This is a radically different problem than large-scale drone warfare: individual drones are harder to detect and shooting them down can be more tricky in peacetime, depending on population density in the areas they stray into. Given that the Ukrainian capability development to increasingly conduct long-range strike in Russia has been foreseeable, it was also only a question of time when some would spill over due to electronic warfare or human errors.

Over the spring and summer, Ukraine has taken the war to Russia by hitting oil infrastructure in the Gulf of Finland and targets in the Moscow region. Ukrainian drones welcomed international guests who had arrived in St Petersburg last week for a major economic forum. As a side effect, the Baltic states and Finland, who share a border with Russia, have seen a number of drones straying into their air space and sometimes crash-landing in their territories - NATO air policing has even had the chance to shoot some down.

Of course Russian drones also regularly stray into NATO airspace. Romania that shares a border with Ukraine has witnessed a good number of Russian drones in its airspace. Recently, a Russian drone likely headed to the Ukrainian port of Izmail hit an apartment building in the Romanian border town Galati instead. The Romanian response, as reported by Reuters, and decision not to shoot the drone down is illustrative of the difficulties such drone threats cause in peactime in densely populated areas:

The Romanian defence ministry said two F-16 fighter jets had been scrambled and a military helicopter was sent to monitor the attack, with the pilots authorised to ​shoot down any drones without endangering inhabited areas. The residents of border counties Braila, Galati and Tulcea were warned to take cover.

The drone was in Romania’s airspace for four ​minutes and flew at a low ⁠altitude for 10 km (6.2 miles), making it difficult for radar to detect, Romanian Brigadier General Gheorghe Maxim said.

He told a press conference that although the U.S. anti-drone system Merops is operational in Romania, it is not yet fully integrated with national air defences, and it would have been too risky to use in a city.

The political consequences have been significant, especially in Latvia where the handling of one drone incident triggered the government to collapse. In Finland, employee and employer organisations are discussing who should pay for the work hours of employees who have stayed at home due to drone alerts, and who cannot work remotely. Estonians, always ahead of the curve with digital applications, have developed a drone map to monitor UAVs in Estonian air space.

While Russia naturally has used the information warfare and propaganda potential of the drone incidents to the fullest, I personally found some European leaders’ attempts at blaming them on deliberate Russian tactics silly and potentially dangerous, given that this is more likely a spillover from “normal” defensive measures than a genius plan involving a master jammer in Kaliningrad that hijacks and redirects drones into the Baltics and Finland, as reported by the Telegraph. (Caveat: I have only read this summary of the reporting, not the article itself, which is behind a paywall.) I am of course no expert in electronic warfare and for sure, Russia has no interest to prevent any drones from straying into NATO airspace and territory as a result of EW. Possibly Russia can also capture Ukrainian drones and send them westward. But I remain sceptical of Russia’s ability to manipulate Ukrainian drones in this highly sophisticated fashion, until there is more proof.

A major drone alert in Finland on 15 May is a good case in point: the Finnish authorities closed the airspace in the capital region for several hours and advised citizens to remain indoors due to a drone threat. Some weeks later it was disclosed that Finland had, in fact, received a warning from Ukraine that drones with payloads had accidentally been directed towards Finland, not Russia. So the cause turned out to be a mishap with coordinates on the Ukrainian side. Finnish authorities didn’t initially disclose the information, likely due to concerns how it may affect public sentiment. Prematurely rushing to blame such an incident on Russia could thus backfire in terms of diminishing the credibility of authorities. Rather, European governments should work with Ukraine to address the issue, as offered by Zelesnkyy, instead of just complaining about it to Ukraine. Ukraine has every right to continue attacking legitimate targets in Russia as long as Russia continues its war of aggression. It is up to us to make sure that we can handle the consequences.

P.S. We covered Ukraine’s drone campaign on our new podcast, Mildly Alarmed - you can listen to the episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

And not only does Sweden have a royal house of French origin, but soon also French frigates. After months of sweat and tears at Naval Group, a French shipmaker, the Swedish government announced yesterday that it had chosen the FDI as its future frigate. It’s a big deal. The four frigates will cost Sweden around SEK 40 billion (€3,67 bn), depending on what type of weapons Sweden wants to have installed on the frigates - Naval Group has promised to incorporate Saab systems of Sweden’s choosing. But apart from the cost, it’s a big deal for Sweden’s air defence: according to Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, the new frigates will triple Sweden’s AD capability. Delivery is expected at a one-ship-per-year pace from 2030. The fact that the FDI already exisist and is deployed by the French and Hellenic navies was a strong selling point vis-a-vis competitors, who could only offer a plan.

I got to visit on board the FDI in Brest last fall and it did seem to have a lot of “pang pang” potential, as the Swedes would say, despite being a promisingly compact vessel (which is fairly relevant given the extensive archipelago in Sweden and between Sweden and Finland). Otherwise, apart from that it looked like a neat boat to me, I can’t say much - for all the nerdy details, please read Corporal Frisk’s five-part review.

Personally, I am happy about the outcome of Sweden’s procurement process, as this cements the strategic partnership between France and Sweden. France’s GlobalEye deal with Saab is likely also sealed now. Given that France and Sweden are the only two European countries that have their national fighter jet programmes (Rafale and Gripen) who knows what the future of this Bernadotte connection holds? Sweden is also one of the eight countries that has begun consultations with France on how the French nuclear deterrent could play a greater role in European security.

The Nordics have been quite good at binding larger European countries into the region’s defence arrangements through procurement cooperation, such as Norway’s submarine, space and missile projects with Germany and frigate procurement with the UK, in the framework of aUK-Norway strategic partnership. In Finland, both the UK and France contribute to the NATO Forward Land Force. Denmark is also planning to procure frigates, but the final decision has been delayed by difficulties in building a new government after elections in March. Naval Group is among the contenders in Denmark, too.

France’s interest in Northern Europe is fairly recent and the French are only beginning to get a foothold in Nordic hearts and minds. For a long time, France was mostly viewed with suspicion, given its reputation as a difficult NATO ally and a feeling that when France talks about European strategic autonomy, it actually just wants to sell French weapons. The latter stereotype is only partially true: the French defence industry is under a particularly heavy export pressure, but that is because maintaining a sovereign nuclear deterrent is expensive and requires wide-ranging national production capacity.

The best way to advocate for France in Northern Europe has until now been to point out that beggars can’t be choosers and we should welcome any and every interest in our region’s security. But the new French commitments to Northern European security, including its forward-leaning support to Denmark and Greenland, will hopefully be the beginning of more “strategic intimacy” with the Nordics, as President Macron likes to say. As things stand, France may have a bright future as a strategic partner to Northern European countries, spearheaded by the Sweden-France partnership - if it sticks to its commitments beyond the presidential elections looming on the horizon next year.

Narva Is Actually Alright

This post was written in cooperation with Marek Kohv, Head of the Security & Resilience Programme at ICDS Tallinn.

The idea that the small Estonian border town Narva, with some 50,000 inhabitants, will be next on the Russian menu has become such a popular headline that the “Narva scenario” even has its own Wikipedia page. But contrary to popular belief, Narva is not simply up for grabs.

First, despite a 85 percent Russian-speaking population, Narvans are not loyal to Putin. Ukraine has shown that the language question is not as clear-cut as the Kremlin would like outsiders to believe, and Narva is no exception.

Generally, willingness to defend the country is extremely high in Estonia: in a 2025 survey, 82 percent of residents believed Estonia must resist militarily if attacked, including 89 percent of ethnic Estonians and 70 percent of other nationalities (mainly Russians). Furthermore, 85 percent of Estonians and 78 percent of residents of other nationalities consider belonging to Estonian society important to them, and 77 percent of the Estonian population are proud of living in Estonia. In Northeastern Estonia, with a large population share of Russian ethnicity, the number of those who feel proud is 65 percent.

Second, if you have an obvious hotspot in your country that Russia has tried to exploit previously, you also have multiple contingency plans. Unlike many Western European countries that largely stopped national defence planning after the Cold War, Estonia has a plan.

After a series of early warning experiences in the 2000s, Estonia adapted its approach to national security. The Russian hybrid campaign in 2007 combining all instruments of power (diplomatic and economic pressure, cyber offensive and propaganda campaign, rioting and active measures of Russian special services), and Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008 exposed new forms of hybrid conflict and accelerated strategic reform. In response, Estonia adopted a new national defence concept in 2010 that expanded the concept of security beyond purely military defence. It defined national defence as a responsibility shared across all state institutions, supported by civil society, international cooperation, and psychological defence.

As a result of two decades of work, Estonia’s security architecture is now built on a layered and integrated approach that combines national defence readiness, allied cooperation, and clear intelligence picture. Rather than relying on a single pillar, Estonia has developed a system in which military capability, civilian resilience, and international partnerships reinforce one another.

Public attitudes strongly support this model. Trust in the Estonian Defence Forces (EDF) remains high, and 62 percent of the population would personally contribute to national defence according to their abilities.

Third, the various Narva scenarios usually assume that Russia would manage to surprise Estonia. However, that is very unlikely. The Estonian intelligence services are laser-focused on Russia. A “little green men” scenario à la Crimea would not work a second time, because countries in Russia’s vicinity are monitoring any developments hinting at a similar attempt closely.

Intelligence plays a central role in the Estonian national defence framework, enabling early warning and improved situational awareness, particularly in response to hybrid threats. The Estonian Internal Security Service (KAPO) has a good overview of attempts by Russian special services to carry out influence activities in Estonia, create intelligence networks or divide society. KAPO has repeatedly and successfully exposed and neutralized such attempts.

The Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service and the Military Intelligence Centre constantly monitor military and political developments in Russia. A former chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) stated in 2022 that “pound-for-pound they probably knock us into a cocked hat” regarding Estonian intelligence expertise on Russia. “No one else is spying for us here - we are Estonian state intelligence and we also see ourselves as NATO intelligence. This is our sector here, we are responsible for this information gathering, so to speak,” said the Director of Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service Kaupo Rosin.

Fourth, any limited Russian attack on one of the Baltic states will not be the end of NATO, because the Baltic states can deal with a limited number of Russians even without allied help. While most Western European countries paused or entirely abolished military service and therefore lost their force generation ability, Estonia has a mobilisation register of around 230,000 individuals and can rapidly expand its wartime structure to more than 43,000 positions – trained together and equipped as units.

This capacity is sustained through compulsory conscription, continuous reservist training, and regular snap reserve exercises introduced in 2016 to test mobilisation readiness without prior notice. Annually, reserve units of up to 20 000 personnel are called up for exercises. From 2027, the EDF will transition to a training cycle focused on the concept of combat readiness as a practical part of conscript service designed to enhance the military’s ability to respond at short notice to a wide range of threats across land, sea, air, cyber, and cognitive domains. Its goal is to ensure unit- and domain-specific readiness to react to emerging security challenges throughout the year.

The voluntary Defence League complements the regular forces by embedding national defence across society. Its nationwide presence ensures territorial coverage, providing continuous local security and support functions. Given that the Defence League maintains a daily presence throughout Estonia, it also means 24/7 protection for more remote areas – including Narva. Together, these institutions reflect Estonia’s principle of whole-of-society defence, where national security is not limited to the armed forces but involves civilian institutions, volunteers, and critical infrastructure providers.

Furthermore, the EDF are establishing a military complex in Narva that can accommodate up to 1,000 service members. The recently opened operational headquarters of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) in Narva-Jõesuu is an additional contribution on the eastern border. The centre coordinates border guard operations in the Nordic and Baltic countries, bringing international expertise and additional personnel to the region. Joint operations and coordination structures support border management, crisis response, and monitoring of irregular migration and cross-border threats. Narva won’t be a walk in the park for little green men.

From a Russian perspective, it is not necessarily rational to wait five years until Europe has rearmed and figured out command and control without the US. Therefore, Europe needs to learn that perfect is the enemy of good enough, and adopt a ‘can do’ mindset even if circumstances are suboptimal.

The Nordic region is reasonably well off when it comes to military capability, but what the Nordic countries mainly lack is manpower. Finland is the only country in Northern Europe with a real force generation ability, with a reserve of up to 870,000 and crossing 1 million by 2031, with the reserve age limit raised to 65 for tasks in the rear. The other Nordic countries are well below 100,000 in terms of mobilization potential. In the wider Nordic-Baltic region, Estonia is another outlier with its total mobilization potential, like in Finland, reaching almost 20 percent of the population, totalling up to 230,000.

The human resources issue is not one that can be solved quickly. Although all the Nordic and Baltic countries have reinstated conscription in some form by now, increasing troop numbers is a slow business, when starting from a low initial number. For example Sweden that brought back a selective, gender-neutral conscription back in 2017 now has the capacity to train about 8000 conscripts per year – compared with 22,000 in Finland, where conscription was not paused after the Cold War. For comparison, Germany is aiming to reach a total troop strength (including reserve) of 460,000 – by 2033.

However, the Nordic countries have managed to compensate for the relatively low numbers in personnel by increasing and intensifying their cooperation. Especially in the Cap of the North region that encompasses the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, the defence forces of the three countries are becoming increasingly well integrated. Finland and Sweden’s NATO accession unlocked new possibilities in regional military integration, so joining the alliance was not in vain from a Finnish and Swedish perspective, even though the alliance finds itself in an unprecedented crisis with no clear future.

In the Nordic region, the air forces have been drivers of integration, with a joint Nordic Air Power Concept for better interoperability and a Nordic division established in 2025 at the Norwegian Joint Air Operation Centre (JAOC) in Bodø. The new NATO Forward Land Force in Finland, with Sweden as a framework nation and contributions from the other Nordic countries, the UK, France, and Italy, is facilitating increased exercise activity and regional land force integration. In the maritime domain, the closest cooperation is between Finland and Sweden in the Baltic Sea, including transferring units under each other’s command. Norway, in turn, has been building strategic partnerships with Germany through a joint submarine project and other strategic areas, and with the UK through joint procurement of a frigate.

Nordic-Baltic cooperation is another area that has seen significant steps forward since 2022. Politically, the “NB8” format has become a prominent voice in European debates about the continent’s security and defence, and overall future outlook. The Nordic-Baltic countries, despite their small size, have also been leading the European efforts to support Ukraine militarily. Demark, Sweden, and Norway are among Ukraine’s strongest supporters not only as share of GDP, but in absolute terms, putting many larger countries’ comparably inadequate contributions to shame. In military terms, the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) that includes the Nordic and Baltic countries and the Netherlands, is an important coalition of like-minded and interoperable countries in the region.

The ongoing US withdrawal from Europe, and especially expressions of hostile intentions by the current administration towards NATO allies, pose a significant dilemma for the defence of Northern Europe. The Nordic countries have hitherto prepared to hold the line until allied (i.e. American) reinforcements arrive. But now it looks increasingly evident that Europeans are on their own and no such reinforcements will arrive from North America, apart from whatever Canada can contribute. That radically changes the way defence in a possible conflict with Russia is planned, especially in the Arctic and North Atlantic.

When thinking about possible conflict trajectories in Northern Europe, the mobilizable strength of the Finnish land force and the combined numbers of the Nordic air forces (a joint fleet of about 250 4+/5^th generation fighter jets), that are all also investing in long-range capabilities with significant conventional deterrent effect, may dissuade Russia from any large-scale ground invasion either in Finland, Northern Norway, or the Baltic states. However, the maritime areas in the High North, as well as the North Atlantic are of high strategic priority to Russia. The wider Nordic region, far beyond the analytically not very up-to-date Narva scenarios, is therefore exposed to Russian power projection interests in terms of its access to the Atlantic Ocean from the High North. However, while the main goal for Northern European allies used to be to keep an eye on Russian submarine movements and prevent them from accessing the Atlantic beyond the so-called Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap, to guarantee safe passage for reinforcements and supplies from the US and to stop Russian submarines from threatening US east coast, this is now a lower priority than the more acute defence of the Scandinavian peninsula and Finland.

But the US itself poses and even bigger dilemma. No NATO members are geared to fight the US, should it act on its threats against allied territory either in Greenland or Canada – on the contrary, maximal interoperability with US forces has been the goal for NATO countries for decades. That Denmark nevertheless demonstrated readiness to fight US forces, should they move on Greenland, was a powerful signal of willingness to defend, no matter who the adversary is, also to the Kremlin.

The Greenland crisis marked a point of no return for the Nordic countries, as Denmark has been one of the most loyal US allies. The Iran war and the US administration’s display of strategic shortsightedness, combined with tantrums about allied lack of enthusiasm is further adding to the strain. The war itself is just the lesson in geography for the current US administration that Trump and his team urgently needed. The European arguments about their crucial role and contributions to the Global War on Terror (GWOT) were lost on this administration until now, as Trump, Vance & Co. thought that the GWOT was a mistake to begin with. Now, they have gained first-hand experience in conducting military operations in the Middle East. And it turns out that doing so without access to bases in Europe is difficult, no matter who sits in the White House. However, this administration is unlikely to learn from its mistakes and change course on relations with Europe.

Beyond NATO’s function as a vehicle of US security guarantees to Europe, the alliance also provides a structure for military cooperation between European countries. NATO is therefore unlikely to collapse as an organisation even if the US entirely loses interest, as European members have an incentive to retain it in place – although in a radically different form. The current work to define and build “a European pillar” and the ongoing burden shifting are preparations for this eventuality. The challenge in Europe will be, then, to ensure that the various regional coalitions coordinate and cooperate with each other.

Until recently, the Arctic 8 were able to keep the Arctic largely to themselves, with little outside presence and interest in the region. This fostered the idea of “Arctic exceptionalism”: that the region is isolated from the rest of the world not only geographically, but also geopolitically, and peace and cooperation reign supreme in the Arctic regardless of tensions elsewhere. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine finally froze the cooperation, which has been largely on ice since then except for some online working group cooperation that has been resumed with Russia.

Even if the idea of Arctic exceptionalism may seem silly now, the Arctic remains an exceptional region for the uniquely harsh climatic conditions – despite the change in temperature that is rising much faster than the global average.

With rising temperatures, also interest in the Arctic is increasing. China (in)famously describes itself as a “near-Arctic state” and has been building up its Arctic presence since 2014 with the aim to become a major polar power by 2030. In Europe, the UK considers itself “the nearest neighbour to the Arctic region” – with considerably more geographical credibility than China – and France published an Arctic Defence Strategy in 2025. Germany’s Arctic Policy Guidelines from 2024 state that “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has fundamentally changed the security environment for Germany’s engagement in the Arctic. The Arctic can no longer be regarded as an isolated region.”

At the same time, the Arctic 8 has become the Arctic 7 after Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, and may be devolving into the Arctic 6 due to US volatility, leaving Canada and the Nordic countries to deal with both Russian and US activity in the Arctic that may go against their interests.

The increased friendly and adversarial interest in the Arctic poses a dilemma for the small European Arctic states. In times of heightened great power competition, the Arctic transforms from a periphery to a central area for both offensive and defensive strategies: the shortest way for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to fly between Russia and US homeland is over the polar region (this year’s Danish military intelligence report has a good graph on this on p. 33), and the Arctic sea lanes cut the shipping distance between Europe and Asia significantly.

Russian Arctic: Balancing Dependence on China

Amidst the heating physical and political temperature in the Arctic, Russian interests in the region have remained stable and fairly predictable. Russian Arctic territory covers over three million square kilometres and reaches from the European to the Pacific Arctic. More than half of Arctic coastline is in Russian territory. Geography gives Russia both an opportunity and, in its own view, a justification, to attempt to control the Northern Sea Route (NSR).

Russia had ambitious plans for the NSR already before it initiated the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the need to redirect energy exports to China and India in the wake of Western sanctions has further increased the urgency to exploit the NSR’s potential. The Arctic is crucial as a source of Russia’s hydrocarbon exports: 83 percent of Russia’s natural gas is sourced from the Arctic areas. Having lost access to Europe through pipelines, Russia is now aiming to further expand in its LNG capacity.

Chinese companies are investors in many of Russia’s largest energy infrastructure projects and have become even more crucial since Western companies have withdrawn their investments due to sanctions. Furthermore, the Sino-Russian partnership has evolved into featuring an increasing number of joint military drills, including in the Arctic Ocean.

The European part of the Russian Arctic is crucial for Russia’s status as a nuclear power and enables it to project power globally. Russia can threaten US homeland territory from the Arctic and harbours its second-strike nuclear submarines on the Kola Peninsula. To protect these strategic assets, Russia maintains a Soviet-era strategy that Western analysts have dubbed the so-called “Bastion defence”: a layered defence posture around the Kola peninsula, encompassing the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea and further west to the Greenland–Iceland–United Kingdom (GIUK) gap. The Bastion defence concept aims to ensure both the security of the assets located on the Kola Peninsula and access of the Russian Northern Fleet to the North Atlantic and beyond.

The Arctic is therefore a strategically sensitive area for Russia, both with regard to China’s increasing push into the region and with regard to NATO’s growing Arctic presence. Russia has created a dynamic in the European Arctic where it unlikely wants to provoke a conflict in the region due to the high priority assets located there, but its military posture has prompted NATO countries to respond by increasing their military presence.

The Nordics: Sandwiched Between Great Powers

The five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) in the European Arctic are on the one hand geographically exposed to Russia’s strategic goals and interests between the Kola Peninsula and the GIUK gap, with the Russo-Finnish and Russo-Norwegian borders only about 200km from Kola. Russian military exercises and other signalling activity also frequently takes place in the Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea.

On the other hand, the geographical vicinity to Russia also elevates the strategic value and relevance of the Nordic countries within NATO and from a US perspective: Norway, for example, has profiled itself as “NATO’s eyes and ears in the north” due to its unique capability to collect and share intelligence on the much-feared Russian submarines’ movements. Both Norway, for intelligence, and Iceland, for anti-submarine warfare purposes, thus have relevance even for US homeland security. (Btw, NATO’s submarine exercise has an epic name: Dynamic Mongoose.)

While especially Canada has traditionally wanted to keep the Arctic off NATO’s agenda and focus on the bilateral cooperation with the US, this is now changing rapidly as more non-Arctic allies seek to increase their presence in the region and the alliance is ramping up its exercise and other activity in the High North. Finland and Sweden have for their part increased NATO’s footprint in the Arctic since joining the alliance in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Sweden is taking on the role of a framework nation in a new NATO Forward Land Force contingent that is being set up in Northern Finland, with contributions from the other three Nordic countries, France, Italy, and the UK.

Greenland has real strategic value for the US, as early warning radars on Greenland are crucial for detecting Russian ICBMs flying towards US homeland territory across the Arctic airspace. However, the erratic and irrational US policy under President Trump towards Greenland, including threats of military means to gain control over the island, has made accommodating US interests on Greenland much harder.

Combined with rumours about potential US-Russian cooperation on Arctic energy projects, as was reported after a May meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss the Ukraine war between an American and a Russian delegation and again indicated in the recent 28-point peace plan for Ukraine, alarm bells are ringing in the Nordic region.

The biggest Arctic headache: US volatility

Arctic security is currently in flux mainly due to the unpredictability of US Arctic policy. While many current dynamics are reminiscient of the Cold War, especially Russia’s growing strategic emphasis on the Arctic, the Trump administration is is shaping the US role in a very different way than European allies are used to. The Danish military intelligence said the quiet part out loud in their recently published annual report: ”the Unite States is leveraging its economic and technological strength as instruments of power, also against allies and partners”.

China’s growing presence in the Arctic is a factor that causes uneasiness both in the West and in Russia that for a long time did not want to give China too much access to the region. If Trump seriously means to resume nuclear testing – a thought that Xi Jinping seems to successfully have induced to Trump at their meeting – and China and Russia follow suit, the US-China-Russia triangle will become even more explosive.

While it has been the smaller Nordic countries’ preference to keep the Arctic to themselves, they are now better off getting other European allies involved in the region. Instead of unpredictable bilateral relations with the US, the more Arctic military activity is coordinated through NATO and other multilateral formats, the better.

The Nordic countries should therefore increase cooperation with the UK, which – as the main European naval power in the North Atlantic and one of Europe’s two nuclear states – in turn needs to make Arctic operations a strategic priority. The Nordic countries should also welcome and encourage the growing French interest in developing cold weather capabilities and increasing its presence in Northern Europe. Nordic regional cooperation is important and can offset some vulnerabilites that stem from the countries’ limited capacity, but given their close proximity and the Arctic region’s strategic importance to Russia, the Nordics need especially nuclear allies’ involvement in and commitment to Arctic security.

The US NSS is in its characteristic ugliness actually a useful document from a European perspective. It codifies in policy, in black and white, what has been evident all year long: Trump and his people are openly hostile to Europe. Once it is spelled out in the NSS, European leaders cannot ignore or explain the fact away anymore. Any hope to sit this out and for things to go back to the old normal looks increasingly ludicrous and politically unviable.

Furthermore, the Trump administration’s eagerness to interfere in European affairs in favour of the far right have promising potential to backfire. As I wrote in February, that was a likely outcome of the approach most fervently driven by JD Vance. Especially claims in the NSS such as “[a] large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes” are just the kind of good stuff that may well trigger an anti-reaction among those “patriotic European parties” that this US administration seeks to support. Given Trump’s pretty uniform unpopularity in Europe - with the highest approval rating in Italy at 28 percent in a recent YouGov poll - any uninvited “[c]ultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” may well end up damaging the European far right.

What comes to the hysteria about mass immigration, it is almost a bit amusing that the NSS mentions the following:

“Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European. As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.”

…because that is a longstanding European concern with regard to the US and its commitment to NATO. This is some Russian-style projection and of one’s own issues onto others.

Perhaps fourth time’s a charm: Europeans should by now have enough data on the Trump administration’s repeatedly failed efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine so that they can start crafting a more proactive strategy with the confidence that Trump will not be able to coerce Ukraine into just any kind of deal. The main issue is probably that Trump and his people are trying to end “the Ukraine war” without understanding that it is Russia’s war in Ukraine. On the other hand, it has become sufficiently clear that any amount of “Trump whispering” won’t fundamentally change the administration’s course on Ukraine or Europe more broadly. The forces pulling the other way within the administration are strong enough to withstand European efforts at good faith cooperation.

Europeans know that Russia hasn’t shown any signs of serious willingness to negotiate in good faith, so it is understandable that working on a peace (or even ceasefire) plan has not been the main priority in Europe. But the fact that the Trump administration at regular intervals throws a curveball at Ukraine and Europe, and every time Europe looks equally stupid, with only a crisis management strategy but nothing of substance of its own to offer. By the way, I was looking for sources with the search words “Russia rejects US peace plan/ ceasefire deal” and found media articles from December 2024, January 2025, March 2025, April 2025 (twice), May 2025, and August 2025. And that was just a quick Google search. So my faith in Russia’s continued efforts to thwart any efforts to end the war seems justified.

But the European counterproposals are every time a bit lazy, too. Europe keeps firmly rejecting territorial concessions, limitations to Ukraine’s defence forces, or any provisions on Ukraine’s future EU and/or NATO membership without consulting the organisations, as they should. All of these are obviously unacceptable conditions for Russia - because no one has so far made a real effort to make Russia accept them. It is therefore evident that when European leaders comment on the latest “peace plan” that is thrown at them, and talk about European red lines, they are signalling to the US – trying to remind Trump once again what goes and what doesn’t – not to Russia. Europeans know very well that their insistence on Ukraine’s rights will be rejected by Russia, until the situations becomes dire enough for the Kremlin to have to start making concessions. But just waiting for that to magically happen is not a strategy, and Ukrainians don’t have all the time in the world.

That is why Europe needs to finally seize the initiative and stop wasting time trying to manage Trump. If Europeans themselves drive the agenda, together with Ukraine, they will not constantly be caught off guard and need to manage yet another crisis. It is therefore time for Europe to formulate clear conditions under which real negotiations can take place. If Europeans made a concerted – and professional – diplomatic effort to communicate to Russia not only “as long as it takes” but what it really takes, it could actually lead somewhere.

And, even more importantly: start squeezing Russia to inspire greater interest in actual negotiations. Finally mobilizing the frozen Russian assets is crucial in this regard. The clock is ticking ahead of the European Council meeting on 18 December, which is expected to be the last possibility to solve the problem on time. Only that way Europeans can nip future US “peace plans” in the bud and force Russia to stop playing around.

And indeed that would be a fitting name for an astonishingly comical series of events the US government presented last week. The Russian input side was quite curious, as some of the points were simply too ludicrous to have really served Russian interests. That, among the conduct of the US government, underlines the inherent unseriousness of the plan as a basis for diplomatic negotiations. It is a wonder - and a sign of the Ukrainian delegation’s patience and professionalism - that the Geneva talks on Sunday actually ended up being somewhat productive.

So much happened in such a short time that it’s quite hard to even still remember all of the plot twists, but I tried to keep track and here are some of my personal highlights (also recommend reading Michael Weiss’ lowlights on his substack ):

1. The fact that it was the Russian cook of the plan, Dmitriev, who did the leaking. As if Russia wasn’t serious and just wanted to create a major information operation…

2. The 28 points included a provision that “If Ukraine launches a missile at Moscow or St. Petersburg without cause, the security guarantee will be deemed invalid.” So other cities are fair game. And also Moscow and St. Petersburg are fair game if Ukrainians have a cause. I have no idea why we keep guessing about Russian red lines, they tell us it’s only Moscow and St. Petersburg that matter…

3. Russia greenlit the use of $100 bn frozen Russian assets for the reconstruction Ukraine (with 50% of the profits going to the US).

4. The plan also included a point about returning children, which amounted to Russia admitting it has kidnapped Ukrainian children. Also the point about “all Nazi ideology and activities must be rejected and prohibited” might have turned out a Russian own goal.

5. The Kremlin denied that they had received any official information from the US on the 28-point plan, which nicely contradicted the idea of a “secret US-Russia plan”.

6. JD Vance’s (who seems to hate Ukraine the most) homeboy, the apparently clueless Army Secretary Dan Driscoll whose initial purpose to visit Kyiv seems to actually have been to talk military-industrial cooperation with Ukraine, was sent to brief Ukrainian and NATO officials about the plan.

7. The Leaders’ statement from the sidelines of a G20 meeting used the phrasing “we reiterate” to emphasise that this is, indeed, not the first rodeo of its kind.

8. US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio denounced the whole document as a Russian plan, not drafted by the US, to US senators.

9. A few hours later, Rubio did a full u-turn and stated that the plan was, in fact, authored by the US - not by Russia after all. (At this point I already thought that the Geneva trip would be cancelled because this is not how anything works.)

10. The latest revelation that, according to a phone call record between Dmitriev and Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s senior foreign policy adviser, the plan very much was “informally passed along” by the Russians.

11. In a phone call with Ushakov in preparation of the Trump-Putin phone call earlier in October (leading to Trump suggesting a meeting between the presidents in Budapest, which never happened), Witkoff said the following:

“Now, me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere. But I’, saying instead of talking like that, let’s talk more hopefully because I think we’re going to get to a deal here. And I think Yuri, the president will give me a lot of space and discretion to get to the deal.”

It is fascinating to read how little Witkoff understands of the peace deal he is trying to negotiate - which, given his background, is no surprise, of course. summed up nicely why you can’t force a peace deal.

Despite the inherent unseriousness of the whole plan and everyone involved in it, Ukrainians managed to turn the ominous Geneva meeting into a productive day with their American counterparts. The 28 points were allegedly reduced down to 19, and according to Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s first deputy foreign minister who was present at the negotiations, the new points “bore little resemblance to the earlier leaked version of the peace proposal”. The harder questions, such as about territorial concessions, were left to the US and Ukrainian presidents to solve. That bears an inherent risk that Trump will flare up at Zelenskyy again.

Even though the Ukrainian delegation managed to turn the plan into one that takes Ukrainian interests into account, I still doubt that it will amount to much. Europeans, together with Ukraine, made clear that they will not acknowledge territorial concessions, accept restrictions on the size Ukraine’s defence forces, or agree to provisions on Ukraine’s EU or NATO membership to be negotiated without the relevant organisations. Unfortunately for Trump, the EU has quite a strong hand to play, as it is Ukraine’s main arms supplier and also keeps Ukraine financially afloat. The EU Commission is expected to present a legal draft for the use of frozen Russian assets for Ukraine’s financial needs in the coming years. That may prove a more efficient incentive for Russia to engage seriously in peace talks than anything Trump has been able to conjure up.

So far, however, nothing has happened this year to make Russia want to agree to conditions that would be acceptable to Ukraine. Equally little has happened that would either force or incentivise Ukraine and Europe to agree to the disastrous conditions that Russia always pushes. That is why I remain fairly confident that the stalemate won’t be solved and this will end up yet another mere media hype. Predictably, the Kremlin already - after initially having denied any official input to the 28-point plan - insisted that they will not agree to any modifications to the plan.

The mind-boggling aspect of all this is that the US government keeps throwing such diplomatically unserious drafts at Ukraine and Europe, who then duly have to engage with them in good faith and try to make something reasonable out of it. While the grovelling strategy was justified to keep Trump from doing greater harm, it always had an expiration date. Now it is time for Europe to take a more proactive stance, stop wasting time jumping through the same hoops with Trump, and start focusing on squeezing Russia until it has to start negotiating seriously.

P.S. It says something that the New York Post, of all media, has the best analysis of this latest farce.

As one can imagine, the Finland-Sweden games are more than just sports. It’s a question of prestige between best frenemies, and emotions run accordingly high and memories are long. The competition is also not restricted to the annual games but scores are being kept in all other sports competitions as well - as a Finnish saying goes, winning is not as important as that Sweden loses. We still remember with great bitterness the 1980 winter olympics at Lake Placid where Finland’s Juha Mieto lost the gold medal to Sweden’s Thomas Wassberg by 1/100th of a second - the closest finish in Olympic history. (And spare me the “finnish” jokes please. This still hurts.) When Sweden became NATO member, the Finnish ministry of foreign affairs posted a congratulatory video with the song “Den glider in” in the background - it was supposed to be the Swedish team’s song in the ice hockey world championships in 1995, which the Finns won against the Swedish hosts 4-1. The winning Finnish team owned the song and it became an instant classic in Finland.

As a Finn living in Sweden, I of course keep a personal score as well. So far, I have listed the following things as better in Finland than in Sweden:

• The Finnish drying cupboards above the sink. I don’t understand why they don’t exist in Sweden. I guess so that IKEA can sell the dish drainers that you put on top of the counter.

• All dairy products, especially cheese and yoghurt, are from a different planet in Finland. So much taste, such creamy consistency. In Sweden the only taste you get in cheese is salty, and yoghurt is always “mild and sour” - and watery. It’s baffling - when you buy yoghurt from Finnish brands in Sweden, it’s adapted to the Swedish mild, sour and watery taste, whereas Swedish brands make wonderfully creamy yoghurt for the Finnish market.

• Trains (on time and nicer).

• Deposit on plastic bottles is much higher (although you of course pay for it yourself when you buy the bottle).

• Many more saunas! I don’t understand the lack of saunas in Sweden! And when you find one, it’s not properly heated!

• Social mobility.

Better in Sweden than in Finland:

• Sauces. For any thinkable dish Sweden has 5-7 more sauce options than Finland. And there are something like 15 different kinds of Bernaise sauce alone.

• Filter coffee. I try to avoid drinking it, but when I have to, it’s usually more drinkable in Sweden than in Finland.

I am making a great effort to assess this in a fair and objective fashion and will strive to add more items that are better in Sweden.

The bilateral competition naturally also takes place in politics. Because Finland was a part of the Kingdom of Sweden for more than half a millennium, until 1809, Sweden used to consider itself the “big brother” in the relationship. But the 2022 NATO year changed everything. The Swedish newspaper Expressen has been leading the change, by thanking “big brother Finland” for “NATO help - we would never have made it without you” (in Finnish!) in May 2022, suggesting that Sweden should join Finland instead as the Swedish NATO process stalled in 2023, and recently stating that “Sweden is like Finland, but worse”. In Svenska Dagbladet (SvD), one of Sweden’s largest daily newspapers, a culture columnist dreamily wrote about how Finland was founded by poets, while Sweden only has had kings (lame of course). Finland’s previous Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s international celebrity was tough for the Swedes, and they are having a full-scale meltdown now over Finnish President Alexander Stubb’s prominent role in European Trump management efforts. Another SvD journalist went as far as to say that Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson even looks like Stubb’s little brother and suggested that “it is perhaps the new Swedish condition - to be beaten by Finland”.

One could think that such a competitive relationship would lead to bad blood. But on the contrary, the reaction to this “new Swedish condition” has rather been to seek a closer relationship and more cooperation. A Swedish historian and columnist suggested that Finland and Sweden could realistically become one country again - any hurdles to a reunion would be merely “cosmetic”. And the idea of reviving the 15th century Kalmar Union, a kingdom that united all five Nordic countries, has gone from an internet joke to a semi-serious discussion. Even though it will probably never happen, it is a nice and wholesome idea for a change. We sure don’t have too many of those lately.

First, the Financial Times reported that France and the UK have agreed to begin coordinating on nuclear responses. This move is a tectonic shift in French nuclear policy, which has been strictly sovereign and national to the point that France has hitherto refused any and all multilateral coordination mechanisms on nuclear deterrence. (The FT describing the French nuclear deterrent as “entirely homegrown” is very much the current Zeitgeist.) France does not, for example, participate in NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements and is the only NATO member that has opted out of the Nuclear Planning Group. Now, France has agreed to set up a nuclear supervision group co-chaired by the Élysée and the UK Cabinet Office, which will be responsible for “coordinating the growing co-operation in the areas of policy, capabilities, and operations” (from the FT article). This is revolutionary on the scale that hell might just as well freeze next.

The planned coordination is based on the assessment that “[t]here is no extreme threat to Europe that would not prompt a response by both nations […] As such, any adversary threatening the vital interests of Britain or France could be confronted by the strength of the nuclear forces of both nations”, as the UK government puts it. The agreement with France means that “for the first time that the respective deterrents of both countries are independent but can be co-ordinated”. And the Franco-British nuclear supervision group is not foreseen to remain a mere debate club: potential cooperation could include refits of nuclear submarines to ensure that a maximum number of SSBNs are at sea at any given time. According to the UK sources cited in the FT article, France and the UK are also working together on a number of projects: next-generation long range and air-to-air missiles, high-tech microwave weapons and jammers for downing drones and missiles, and on using artificial intelligence to improve synchronised strike capabilities.

France and the UK only possess about 300 nuclear warheads each, which limits their ability to replace the US-provided extended deterrence as it has existed in Europe through nuclear sharing arrangements. The goal is therefore rather to make the best of what the two European powers have and lift the threshold for adversaries (uh, Russia) potentially contemplating unwise moves. Europe is in that sense better off than Asian US allies, whom the US has hitherto managed to talk out of developing own nuclear weapons. But that might soon change, as South Korea and Japan are both capable potential proliferators - and now Trump has given them a push.

Second, the coalition of the willing, led by the UK and France and consisting of 32 countries that have committed to support Ukraine, will get a three-star multinational operational headquarters in Paris. In true European style, the headquarters will rotate to London after 12 months. The new permanent headquarters will be a step towards institutionalising the coalition and enables flexible military contributions from partner nations. The coalition has had operational plans for a possible post-ceasefire reassurance force for some months now, but the political conditions have been lacking. Should (or “when”, as the UK government phrases it) the reassurance force be deployed, a coordination cell will also be established in Kyiv, headed up by a UK 2-star military officer. I suppose it is reassuring that such a force is basically ready to go if needed.

The UK government lists three main tasks for the force:

• Regenerate land forces: providing logistic, armament and training experts to assist with the regeneration and reconstitution of Ukraine’s land forces.

• Secure Ukraine’s skies: The Coalition will provide safe skies alongside Ukraine’s Air Force using Coalition aircraft to deliver Air Policing, reassuring the Ukrainian population and establishing the conditions for normal international air travel to re-commence.

• Support safer seas: The existing Black Sea Task Force of Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria will be bolstered by additional specialist staff to accelerate the clearance of mines from the Black Sea and ensure safe and secure maritime access for all vessels transiting to and from Ukraine ports.

However, what is more remarkable than the reassurance force is the institutionalisation of the coalition of the willing. It was created to bypass NATO and since the US has withdrawn from the leadership, it has also been a way for Europeans to coordinate with each other and Indo-Pacific partners - without the US. It already has an established meeting system for the highest political and military leaders: the heads of state, and the chiefs of defence.

The most advantageous feature is that Ukraine is already in (obviously), while Hungary is out. The US was on its way out too, but apparently got second thoughts and is now trying to slime its way back in: US representatives joined the meeting of the coalition for the first time, including Special Presidential Envoy, General Keith Kellogg, Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Richard Blumenthal. Perhaps they realised that they are becoming irrelevant now that Europeans are actually doing what the US has demanded of them, and given that the Trump administration has been reluctant to grant Ukraine any new additional aid.

Together, these two new elements - the Franco-British nuclear coordination and the institutionalisation of the coalition of the willing - can become a subtle way to work around existing institutions that have proven dysfunctional or insufficient to meet the needs of supporting Ukraine and increasing European independent capability. Depending on the US trajectory, NATO may lose its centrality as Europe’s main defence and security arrangement, and then such alternatives come in handy. Both can become institutional elements in a new European security architecture, this time built without the US. It is up to the Trump administration to recognise its best interests and start engaging more constructively. But Europe is clearly moving on either way.

The Finnish Defence Minister, Antti Häkkänen, announced at the summit that the contributing nations to the new NATO Forward Land Force that will become operational this year in Northern Finland have now been confirmed. Apart from the framework nation Sweden, all three remaining Nordic countries Norway, Denmark, and even Iceland in some form are on board - although Iceland does not have armed forces - plus the UK and France. This promises to be a very good setup, demonstrating Nordic solidarity and committing the two European nuclear powers to the northern flank. The FLF in Finland will be slightly different than the already existing ones along the eastern flank, with rotational presence of NATO troops (the German permanent brigade in Lithuania being an exception), in that the focus in Finland is on exercises and training and will not include even rotational presence beyond the duration of the exercises. My personal highlight is that even Iceland is on board, which is symbolically important for signalling Nordic unity. I am curious to see what the Icelandic contribution will be – I hear that their coast guard is a tough guy (okay sorry, I’ll stop now).

While the UK is a longstanding close partner for all the Nordic countries, France has recently strategically reoriented towards Northen Europe after getting ousted from Africa. France has already increased its presence significantly in the two new NATO members Finland and Sweden: in late 2024, it was reported that France has become one of the most frequent allies to participate in exercises in Finland, after Swedes, Americans and the Brits. I have visual confirmation on this trend from my home town Rovaniemi, close to the large exercise range in Rovajärvi, where I have spotted French soldiers during recent visits.

France is also investing heavily in its relationship with Sweden. At the French Ministry of Defence (or, Ministry of the Armed Forces like the French call it), Sweden was identified as a European partner with high potential for defence industrial cooperation, as Sweden has a significant defence industry. It is not a coincidence that France appointed Thierry Carlier, the previous number two from the French defence procurement and technology agency (Direction générale de l'armement, DGA) as the new ambassador to Sweden. Mr. Carlier immediately made a splash by stating to Swedish media that France’s allies, and Sweden among them, are naturally covered by the French nuclear umbrella. The statement was quite revolutionary, as the French do not consider themselves to have a sufficient arsenal for US-style extended deterrence arrangements, and therefore usually never refer to a “French nuclear umbrella” – or make such clear statements about who may or may not be covered by the French nuclear deterrent.

Sweden and France are the only European countries that produce their own fighter jets: the Swedish Gripen and French Rafale. France is therefore interested in expanding industrial cooperation with Sweden to improve European strategic autonomy, which is an important policy goal for France. Just last week, France signed a declaration of intent with the Swedish company Saab to buy two (up to four) GlobalEye surveillance aircraft. To demonstrate its commitment to northeastern Europe, France recently projected power to the north during the air exercise Pegasé Grand Nord, with deployments to Northern Sweden and Poland. The drill sent two important signals: that France and Sweden are working together to improve European ability to operate without the US, and to Russia that a possibly diminished US presence will not leave a vacuum in Northern Europe.

At the same time, despite the transatlantic rift on the political level, military-to-military cooperation with the US has not yet been significantly affected. One prime example of intensifying and even unprecedented exercise activity is the trilateral Atlantic Trident air exercise, with US, UK and French participation, for the first time hosted outside the three nations – in Finland. We will see how long this lasts.

P.S. ICYMI: I am writing a weekly column for called The Europe Dispatch. I’ve written about topics such as Russia’s military buildup along the northern NATO border, Russian nuclear threats, conscription in the Nordic-Baltic region, and willingness to defend.

In October 2023, I was asked to give a worst case scenario presentation of where the world is headed at a closed-door event. Already at that point, there was no shortage of possible worst case scenarios. It was right after October 7th, with the Middle East theatre already blowing up. What I ended up presenting was a theory of “world wars”, instead of a World War.

Given the recent escalation between India and Pakistan, it feels like an appropriate timing to revisit what my “world wars” theory was about. In their escalation management policy, the Biden administration (as well as many European partners, especially in Berlin) were so focused on not doing anything that could risk a vertical escalation into a nuclear World War III that they either overlooked, underestimated, or accepted as the lesser evil a slower-paced horizontal escalation in other theatres. By doing so, the US under Biden signalled a lack of resolve that enabled Russia to continue its war, and encouraged others to seize opportunities with little fear of devastating consequences (at least from the US and the wider West). The Trump administration’s diplomatic inability, in turn, has been interpreted as a green light by many aspirant revisionist powers or groups. Trump and his MAGA people may not be overly interested in or knowledgeable of foreign policy, but any attempt to ignore it and withdraw from the global role will only lead to a constant need to play a firefighter. That the Trump team was at least able to mediate a ceasefire in the India-Pakistan conflict was a relief, but the fact that it was violated only hours later shows how much US global credibility has already been damaged.

What this type of horizontal escalation means is that we are entering an era of world wars, with conflicts flaming up in different parts of the world. My estimate is that they will likely remain confined to the regional areas, but of course having a multiplicity of simultaneous active conflicts can increase the likelihood of vertical escalation, as well, or their getting mixed up into a larger conflict. And two nuclear powers shooting cruise missiles at each other does not exactly lower the likelihood of a nuclear escalation ( described the so-called stability-instability paradox in his latest Substack update). It is unfortunately necessary to be fairly creative with the conflicts on our bingo cards for the coming years.

Preventing a nuclear escalation may require treading carefully, as the Biden administration firmly believed. Preventing the rise of the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea cooperation that aims to challenge the existing international order, and deterring other rogue actors from committing acts of violence that are likely to spiral into further escalation, takes willingness to impose costs on rule breachers. The United States used to have an interest in upholding the international order that it was the main architect of after World War II. Now, the US is choosing to let it disintegrate. Whether China is willing to take on the responsibility (and related costs) of designing and upholding a new order is not entirely clear, even if it were in concert with other great powers. Global leadership is immensely costly. America may not want to play the world police anymore, but as the India-Pakistan escalation showed, the US will likely be drawn into the role of a global firefighter instead. Extinguishing fires ad hoc is, however, harder than preventing them with a good and consistent policy.

For Europe, America under Trump turning its back on the rules-based international order is a grave challenge. It has been precisely the rules-based and liberal character of the US-led international order, recognising the right to sovereignty of all states, regardless of their size, that has enabled European small states to prosper without fear of aggression from larger powers. After having ignited two devastating World Wars, Europe has managed to move beyond its past balance of power thinking that kept leading to such wars - to a large extent thanks to American nudging after World War II. But a return to a 1815 Vienna Congress style great power concert on the global level, recognised spheres of influence, or an “age of empires” as my excellent colleagues at FIIA put it in a recent publication (strong reading recommendation), will mean that many truths we have taken for granted in the past 80 years may not apply anymore. To quote my FIIA colleagues:

“In an age of empires, the EU’s ability to offer a non-imperial alternative to global politics depends on maintaining the rule of law at home and fostering equitable partnerships abroad … US-Russia ceasefire negotiations have sidelined Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, reflecting a willingness to accommodate aggressor states …. Regardless of future [US] administrations, the resurgence of imperialist politics is reshaping global dynamics. The erosion of international law and the use of extortion tactics by the US are fundamentally altering the geopolitical landscape … The EU now faces profound strategic questions that go beyond security concerns to the very future of liberal democracy and economic stability in Europe.”

This applies to a wider Europe beyond the EU. The UK’s choices are diminishing, pushing it back towards the European continent in ways that will soon be hard to deny on the top political level. The EU must rise to the challenge of absorbing new members, and the smaller hitherto non-EU countries Norway, Iceland, and potentially even Switzerland are facing new realities that come with new, and perhaps fewer, choices. The space for neutrality, which was an important element of the previous European security architecture, has generally diminished radically. There is often opportunity in chaos, but seizing it will require much more than the EU’s usual muddling through approach. I hope that we have leaders with enough courage and strategic IQ to understand that protecting Europe takes more than just a higher percentage of GDP in defence spending.

At least it is the right direction of travel that Germany’s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Poland’s Donald Tusk, the UK’s Keir Starmer, and France’s Emmanuel Macron travelled together to Kyiv - on Europe Day, 9 May.

From a European perspective, Trump’s trade war and other efforts to alienate allies and undermine the American position in the world in every possible way are hard to make sense of. Seen from China’s perspective, however, everything is basically falling into place very conveniently. The US isolating itself from the rest of the West and forcing its allies to look for other options is great for China:

• Japan and South Korea have already resumed talks on cooperation with China.

• China could generate a lot of goodwill in Europe by expressing a wish to protect free trade and to preserve some rules based elements of the international order. This would be a dream come true for Germany, France would also likely immediate jump on it. Furthermore, Spain is fashioning itself as an envoy between Europe and China, and in Sweden, there are voices in the public debate suggesting to “give China a new chance”.

• Finally, having Russia as a vassal state is very convenient for China. For now, letting the war go on and keeping Russia and Europe busy in Ukraine, neither winning nor losing the war, is a good play. China would be wise not to empower Russia too much, even if the US ends sanctions on Russia.

• All in all, China has a good chance to have Russia, Europe, and its Asian neighbours where it wants them. Navigating this and making sure Europe does not lose all its leverage will be hard, as European countries tend to seek bilateral relations and deals with China rather than identify common interests. Europeans are also much less likely to align with the US on China now.

At the same time, it is hard to see how the US under Trump is going to profit from all this in any way - especially if there still is an agreement in Washington that China is the main challenge to US power. wrote a longer and more detailed piece about how the US is giving China a strategic advantage.

For Russia, it seems that the sudden friendliness of the US administration is somewhat overwhelming. Having built a siege mentality on the narrative that NATO only exists to screw Russia (like Trump claimed that the EU only exists to screw the US), it requires quite the adaptation to suddenly see NATO’s main power and guarantor flip. Again, one should be careful what one wishes for - NATO has been a useful foe for the Kremlin and it will be potentially hard to spin the narrative to justify massive militarisation if the main threat is now supposed to be Europe, the decadent and impotent continent of the past. As I discussed with Benjamin Wittes on Dog Shirt TV, it was probably better for Putin to have a weak Europe militarily dependent on the US as a neighbour, as there always was a question mark hovering over the US commitment to Europe even during NATO’s best days. If Europe is empowered as a result of the US self-sabotage shenanigans, the situation may well turn out much less convenient for Russia.

Finally, for further reading:

• For Internationale Politik Quarterly, I argued that Europe is going to succeed not despite, but because the challenges are so enormous and because there are so few alternatives.

• In my debut commentary for Chatham House, I wrote that Norway is facing a similar moment of truth regarding EU membership as Finland and Sweden did with regard to NATO three years ago. With Trump’s trade war increasing the stakes, I recommend to make the “situationship” official.

• And, a compelling piece by Silvia Merler for Bruegel, arguing that Europe should seize the moment by issuing EU bonds to satisfy the demand for safe assets that has emerged after the US bonds started wavering. EU defence bonds would thus be a win-win for Europe: they would mobilise necessary funding for defence investment and at the same time enable Europe to fill the void left by the US in the global financial system.

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However, you don’t have to be a Finn to want to defend your country, your home, family, friends, values, principles, way of life, or other things that are dear to you. Essentially, willingness to defend is a mindset. Backing it up by actual military capability is important and quantity has a quality of its own, but quality of the people is what matters most in the end. Finland proved this in the Winter War in 1939, when it prevailed against the utterly overwhelming Soviet Union. But one doesn’t have to go that far back in history to find proof. Just look at Ukraine. You can never subjugate a people willing to defend their freedom with whatever they have at hand.

It is time for Europe to stop being weak. Granted, military build-up is an expensive and often slow process, but it can be done. Europe has enough money to keep Ukraine in the fight and if it prioritizes its resources and political will right, success is a realistic option. As Caroline de Gruyter put it in Foreign Policy, “Europe’s biggest problem isn’t Trump, but pessimism” and I wholeheartedly agree that Europe needs more “possibilist” thinking. In fact, both pessimism and optimism can spur action or inaction. Optimism can facilitate complacency and incentivize ignoring problems - or it can encourage decisive action, if both citizens and leaders believe that bad outcomes are not inevitable. Pessimism can lead to defeatist apathy, but it can also foster a culture of preparing for various worst cases (such as in Finland, which in turn enables activist optimism once a worst case becomes reality). What we need now is swift and decisive action. Whether it is inspired by a pessimistic need to prepare for a suboptimal future or an optimistic take on our ability to rise to the occasion, is secondary.

Essentially, Europe+ needs to demonstrate ability to offer a credible alternative for Ukraine and prioritize Ukraine’s continued existence over everything else. There are four things that the EU and its wider Europe+ partners (including non-EU members like Norway, the UK, Iceland, and Canada) have to get right in the coming weeks and months.

1. Slam enough money to the table to demonstrate credible ability and willingness to keep supporting Ukraine even if the US bails completely. The planned €20 billion military aid package is a good start and needs to be agreed on asap.

2. Remove peacetime bureaucratic hurdles from defence production in Europe. Banks still discriminate against defence companies. More long-term government contracts are required for increasing production capacity. Ukraine needs all the equipment and ammunition we can send today and we will need it tomorrow the latest. So short-term aid for Ukraine and long-term rearmament of Europe have to be combined. There are already examples of successful joint procurement, such as the Swedish-Danish CV90 deal, with a number of the vehicles from the order going to Ukraine. The deal was enabled by the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration’s cooperation agreement with Ukraine. More of this.

3. Harness European innovation power and support joint ventures with Ukrainian companies. This is already happening on a small scale: e.g. the Finnish Summa Defence is beginning to produce drones in Finland, together with Ukrainian partners. The goal is to produce for Ukrainian short-term needs but also to kickstart industrial-scale drone production in Europe. The Estonian Frankenburg Technologies has developed “a miniature missile designed to counter low-flying drones” for Ukraine. Notably, these companies were able to start development and production at a fairly swift pace. The EU and European governments should encourage this type of innovation by providing initial financing.

4. Invest in Ukrainian defence industry. Regardless of the outcome of any hypothetical ceasefire agreement, Ukraine needs to build up its own production capacity to become less dependent on our goodwill.

It is welcome news that the UK and France (“and possibly two others”) are now working with Ukraine on a ceasefire plan. Down the line, European countries will have to be ready to take also military responsibility for the outcome of future negotiations. However, it looks increasingly unlikely that Trump will be able to broker a feasible deal anytime soon, so a peace plan should not be Europe’s primary effort. Naturally, Europe still needs to be prepared and have something to offer if the fighting is to come to an end this year. At this stage, however, it is questionable whether Trump ever even aimed to reach a serious outcome, or was the deal always meant to be unacceptably bad for Ukraine, so that Trump could then blame the failure on “Ukraine not wanting peace”.

If Europe+ gets its short-term act together, it can change Russia’s (and Trump’s) calculation by showing that it is not helpless if left to its own devices. The war is not going well for Russia at the moment, and only a favourable deal with Trump would save Putin now while they are still in a relatively good position (having to use donkeys for logistics suggests that this window might be closing soon-ish). Europe+ can complicate the equation by throwing its full weight behind Ukraine in a way neither Russia nor the US would have believed possible. If this succeeds, Europe can buy time to figure out all the rest later, such as military arrangements if the US is no longer committed to NATO, and long-term fiscal and decision-making rules for defence spending and the rearmament of Europe. But if Ukraine falls victim to a Trump-Putin sellout, the timeframe for solving any other problem is shortened by years.

There was a real risk that Europe would fail to agree on a common strategy vis-à-vis Trump, competing against each other in a beauty contest to win Trump’s favour instead. But on the contrary, Trump and his people have driven so far off the cliff that the European response has been firm and united. The Trump team’s concerted effort to antagonize Europe at the Munich Security Conference has been followed by Trump’s brazen claims that Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, would be an unelected dictator (while refusing to say the same about Putin) and blaming Ukraine for the war, and, incredibly, the US voting with Russia against a UN resolution condemning the Russian invasion. And the treatment is showing results. According to Euractiv, European reactions were rather blunt:

”Several European diplomats speaking to Euractiv didn't mince words. One of them described the UN/G7 debacle over Ukraine wording as a ‘total clusterfuck,’ while another went as far as to call Trump ‘Putin’s bitch.’”

Meanwhile, European leaders have been busy setting up plans to save Ukraine from Trump’s clutches. Macron, who finally seems to be getting the hang of leadership in Europe - not in unilateral moves, but in consultation with others - convened two meetings last week. On the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, 24 February 2025, a large number of European and EU leaders were gathered in Kyiv to show solidarity with Ukraine (notably in the absence of American representatives). On the same day, the EU announced its 16th sanctions package (including on the shadow fleet), and a substantial support package for Ukraine’s energy security, with full integration of Ukraine and Moldova into the EU’s energy market by early 2027. Reportedly, the EU is also working on a new military support package for Ukraine, worth “at least” €20 billion.

Ukraine signed a watered-down version of the rip-off minerals deal with the US after Trump backed down from the demands for a right to $500 billion in potential revenue from exploiting mineral resources. In its current, rather vague form, the deal seems mainly to aim to please Trump the dealmaker and leaves details to future negotiations. On the same day, the EU offered Ukraine a partnership on “critical materials” on a mutually beneficial basis. By offering an alternative, the EU can boost Ukraine’s position on a number of issues in the negotiations.

Apart from non-EU member Europeans Norway, Iceland, and the UK, also Canada has been actively participating in European meetings, making the format much wider than just the EU - more like a “Europe+” (in Kyiv, Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre joked that Europe is buying Canada back from the US). Notably, not even the two difficult EU/NATO members Hungary and Turkey are jeopardizing the current efforts. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán agreed to the latest sanctions package on time for the war anniversary, and Turkey seems to have decided to pick the European side for now, with President Erdogan expressing support for Ukraine’s NATO membership. Trump’s obvious disdain for Europe has even turned the German election winner, Christian Democratic Party leader and die-hard transatlanticist Friedrich Merz, into a Gaullist proponent of not only European strategic autonomy, but independence, from the US. Merz also previously expressed interest in the French offer to talk about possible European cooperation on nuclear deterrence. In a remarkable feat, Trump has united US allies - against the US.

Beyond the political centre, MAGA is losing popularity even among European far right. French far right leader Jordan Bardella cancelled his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) after Steve Bannon repeated Elon Musk’s Nazi salute. Norwegian far right politician Christian Tybring-Gjedde, who has been one of Trump’s most avid proponents in Norway and nominated him twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, has changed his opinion and is now criticizing Trump’s Ukraine policy. As it happens, Nazi salutes or disrespecting a country’s sovereignty are not considered patriotic moves in France or Norway, both having been occupied by Nazi Germany in World War II. Already a year ago, the far right Sweden Democrats’ MP, Mattias Karlsson, came back severely disillusioned from a trip to the US. He had found MAGA way too radicalized and agreed with the journalist interviewing him that the Republican Party had become “shit”.

The issue that Trump and his team either does not understand or care about is that over the past three years of unprovoked war, Ukraine’s place in Europe has changed significantly. If in 2014, there was only a vague sense of inconvenience about Russia’s annexation of Crimea, now Ukraine is perceived as central to European security. Ukraine is also firmly on the path to become an EU member, with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen optimistic that the accession could happen before 2030 if reforms continue at the current speed. The Nordic and Baltic countries are particularly invested in Ukraine’s future, and are driving Europe forward as a whole. These eight small countries, in an exposed location close to Russia, firmly consider Ukraine’s fate to determine theirs. This sentiment is widely shared on the continent.

P.S. Tesla’s sales dropped by 45 percent in Europe last month. And the Wall Street Journal reported that investors seem eager to make Europe great again. So if you think that Europe is doomed, you are not listening.

While it is fair to demand Europe to step up and take responsibility for its own security, it is not necessarily smart - that is, if this administration is interested in maintaining American great power status. There are multiple ways how the US might very well end up shooting itself in the foot by antagonizing Europe.

First, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth demanded in his rambling nearly 30-minute-long remarks last Thursday that Europe must start taking full responsibility for the continent’s security with no or minimal US contributions, invest into its capability accordingly, and build up an efficient European defence industrial base. If Europe were to implement these suggestions, the US would soon find Europe less willing (and, in all likelihood less able due to new tasks on the continent) to support its wars elsewhere. The US defence industry would also find Europeans less eager to buy American, in order to support the European industrial base.

Second, it was a calculated provocation to send Vice President JD Vance to the Munich Security Conference to insult all Europeans present by talking about the culture war and belittling the very real threat that Russia poses to Europe. Listening to Trump’s VP scold Europe over having cancelled Romanian election results due to Russian interference, himself representing a president who violently attacked the US system of governance and still refuses to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 elections, is grotesque to say the least. But again, going to Munich of all places and catering to a far-right audience is simply not smart. The Trump administration does not seem to understand European coalition politics particularly well and that far-right parties in most European countries (even in those where they are in power) have to co-govern with others, and are polling at 20-25% at best. That leaves a very sizeable majority of Europeans deeply antagonized by what can only be considered a blatant insult. The MAGA administration is clearly trying to renegotiate the terms of whatever is left of the transatlantic partnership, by seeking to end liberal Western democracy and replace it with a far-right agenda, and returning to great power politics, including a diminished sovereignty for smaller countries. As it happens, this is not a winning strategy with many European countries, even where the far-right is gaining in polls, as they happen to be small states very eager to have a say in affairs directly concerning them.

Third, the US Special Envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, suggested that Europeans would not sit at the table when the US negotiates peace in Ukraine with Russia. The statement came right after the US administration circulated a questionnaire to European governments, inquiring what they would be willing and able to contribute to security guarantees for Ukraine. As it happens, this is not how anything works. The US cannot wash its hands of the consequences of a peace deal Trump thinks he’s brokering, and expect Europeans to accept being excluded from negotiating the terms of the deal but take all responsibility for its implementation. This will lead to certain failure. It takes two to tango and if Ukraine, increasingly likely supported by Europe, does not sign on to a bad deal, there will be no deal. Similarly, excluding a European ceasefire force in Ukraine from NATO’s Article 5 security guarantee is simply a bad faith deal for Europe.

Instead of splitting Europe, the audacity of US behaviour in Munich and beyond has fostered unity in Europe to not let the US serve the continent on a silver plate to Putin. What can potentially result is an increasing willingness in Europe to work against the US, not with it, as a last resort. For the sake of American global power, the Western alliance is not something the US should gamble away lightly.

What has been said about the WaPo article since then:

• Sami Liimatainen, lead investigator at the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in the latest Eagle S case, which the NBI is investigating as “aggravated sabotage”, said he had not heard such claims before.

• Jukka Savolainen, ex-Commander West Finland Coast Guard District and now expert at the European Centre for Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, dismissed the idea of accidents as an agenda benefiting only Russia and pointed out, as many other experts have done (including in the original WaPo article), that it is impossible to drag an anchor for over 100km unnoticed, as was the case with the Eagle S ship.

• The Norwegian VG confirmed the WaPo claims from what seems to be the same Allied intelligence sources and cites an anonymous Norwegian official saying that it would be counterintuitive for Russia to risk any disturbance to its oil export operation, which provides crucial funding for its war in Ukraine.

• The Finnish Helsingin Sanomat reported that according to (again anonymous) sources, the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) has so far not found proof that Russia is linked to the incident and the NBI has not found proof of intentionality either - so far. The investigation continues, however, and the NBI is currently going through the crew’s communication devices.

• Swedish authorities remain skeptical of the accident theory. Minister of Defence Pål Jonson dismissed the WaPo article as claims that “come and go” and emphasized that the investigation is still ongoing. The Swedish lead investigator, public prosecutor Henrik Söderman agreed with Jonson. Hans Liwång, professor at the Swedish Defence University, points out that it has been proven in all three cases (NewNew Polar Bear in October 2023, Yi Peng 3 in November 2024 and Eagle S in December 2024) that it was the ship in question that broke the cables with its anchor. Whether it was deliberate or accidental is, however, much harder to prove.

The main question is whether intentionality really matters. It has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt that Russia does use the shadow fleet to circumvent Western sanctions, which in itself is a problem that needs to be tackled. It is also a fact that the shadow fleet’s rusty ships pose a grave environmental, navigational and infrastructure hazard in the Baltic Sea. Granted, the increased number of incidents in a short period of time could be attributed to the fact that the shadow fleet has expanded since 2022 as Russia’s response to Western sanctions. The ships are in a bad condition and tend to have loose anchors, so increased traffic can increase the number of accidents. But intentional or not, causing such damage to critical maritime infrastructure is unacceptable and requires robust countermeasures. As Johannes Koskinen, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the Finnish Parliament points out, the magnitude of damage caused by Eagle S amounts at least to gross negligence and thus comes close to the threshold of intentionality. Koskinen also says that it is unlikely to get a confession from the crew in the normal criminal investigation.

It cannot come as a surprise to anybody if the Finnish investigation of the Eagle S incident finally has to conclude that there is no evidence to prove intentionality and the case is closed as accident rather than sabotage. It is also unlikely that Russia can be directly linked to the incident. Nevertheless, by way of using the shadow fleet, Russia is responsible. And the question of intentionality does not fundamentally change anything regarding the need to deal with the hazards posed by the shadow fleet, or even the response options. In any case, legal measures have to be found to restrict the poorly maintained and insured ships’ access to the Baltic Sea or at least to carefully monitor their movements and stop any strange manoeuvres (this Finnish news article traced the very curious movements of the Eagle S in the past two years, including around military zones and NATO exercises). In that sense, even NATO’s Baltic Sentry operation is not an overreaction, as better situational awareness and monitoring capacity is urgently needed due to the frequent manipulation of the ships’ AIS signal, which has already led to a number of close calls in the Gulf of Finland. The swift Finnish reaction to confiscate Eagle S and detain its crew was also the right call, as it causes costs or at the very least, a delay, which is a warning to other similar ships operating in the Baltic Sea.

The debate caused by the WaPo article is essentially a storm in a teacup, as lack of evidence of intentionality does not give European governments a free pass. Deniability is an important part of the whole operation and it is unlikely that Finnish authorities will find such conclusive evidence that they can pin intention on the crew and tie it to Russia. But it is equally unlikely that the public will believe that everything has been a pure coincidence. Finding effective countermeasures to Russia’s sanction circumventing scheme is crucial either way, for the Baltic and North Sea and for Ukraine.

The question tends to pop up at the annual Swedish conference on security and defence matters in Sälen, held again last week. A year ago, at the 2024 edition, Sweden’s Minister of Civil Defence Carl Oskar Bohlin made worldwide headlines with his speech, stating that “there could be war in Sweden”. The statement sent such shockwaves through Swedish society that the country’s then-Supreme Commander Micael Bydén had to go on a children’s tv show to answer to questions with “yes” and “no” signs to calm down anxious children. Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson had previously stated on multiple occasions that the security situation is the worst since the Second World War. This year, the King of Sweden Carl XIV Gustaf assessed that the situation is worse than during the Cold War.

In Finland, the statements from Sweden were received with substantial confusion. While being very close partners and like-minded countries - and despite sharing the same threat assessment - Finland and Sweden nevertheless seem to exist on different planets: In contrast to Sweden, many in Finland consider the country’s immediate security situation to be better than ever since gaining independence in 1917. This has three main reasons: the Finnish Defence Forces are better equipped now thanks to continued investment, Russia has pulled as much as 8o percent of its military equipment and troops from the Finnish border to its war in Ukraine, and Finland is now a NATO member. According to the Director of Finnish Defence Intelligence Pekka Turunen, Russia so far has not been able to increase its military capability in Finland’s vicinity, despite lofty reform and build-up plans. The recently published annual Finnish military intelligence review 2025 also assesses that “as long as the war in Ukraine continues as a war of attrition as today, the military power in Finland’s neighbouring area will not grow significantly” (p. 12).

The difference in assessments between Finland and Sweden is therefore mainly a result of vastly different points of departure. Sweden simply had it much better during both the Second World War and the Cold War - and scaled down its armed forces during the 1990’s and 2000’s “strategic timeout” to a level that would not fully suffice to defend the country today, despite efforts to grow the armed forces again since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. In Finland, the Cold War never ended, and neither did conscription service and investment into national defence capability, although defence budgets were fluctuating below or around 1.5 percent of GDP for most of the 2000’s and 2010’s. A fun fact: to save costs, in the 2000’s and 2010’s Finland bought second-hand kit from Western European countries that were scaling down their armed forces, such as the first purchase of 22 MLRS from the Netherlands in 2006 for the price of €43,5 million, the first 124 Leopard 2A4 MBTs from Germany in 2002 for less than €1 million each (€120 million in total) and further 100 Leopard 2A6 MBTs from the Netherlands for €200 million.

There is an understandable political and psychological explanation for the different rhetorics in Finland and Sweden. It was therefore a cheap shot by Finland’s Swedish-speaking public broadcaster to make fun of the “Swedish war panic” and that “Swedish politicians are competing to outdo each other in dramatic rhetoric” on the occasion of the annual security conference in Sälen. It is necessary to explain to the “peace-damaged” Swedish people (as Swedish commentators have put it) that the situation is more serious now and requires a different level of investment and defence spending. In Finland, the possibility of war never fully disappeared from the collective consciousness, as Robin Häggblom (aka Corporal Frisk) explained last year in this piece on whether one is allowed to talk about war in Finland. If politicians used a similar rhetoric in Finland, they would risk a number of concerned citizens beginning to move towards the Eastern border with Molotov cocktails…

Back to Russia’s intensifying hybrid warfare, which arguably poses the most urgent threat to both Finland and Sweden, and the rest of Europe alike. While Russia’s grey zone aggression has been ongoing for decades, especially in the Nordic-Baltic-Arctic region (as we illustrated in this collection of hybrid cases last year), it has reached a level that makes the term hybrid warfare accurate.

What makes it so hard to find the right response, however, is that it is essentially a peacetime phenomenon. It is understandable that military commentators would prefer to call it war, as it would it in some ways make things more straightforward. But the point is to test European countries’ preparedness level and resilience without crossing the threshold of armed conflict - and essentially keeping it outside of NATO’s more effective response options. The aim is to find the most effective way to disrupt civilian life, be that by way of sabotaging critical infrastructure, causing political discord or sowing fear in the society. We have seen how much effort Russia has put into trying to demoralize Ukrainian society and national resolve through the destruction of critical civilian infrastructure and services. If a cyber attack is sufficient to do the trick - such as knocking out a hospital, as was the case frequently in France in the recent years - this is the easiest way to go. But if cyber defences can dilute the effect of an attack, cables must be physically cut. The results of the different kinds of attacks are a valuable source of information for adversaries, among other things on whether certain timings are better than others. It was hardly a coincidence that the latest Baltic Sea cable cutting in the Eagle S case happened on Christmas Day (which, however, had no effect on Finland’s ability to respond swiftly).

Russia often exploits legal loopholes, knowing all too well that Western countries are trying to salvage whatever is left of the international rules-based order (which is, from a small state perspective, like Finland and Sweden’s, an essential security interest, as it guarantees all states’ right to sovereignty, regardless of their size and resources). The issue of the Russian shadow fleet’s increasing involvement also in sabotage of maritime infrastructure cannot be solved by military means only but requires more creativity in finding legal ways to deal with the ships’ access to the Baltic Sea. Simply blockading the Baltic would be nonsense, as for example Finland depends on the Baltic Sea transport lines for 90 percent of its exports and imports. Therefore, at the recent NATO Baltic Sea meeting in Helsinki after the Eagle S incident in the Gulf of Finland, the eight members states present agreed to “identify further measures in accordance with international law of the sea, including the freedom of navigation, to prevent and effectively respond to willful damaging of critical undersea infrastructure or irresponsible behaviour.” Due to the hybrid nature of the warfare, the EU with its regulatory power can also play an important role by giving its member states both legal and political backing (more on this coming soon). Finland also delivered an interesting example of an effective legal method when it started confiscating Russian Federation assets in Finland based on the Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz’ compensation claim for lost revenue since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Remaining within our own legal frameworks is crucial, as we should never forget what we are protecting: our free societies based on democracy and the rule of law.

When faced with a death by a thousand paper cuts, the question is when the pain reaches an unacceptable level. Simply establishing deterrence by denial - denying the aggressor a disruptive effect - is not enough, Europe must move towards deterrence by punishment (more also on this soon). That is, to a great extent, a question of political will. And that seems to be increasingly in place, at least in northern Europe.

To answer the question of war and peace from the beginning, Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is right to say that Sweden is “not at war, but neither at peace”. Most citizens do not (and should not) notice a drastic change in their everyday lives that war would imply, but small things, like the call up of electricians for civilian duty, indicate a new level of threat. President of Finland Alexander Stubb described the situation as an era of “peacelessness” or “restlessness”. As the peacetime warfare Europe is facing is of a hybrid nature, so must also the response be.

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