plausible interpretation, may be inclined to walk away from the war, although whether he will is anyone’s guess. What is clear is that Russian decision-makers still consider Trump’s return to the White House to be a gamechanger: either because his capriciousness causes him to perform another somersault and turn against Ukraine once more or because he does indeed wash his hands of the war, leaving Ukraine and Europe to face Russia largely on their own. Speaking in early September 2025, Putin indicated his readiness for all eventualities: the Trump administration’s policy offered ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, but Russia would achieve its goals in Ukraine by military means if necessary.
Conclusions
Russia is a revanchist power seeking to restore its ‘place in Europe’. Decision-makers in Moscow equate this with the notion of derzhavnost, which encapsulates a specific and inflexible understanding of sovereignty. As a great power, Russia is entitled to build its own system of governance as it chooses; to limit the sovereignty of its post-Soviet neighbours; to shape the geopolitical ‘rules of the game’ in Europe more widely (with the right to veto security initiatives that it opposes); and to be acknowledged by others as a great power, according to these criteria. To accomplish this agenda, Russia took increasingly confrontational, aggressive and violent action, culminating in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
By the end of 2024, this ambition lay mostly unfulfilled. Russia had built a ‘sovereign’ system of governance but in a dictatorial form that virtually no-one had foreseen a quarter century earlier. Otherwise, the audit made dismal reading for decision-makers in Moscow. Russia’s attempt to dominate the European slice of the post-Soviet space had blown up in its face. It had established a protectorate over Belarus, although the long-term viability of the Lukashenka regime was unclear. In contrast, Russia had alienated much of Moldova’s elite and society. Incomparably worse, its genocidal war in Ukraine had made implacable foes of millions of Ukrainians. Nor had Russia come close to revising the wider European order. Rather, as 2024 drew to a close, the war in Ukraine had reinvigorated the transatlantic community, which was enlarged (in the case of NATO), more united and more vigilant. Consequently, Russia had not won Western recognition as a great power in Europe, as it defined the term. Instead, it was more isolated and estranged from the West than at any time since the late Cold War.
The reason for this litany of failure was simple: Western countries rejected Russia’s vision of European security. Their thinking was shaped by an entirely different conception of state order. A core part of the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris, this prioritises the sovereign equality of European states, democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms – an understanding of state order incompatible with one that enshrines the rights of rulers to treat their populations as they please, more powerful countries to violate the sovereignty of less powerful countries and ‘great’ powers to block decisions taken by alliances of which they are not members.
This analysis contradicts three arguments that profess to explain today’s security crisis in Europe. The first of these emphasises the enlargement of NATO66. This is simplistic and misleading. The origins of the stand-off between the West and Russia in Europe lie in the clash of fundamentally discordant conceptions of state order identified in this paper. The controversy stirred up by NATO enlargement is a manifestation of this deeper conflict: the principle that European countries should be able to choose their alliances, affirmed in the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris, versus Russia’s claim that it is entitled to overrule that principle.
A second claim, often made by policymakers in Moscow, is that Russia’s goal since the end of the Cold War has been a Europe without ‘dividing lines’, implicitly placing responsibility for the current crisis wholly on the West. This is a fallacy. A dividing line in Europe is precisely what Russia has wanted: the institutionalisation of its self-proclaimed right to unconstrained sovereignty, putting it in an exclusive, even unique, category distinct from other European states. A two-tier system – with Russia ensconced in the top tier as an authoritarian citadel exercising dominion over its neighbours and acting as the arbiter of wider European affairs – is integral to the notion of derzhavnost.
A related argument is that the West should have accepted Russian calls for a ‘pan-European security system’. One scholar claims that Medvedev’s draft European Security Treaty proposed ‘the creation of a genuinely inclusive security system to ensure that new dividing lines were not drawn across the continent [sic]’, implying that if Western governments had responded positively to it, they might have avoided the chain of events that led to the crisis in Ukraine in 2013-1467. Leaving to one side the actual goal of the draft Treaty – the restoration of Russia as a great power on its own absolutist terms – no-one has explained how it (or other variants of an ‘inclusive security system’) would have reconciled the irreconcilable notions of sovereignty dividing the West and Russia. The question for Western policymakers is, which concept of state order do they think serves their interest in long-term security in Europe? For years they chose the version that is predominant in the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris.
Or they did until Trump returned to office. Since early 2025, Western unity over the future of European security has been disintegrating. Contrary to Russian expectations, however, this is not because Europe is breaking with the US but because a US president has taken a wrecking ball to transatlantic relations.
Having neglected their own defence68, Europeans will now have to take the lead in upholding their vision of continental security. The Trump administration is not a reliable partner in this project given its disregard for the values that have underpinned the post-1991 order in Europe. Europeans might be able to reach situational accommodations with a Trump-led US that help them and Ukraine defend the current order, such as purchases of US arms and agreement to maintain the flow of US intelligence, although these would be contingent on presidential whim. The rest of this paper is therefore directed at Europeans – the EU and non-EU powers, such as the UK.
The starting point is that European and Russian views of continental security will be irreconcilable as long as the Putin leadership holds power – which, as already noted, it might do for another decade (or longer). European decision-makers should therefore expect relations with Russia to remain at least as adversarial as they are until there is a transition of power in Moscow. Indeed, depending on the disposition of a successor regime, confrontation could well last into the post-Putin era. It is important to stress that this is not inevitable69. Yet, as the experiences of the 1990s and early 2000s show, even a new leadership markedly less antagonistic towards the West would probably understand Russia’s ‘place in Europe’ in ways unacceptable to European governments.
Such a profound difference in outlook augurs for an unsettling future but in itself it is not contrary to Europe’s interests. What it shows is that with regard to the foundations of security in Europe, those interests cannot be reconciled with Russia’s; the reasons why must be understood; and the conflict that this irreconcilability creates must be addressed calmly. Europe is again the site of a dangerous and long-term geopolitical confrontation; Europeans have to face that reality and deal with it.
Ukraine is on the frontline of this confrontation. If Russia were to prevail decisively over it (although this still appears unlikely at present), the post-1991 order in Europe would struggle to recover. Ukrainians would be the initial victims as Russia dismantled their state and extended the cruelty and depravity of occupation to even more of their country70. But the effects would spill into the rest of the continent, which would have to cope with refugees and violence pouring out of a broken Ukraine71; an emboldened, vengeful and militarised Russia still intent on restoring its ‘place in Europe’; and the collapse of Europe’s morale and reputation. If NATO were still clinically alive, a disaster of such magnitude would in all likelihood finish it off. The continued existence of a sovereign Ukraine is a precondition for the survival of the post-1991 order in Europe.
In these circumstances five broad-brush priorities for European governments should be:
- Reaffirming their understanding of European security as an unambiguous strategic objective. In an age when this seems anachronistic, particularly when the leaders of the US and Russia view the world in broadly similar terms, European leaders must make the case for their vision of state order much more compellingly than they have done. They might follow Finland’s lead: its chairpersonship of the OSCE unequivocally reiterates the continued relevance of the norms and values that are central to the Helsinki Final Act.
- A frank dialogue with their citizens about the gravity of the threat that Russia in its present condition poses to European security; the political, economic and societal mobilisation needed to defend the existing order; and the costs of doing so. A core theme should be that although the costs will be great, they will be far greater if the post-1991 order dies. With European leaders facing a myriad political and economic pressures, this is not a propitious time for such messages. But ensuring national security is every government’s most basic function.
- Placing Ukraine front and centre of efforts to defend the post-1991 order in Europe. This would entail comprehensive and long-term political, economic and military support, including accelerated integration of, first, the European and Ukrainian defence sectors and, second, Ukraine’s economy into the EU’s single market (as part of Ukraine’s eventual EU accession). The purpose would be to enable Ukraine to achieve ‘strategic neutralisation’ of Russia in a protracted war: ‘functionally defeating Russia’s objectives while building a resilient, secure and sovereign state’.
- Significantly strengthening Europe’s own defence capabilities, starting from the assumption that the US contribution to continental security will continue to decline (while managing this decline carefully). Headlines include bringing European national defence spending nearer Cold War levels; improved Europe-scale procurement and planning; and buying military assets that Europe cannot produce72. The major West European powers – Germany, France and the UK – have a special responsibility to make sure that Europe meets this challenge.
- Putting their own affairs in better order. It is unrealistic to expect that states will always align their actions and words. But Europeans cause problems for themselves by repeatedly falling below their avowed standards, weakening their authority when communicating with Russia or seeking support elsewhere in the world to call out Russian aggression in Ukraine. In defending a norms-based order in Europe, Europeans must abide by, and be seen to abide by, those norms as far as possible.
In June 2024 Putin crowed that ‘we are witnesses to the collapse of the Euro-Atlantic system of security. Today it is simply no more73.’ He was exaggerating, though not by much. The post-1991 order in Europe is in greater peril than ever from a revanchist Russia set on replacing it with a geopolitical settlement antithetical to the principles that have long shaped European thinking about security on the continent. The question now is whether Europeans have the political will to avert such an outcome.