War in Ukraine: why is Europe afraid of Russia?

European military and political leaders, from mid-level to heads of state such as France’s Emmanuel Macron, have spent the last few weeks warning against the possibility of Russia launching attacks against multiple European countries, now members of the European Union and NATO, like the Baltic countries.

Ukraine is not a member of any of these organizations, although it has received their financial support in the form of weapons and ammunition. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said in early February that Europeans could expect a Russian attack in the next three years and that they had to prepare because Russia, thanks to the war in Ukraine, was already preparing.

Europeans have not seen a major war (with the exception of the Balkan civil wars of the 1990s) since the end of World War II in 1945. There are nearly 80 years of uninterrupted peace, meaning very few citizens of the bloc have had memories of those times. Eight strange decades in a continent where all generations have suffered great wars for centuries, be they between states, imperialists or civilians.

Why the fear of Russia now, when Moscow conquered the Ukrainian province of Crimea 10 years ago and on February 24 we entered the third year of the current war? What has changed in recent months?

The most obvious change is the increasingly real possibility that Donald Trump, who promises that he will not respect his country’s obligations as a member of NATO, will return to the White House in 10 months.

It’s not that Trump is raising doubts about his commitment to transatlantic security, it’s that he’s gone so far as to say he would encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack some European countries. In 10 months Europeans could see themselves not with a distant American president but with an enemy in Washington.

Trump is not the only reason for the repeated warnings in recent weeks and months. As the war in Ukraine progresses, European security services are carrying out new analyzes of current Russian military threats and new military capabilities.

The risks

Also the ability of the European military industry to mass produce weapons and ammunition and surpass the Russian industry. European diplomatic sources believe the bloc is experiencing the greatest risk of large-scale military conflict in decades. And it is not prepared for this unless it invests quickly and massively for the military industry to regain the production capacity it had at the end of the Cold War.

The warnings focus on this point because Russia exploited the war in Ukraine for this increase its military production. The Russians remove more than 100 tanks a month from factories, faster than the rate at which they lose in Ukraine. They are already capable of producing more than two million artillery shells (and have purchased another two million from North Korea) when the Europeans have not yet reached a million.

Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of men for the war, plans to mobilize another 400,000 this year and has not yet declared a general mobilization. The Europeans are very far from these numbers and have no intention of carrying out extraordinary mobilisations. Few countries in the bloc have compulsory military service.

Can Russia launch another war in the next few years after its losses in Ukraine, whether or not it wins that war? Sources consulted at NATO believe that not tomorrow, but three to five years will be enough for Moscow to physically re-establish its armed forces.

Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said this two weeks ago, according to the British newspaper Financial Times, that Russia could launch a limited attack against one of the Baltic republics in the next five years to test whether NATO respects Article 5 of its treaty, if the other 31 member states come to the aid of the attacked one. It would be more of a test attack than a war of conquest.

European diplomats believe that Putin plans to reconquer for today’s Russia the territories that once belonged to Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, such as the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and, in one version more extreme, also Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic or Slovakia.

They believe that Russia will not stop until it suffers a defeat that will prevent it from waging war and that Ukraine is at the same time only the first step as a place where it must be defeated in order not to attack other European countries.