Western allies will have to grapple with a “very big Russia problem” regardless of how the war in Ukraine ends, according to NATO’s top general in Europe, who underscored eastern European fears that Russia threatens “the survival of their states.”
“The outcome on the ground in Ukraine is terribly, terribly important — vital to future European and global security,” U.S. Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the NATO supreme allied commander Europe, told the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday. “So supporting Ukraine is vital for our security. But we can’t be under any illusions: at the end of a conflict in Ukraine, however, it concludes, we are going to have a very big Russia problem.”
Those remarks suggest Russia will pose a substantial threat to NATO for years to come, an assessment that would put pressure on the United States and its European allies to fortify against the prospect of Russian President Vladimir Putin or his successors rehabilitating their military forces after the current round of fighting halts. His remarks elaborated on a senior Estonian official’s argument that the stakes of war in Ukraine are “existential” for his country and their NATO neighbors.
“What people need to understand is that our house is on fire in Europe. War in Ukraine is existential,” Jonatan Vseviov, the secretary-general of the Estonian foreign ministry, told the Aspen audience during a panel discussion with Cavoli. “It’s existential, not because of geographic proximity, or even because of Putin having not changed any of his original goals — which are not limited to Ukraine only, [but include] the fundamental reshaping of the European security order and creating a buffer zone on his borders, which would include my country.”
That fire burned hotter through the winter and spring months as Russian forces bombarded Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure while Ukrainian troops labored under a shortage of air defense systems and ammunition. The passage of long-delayed legislation to authorize the shipment of additional U.S. military equipment to Ukraine has helped to stabilize the front lines, although Ukrainian forces remain under pressure.
“While I think the next two or three months are going to be probably the hardest this year for Ukraine, I came back from the front seeing the situation as, overall, improving, and the fight on a better trajectory than it was this winter and spring,” Michael Kofman, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior fellow, told War on the Rocks last week in a discussion of his latest research trip to the war zone. “It will take several months for it to improve, and this is … the greatest period of vulnerability for Ukraine right now … but it does increasingly seem unlikely that the Russian forces will be able to turn their gains into operationally significant breakthroughs, or that there will be a collapse of the front.”
Vseviov, for his part, said Russia is also paying an “extremely costly” price for the war, a strain that could lead to a shift in the conflict in 2025 — if Ukraine’s international supporters also weather the pressure from Russia over the next several months.
“Now come 2025 — and assuming that we’re able to stay the course, and looking at the macro trends, our production picking up, our financing picking up — this ‘time is on my side’ argument is not going to carry water for [Putin] anymore. So he has to derail us at all costs this year,” Vseviov said.” I think the fever will break sometime in 2025. Thus it might get worse in the coming months of the fall. So we need to brace ourselves for that eventuality and then deal with every case, but not fall in his traps.”
The increase in defense spending by NATO allies is expected to flow toward “a shopping list” of military capabilities that each country needs to play its part in NATO’s emerging plans to defend alliance territory, according to Cavoli, who emphasized that these investments will be necessary in any plausible future scenario.
“We are going to have a situation where Russia is reconstituting its force, is located on the borders of NATO, is led by largely the same people as it is right now, is convinced that we’re the adversary, and is very, very angry,” he said.
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Vseviov’s remarks, Cavoli suggested, reflect a widening consensus within Europe about the threat posed by Russia.
“I think it’s under-appreciated in our country, in the United States, just how much our European allies have awakened to the fact that the house is on fire,” Cavoli said. “This is not just rhetoric. This is true concern about the stability of their continent and the survival of their states. So this is fundamental, and we should recognize it and encourage its development.”