Introduction: How Ready?
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has raised the spectre of a war in Europe involving NATO states’ military forces and reshaped the European security landscape.
The 2022 NATO Strategic Concept identified Russia as ‘the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area’.1 Defence ministries across NATO states are scrutinising the effect of the war on the Russian armed forces and trying to assess how quickly these forces could become a direct threat to NATO members’ territories, particularly in Eastern Europe. The US Defense Intelligence Agency stated in mid-2024 that Russia was ‘very likely incapable of seizing and holding territory inside a NATO country’, due to the severe attrition of its ground forces in Ukraine. However, even whilst fighting in Ukraine, Russia’s forces still pose a significant threat, given the capabilities at the country’s disposal, including ‘a cyber and indirect actions threat’ against NATO countries.2 According to the head of the United Kingdom’s Security Service, agents from Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency, the GRU, have ‘carried out “arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness”’.3 Russia also remains capable of conducting long-range strikes against critical sites, with military power still also residing in the largely intact parts of its forces, such as its Northern Fleet.4
Assessments of Russia´s military recovery vary, but all identify Russia as posing a significant threat to NATO-Europe in the medium to long term. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the UK Chief of the Defence Staff, stated that ‘it would take Putin five years to reconstitute the Russian Army to where it was in February 2022; and another five years beyond that to rectify the weaknesses that the war has revealed’.5 However, NATO states closer to Russia are more pessimistic. The Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service expects that ‘within the next decade, NATO will face a Soviet-style mass army that, while technologically inferior to the allies, poses a significant threat due to its size, firepower and reserves’.6 In mid-2024, Norway’s chief of defence, Eirik Kristoffersen, painted an even more concerning picture, arguing that Russia’s defence-industrial mobilisation meant the Alliance had a ‘window of two to three years to prepare before Russia has rebuilt the ability to carry out a conventional attack’.7
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