Europe needs to keep its eyes on the prize

Distraction is a key weapon in war. The recent incursions into the airspace of European members of NATO by Russian aircraft and drones fits this pattern perfectly. This rise in what security officials call “hybrid” or “gray-zone” attacks is designed to distract European governments and their publics from the real challenge: the need to ensure that the Ukraine war is ended in a manner that is favorable to that beleaguered democracy and to all of us in Europe.

That would also bring the real prize: a huge boost to our security, to our democracies and to all our economies.

In fact, European governments should take some reassurance from the arrival of Russian aircraft in Estonian skies, drones in Poland, Denmark, Germany and elsewhere – and even from the acts of sabotage that have taken place across the continent.

If Russia felt it was winning the war in Ukraine, it wouldn’t bother with launching such attacks [shown below in their full extent prior to the most recent incursions in research from the International Institute for Strategic Studies as featured in The Economist.]

Yet Russia is not winning the war in Ukraine. It currently controls just 19% of Ukrainian territory. That includes the province of Crimea, which it annexed by force in 2014. In the past month, it has gained just 200 square miles.

At that rate of advance, it would take a further 78 years for Russia to capture the whole country.

Meanwhile, during the past two months Ukrainian long-range attacks have shut down an estimated 15-18% of Russia’s oil refinery capacity, which raises Russia’s domestic petrol prices and hurts fuel supplies for its war effort and some of the exports that are financing that war effort.

Certainly, Russia’s gray-zone attacks need to be responded to. Otherwise, if left unchallenged, they will presumably increase. The danger posed by Russia’s military drones to airports, other critical infrastructure and civilians points to a broader vulnerability in future, which will need to be dealt with. The cost of military drones has fallen so low that they will also be useable by terrorist groups and by countries farther away from Europe than Russia is.

The idea of including electronic warfare and other anti-drone defenses in Europe’s collective security planning is therefore important. Such defenses, indeed, are likely to be more important to European security than multi-million-euro fighter jets, though some of those will be needed too.

Nonetheless, drone defenses should be counted not as immediate requirements but as necessary investments for the medium and longer term, plans that Ukraine’s own vast expertise in drones and electronic warfare will help with. The immediate need is to ensure that Ukraine survives and thrives, retaining its expertise and drone industry along with its own independence.

It is extremely unlikely that Vladimir Putin really wants to provoke any of the European members of NATO into a direct conflict at a time when Russia’s military is so weak, when it has failed to establish air supremacy over Ukraine and when its economy is showing clear signs of strain.

In theory, he might enjoy the idea of testing NATO’s solidarity by attacking one of its members and forcing others, including most notably Donald Trump’s United States, to choose whether to join in to support the new victim or to stand back. In practice, he must know that in a war NATO forces could inflict too much damage on Russia and its military to make such a gamble worthwhile in current circumstances.

The only circumstances in which he would be likely to try that gamble would be ones created by a Russian victory in Ukraine. Then, attempting to seize one of the Baltic States to prove that NATO is dead would make sense. Which is why preventing such circumstances from occurring is so vital. As even Trump’s Republican Party must now be realizing, preventing those circumstances from occurring in Ukraine is also vital to deter China from seeking its own territorial expansion by attempting to capture Taiwan.

Ukraine is finding it harder to defend itself against Russian missile attacks and needs more help in upgrading its own defenses. For Europe, helping it to do so, including by buying more American Patriot missile-defense systems, would bring a greater benefit than investing money now in broader European defenses against drones.

Most important for Ukraine, however, is its ability to sustain regular long-range attacks against Russia’s own critical infrastructure, including those oil refineries as well as weapons stores and factories.

News that America has agreed to provide more intelligence support to Ukraine to help it target such attacks is very welcome. Even more welcome would be an American decision to allow Ukraine to buy a stock of its best long-range cruise missile, the Tomahawk, although that currently looks unlikely and would anyway take many months before it would make a difference.

But Ukraine is hard at work developing its own middle-range missiles, which could start making an important difference during the next few months.

What Ukraine needs most from Europe is the immediate supply of more missile-defense systems and the supply of more funds with which to build and buy its future weapons. Putin’s gray-zone attacks on Europe look calculated to raise doubts in governments’ minds as to whether they can spare more of their own missile-defense systems and whether they should allocate more funds to their drone defenses, rather than to Ukraine.

That is why Europe needs to keep its eyes firmly on the prize that is sitting within reach: a Ukrainian victory, defined as an outcome that maintains that country’s sovereignty and rewards the huge military and social efforts it has made. Last week, the European Council made a step forward towards lending Ukraine €140 billion on the basis of the frozen Russian central bank reserves sitting in European accounts, although a final decision was deferred until next month.

To encourage that decision and other immediate support for Ukraine, let us think about the benefits that would arise from a favorable end to the war.

If the war should end in that way, millions of Ukrainian refugees, currently housed chiefly in EU countries amid some political controversy, would return home, even if some chose to try to stay. Normal cross-border trade would be resumed. Energy prices would be likely to fall. Reconstruction of Ukraine’s hugely damaged towns and cities would move from the planning stage into reality, creating a huge demand for finance but also a construction boom.

If there is one event that stands to make Europe’s economic prospects look brighter, it would be a successful end to Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine.

First published in English on the substack Bill Emmott’s Global View, this is the English original of an article published in Italian by La Stampa. It is republished with permission.