Russia and Europe’s northern and eastern flanks

Abstract

What threat does Russia actually pose to Europe’s defence? Russia has become more aggressive since President Putin came to power in 2000. It is modernizing its armed forces and has forged a new strategy of complex strategic coercion. Many Russians see this as necessary because of the enlargement of NATO and the EU and that a critical Russian national interest is to have strong Russian armed forces. However, Russia is also a relatively poor and politically unstable state and the cost of maintaining such an effort in the wake of COVID-19 could prove crippling, which makes Russia potentially dangerous, particularly to its immediate neighbours. There are also many technical and materiel road-bumps on the way to developing the Russian future force Putin likes to imply already exists. Consequently, it is Russian economic weakness and political instability allied to the overbearing cost of the Russian security state that poses the greatest danger to European defence and the prospect of more adventurism, such as the 2014 seizure of Crimea and Donbass from Ukraine.