Last year, during a working-level exchange with officials from NATO Headquarters, I received a response to an assertion found in one of the Centre for “XXI Strategy”’s studies—something that might seem self-evident in the eleventh year of Russia’s aggression: “the war in Ukraine is a war in Europe.”

The reply from Brussels was as follows: yes, but it is not Europe’s war. That is, this is your war with Russia; we are, of course, on your side against Russian aggression, but it is not our war (i.e., NATO’s or the EU’s).

Today, we are witnessing a transformation in European thinking, a shift in the approach of certain European members of the Alliance in recognising that a war is being waged on the continent—and it is directed against Europe.

Yet this reassessment is occurring not merely because Europeans have had a sudden realisation about Russia. The awakening is driven by the fact that the “roof” of the European house has begun to slide off. The security roof. The American one. The one Europe has become accustomed to over the 80 years since the Second World War. Under the shelter of this roof, insufficient attention was paid to the complete transformation of Russia under the FSB into a mafia state and to the actions of the Putin regime in Europe over the past quarter-century.

The Hague Summit may have temporarily slowed the “sliding of the roof,” but it has not stopped it, given the Indo-Pacific’s priority in U.S. strategic focus. Russia has been named a long-term threat, for what is at stake is not merely its aggression against Ukraine but a war in Europe—one that is unfolding from within and has every prospect of soon escalating into a conventional conflict.

On the Nature of Things

The Russian intelligence-service hierarchy has operated—and continues to operate—against the West in a systematic and consistent manner since Putin’s installation in the Kremlin in 1999. The Baltic states, Georgia, and Ukraine have always been thorns in the side of the Putin regime. In the Kremlin’s view, these countries—having followed the path of “aggressive Western encroachment upon historically Russian territories” after the fall of the Berlin Wall—were the root causes of the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century: the collapse of the USSR.

Thus, it is no coincidence that Russia carried out demonstrative “punitive actions” in hybrid form: the halting of oil transit through Latvia in 2003 and through Lithuania in 2006, the gas blockade of Ukraine and Georgia at the start of 2006, and the unprecedented mass cyberattack on Estonia in 2007.

Russia launched large-scale oil and gas projects circumventing the Baltic states and Ukraine—BTS-1, BTS-2, Nord Stream and South Stream—intending to “cut them off from transit.”

Putin’s speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference marked Russia’s open challenge to the West and particularly to the United States as its leader. With oil prices at a peak and delivering windfall profits to the Putin regime, the invasion of Georgia followed in 2008. Then, at a new price peak in 2014, aggression against Ukraine began.

Yet within European political circles, Russia’s actions in Ukraine, Georgia, and the Baltics were interpreted differently. Many preferred to overlook the threat, satisfied with the corruption-prone flows of oil and gas. In Berlin, it seemed axiomatic that “countries which trade do not go to war.” In Moscow, however, a Soviet-era methodology prevailed—one in which trading partners could be fought successfully from within, with money used as a weapon to reshape them in Russia’s image.

A Bit of Recent History: Organisational Weaponry

Soviet-era concepts developed by Spartak Nikanorov and Sergei Solntsev (notably the “management of management systems” methodology) were put to effective use during the Putin era, a time marked by the wholesale application of advanced intelligence techniques to achieve strategic goals.

Organisational weaponry refers to a set of non-military, long-term measures aimed at eroding the target’s ability to resist. One report by the Izborsky Club stated: “Organisational weapons are essentially a means of activating a pathological system within the functional system of a target state.” The result: a substitution of the target state’s core values with those of the aggressor, presented as more ‘effective’. The pathology quietly introduced into the state organism disables its immune system—its national security and defence structures—and reprogrammes its security and military bodies such that they no longer identify or counter existential threats.

However, the Kremlin’s most significant victory in its war against the West since Munich 2007 has been the de facto disorganisation of the United States as the leading force in the transatlantic space, and the dispersal of the “collective West.” It did not happen overnight. The success of 2016 did not carry forward in 2020—but 2024 justified decades of effort.

In 2025, we are witnessing the rapid transformation of the United States under its current administration into an authoritarian plutocracy, dismantling the traditional American system of democracy with its checks and balances. Trump’s idol is Putin; his model is the mafia state built by Putin. This now stands in ever sharper contrast with Europe, where fear is growing due to two sources of unpredictability: Trump and Putin.

Still the ‘Alliance of the Frightened’

A new wave of debate is now underway about how Russia might act against NATO without—or with minimal—use of armed forces. The Baltic states are again viewed as the weak and poorly defended link on NATO’s eastern flank. Once more the Crimean “little green men” scenario is raised, alongside the Donbas model of hybrid warfare, and the Suwałki Corridor is mentioned.

Yet in the twelfth year of its war against Ukraine, the Kremlin has developed further innovative options for targeting the Alliance, closely observing NATO’s (in)action. The accession of Finland and Sweden strengthens NATO but does not make it more operationally effective. The question “Who will die for Narva?” remains unanswered, despite the Alliance’s reaffirmation of Article 5 at the Hague Summit.

NATO Military Committee chairman Rob Bauer’s admission that Article 5 does not imply an automatic military response in the event of a Russian attack—such as on an Estonian village—only encourages the Kremlin. Especially when neither NATO nor the EU show any readiness to compel Russia towards peace, limiting themselves instead to partial containment which does not deter Russia but rather emboldens it.

The latest example is intelligence from Ukraine’s GUR about increased production of Iskander missiles, far beyond what would be required for the Ukrainian front.

Russia’s principal weapon remains the exploitation of European fear. Since 2014—and again since 2022—NATO has presented itself as an “Alliance of the Frightened.” The Hague Summit confirmed this impression by failing to call things by their name: Russia’s war in Europe.

The “coalition of the willing” remains abstract. Beyond fear of war, Europe’s citizens and politicians are equally fearful of losing the comfort to which generations have grown accustomed over the past half-century. This psychological vulnerability—exploited by Russia through scenarios that shock the European public mind—is central to Moscow’s strategy. Imagine a European citizen suddenly cut off from communications, the Internet, banking, water, and electricity.

Strike First

Russia’s working scenario is the “multi-crisis of Europe”—the orchestration of simultaneous crises across telecommunications, digital systems, transport, and energy. The aim is to cause operational dysfunction of vital systems that underpin European societal comfort, inducing a state of psychological shock and helplessness.

The tools: cyber capabilities, influence networks, social media, migrants, organised crime, and marginal groups, all coordinated by infiltrated cells, private military contractors, and intelligence operatives who have been legitimised in Europe over the past decade.

At the 2015 Valdai Forum in Sochi, Putin admitted: “Fifty years ago, the streets of Leningrad taught me one rule: if a fight is unavoidable, strike first.” This has been Russia’s guiding principle in Georgia and Ukraine—and, indeed, towards NATO. One need only recall the 1999 dash by Russian peacekeeping forces under Major Yunus-Bek Yevkurov (later a Deputy Defence Minister) to occupy Pristina airfield ahead of NATO forces.

Another reason for the Kremlin to strike first is the need for revenge following defeats in the Middle East—the loss of Syria and the rout of Iran by Israel and the U.S.

North Korea’s involvement, not only in supplying artillery and missiles but also manpower, indicates that Moscow is preparing for a protracted war against Ukraine and Europe that will require reinforcements.

Pyongyang’s full participation in the war against Ukraine on European soil also served as a test: which NATO leaders would be willing to send troops to stand alongside Ukraine’s Armed Forces in response to East Asian troops deployed to the Eastern European theatre? The result: no one. Even the French president, who in spring 2024 vaguely hinted at protecting Odesa from air strikes, fell silent. The Kremlin believes the response to a Baltic scenario would be similar—even if the targeted country is a NATO member—particularly under the influence of the latest Trump-era interpretations of Article 5.

Recently, Putin has been emphasising that Russia poses no threat to Europe, and has begun—for the first time in years—to complain of economic difficulties. This, however, appears more of a smokescreen in line with Sun Tzu’s notion of war as a path of deception—especially in the run-up to “Zapad-2025” military exercises.

Since the start of the so-called “Special Military Operation” in 2022, the Russian regime can only remain stable in a dynamic mode. War sustains that dynamic. A new front serves to prolong Putin’s hold on power, preserving the “window to Europe” that Peter the Great cut through the Baltics—a window now perceived as threatened by “aggressive NATO.”

Algorithms

The United States’ distancing from Europe, combined with obstructionism by several NATO member states (Hungary, Slovakia, Spain, etc.), is creating a de facto military advantage for Russia. Militarily, Europe without the U.S. is unlikely to outmatch the Russia–North Korea tandem.

It is not a question of Russia needing large numbers of tanks to advance along Europe’s autobahns—those have already been lost to Ukrainian forces. Nor is there any need. With “bridgeheads” secured through organisational weaponry in countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, Russia can mass-produce missiles and drones, with North Korea contributing ballistic systems. That suffices to shift the war from hybrid to conventional form—targeting power substations, urban water systems, data centres, and more. Iskanders, KN-23s, and Kalibrs will be used to strike not only infrastructure but also European psychological stability—bringing the war home.

The hypothetical “Estonian village” or even Narva may not interest the Russians, but the sparsely populated islands of Estonia’s Moonsund Archipelago might—offering control of the Gulf of Riga and impacting Latvia. Similarly, the Åland Islands, which were part of the Russian Empire until 1917 and remain demilitarised despite Finland’s NATO membership, are of potential interest.

A probable algorithm for disorganising Europe via a limited conventional war centred on the Baltic Sea could include:

• Cyberattacks targeting power grids, data centres, transport, mobile networks, banking, and urban water systems;

• Extensive use of fixed and mobile electronic warfare systems (naval) in the Baltic Sea zone (GPS spoofing);

• Provoked “spontaneous” protests by migrants, including criminal and terrorist acts in European cities;

• A large-scale environmental disaster caused by a “coincidental incident” (e.g., oil spill in the Channel or North Sea);

• Sabotage of gas pipelines, high-voltage cables, and fibre-optic lines in the North Sea and Baltic regions;

• Nuclear blackmail, either via Iskander deployments or seizure of one or more of the four nuclear power plants on the Finnish and Swedish Baltic coasts;

• Deep-sea sabotage of transatlantic fibre-optic cables between Europe and North America, carried out by Russia’s Main Directorate for Deep-Sea Research;

• Attacks on arms and ammunition depots, weapons storage sites, and fuel facilities;

• AI-controlled drone swarms targeting locations in the Baltics—avoiding NATO troop positions (especially American and German) and offering “safe withdrawal” in exchange for non-engagement (i.e., “this is not your war”).

When?

Russia is confident that Europe is incapable of acting pre-emptively—only reactively, and only under de-escalatory scenarios. The last three years have seen Russian UAVs, cruise missiles, and aircraft breach the airspace of Poland, Romania, and occasionally other NATO members (Hungary, Croatia, Estonia) without interception—demonstrating NATO’s inability to react adequately. Leaders fear escalation. They lack internal resolve. They are psychologically vulnerable. The spectacle of collective genuflection before Trump only reinforces the Kremlin’s belief: strike first.

Moreover, NATO and national planners calculate that the Alliance will need 5–10 years to become war-ready. These forecasts assume that Russia will require the same timeframe. But this assumption is flawed. Russia has no intention of launching a frontal assault from Kirkenes to the Bosphorus. Nor will the Kremlin wait for NATO to prepare. Russia is already operating inside Europe, from within.

The Kremlin understands perfectly that NATO and the EU will not respond to sub-threshold, non-conventional warfare—or will do so only in token, non-conventional ways to avoid escalation. There is an unfounded belief that Russia will act symmetrically and within Western rules.

A case in point: the downing of a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea on 14 March 2023 by a Russian Su-27 fighter, using no onboard weapons. The U.S. responded only with words—and even suspended further reconnaissance flights to avoid provoking escalation. Russia achieved its objective.

The Kremlin also clearly sees that NATO and EU unity is largely a simulation—European-style Potemkin facades. Especially when there are “Trojan horses” within the alliances capable of blocking consensus.

The Kremlin believes that institutional dysfunction at the European and national levels will trigger political crises, eventually transforming governments along Hungarian or Slovak lines. Pathology becomes normalised. It did not succeed in Romania, France, or Germany—but that is no obstacle. It will succeed later.

Russia is already prepared to act where Europe is most vulnerable. Whether it occurs in the coming months—synchronised with “Zapad-2025” exercises—or next year is secondary. Another indicator: on 25 June, Russia unilaterally approved a new set of coordinates defining baseline boundaries in the Baltic Sea, redrawing maritime borders at will, in disregard of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and without the consent of neighbours—Finland, Sweden, Lithuania, and Estonia.

Details Matter

Amid global developments, the drifting of a “shadow fleet” tanker near undersea cables in the Baltic or North Seas, the arson of Bundeswehr trucks by pacifists or pro-Palestinian activists in Germany, the torching of armoured vehicles in Belgium, sightings of unidentified drones near U.S. military bases in Europe, local blackouts, or lorries ploughing into crowds during mass gatherings—all may appear incidental. But in reality, these are elements of training exercises by Russia’s irregular forces in Europe ahead of “H-Hour.” So too are periodic ruptures of undersea telecoms and power cables in the Baltic, masked as accidental or isolated sabotage at defence industry sites.

Russian émigré Yevgeny Messner, an officer in the Tsarist army, described in his 1960 book the warfare of the future: “In future war, battles will not be fought along a line but across the entire territory of both sides, as behind the armed front there will emerge political, social, and economic fronts. Warfare will not be two-dimensional, nor even three-dimensional (as since the advent of military aviation), but four-dimensional—the psyche of nations is the fourth dimension. The enemy will wage war from within your territory, supporting partisans, backing opposition parties with propaganda and finance, fomenting disobedience, sabotage, and terrorism, and inciting insurrections.”

“War will be waged not only with regular troops, who will lose their monopoly, but with irregular forces: partisans, saboteurs, terrorists, propagandists… and by other unconventional means: aggresso-diplomacy, oil as a weapon, pornography as a weapon, drugs as a weapon, brainwashing as a weapon…”

Sixty-five years ago, from Argentina, a Russian émigré effectively predicted Russia’s war in Europe in the 21st century. The only additions are cyberwarfare—and more recently, artificial intelligence, with China supporting Russia as a co-beneficiary of EU and NATO disintegration.

This opinion piece first appeared in Zerkalo Nedeli (zn.ua)