European countries have much to learn from the nearly four years of Ukrainian conflict about the evolution of warfare and how to better prepare for the future of international security, according to Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Margus Tsahkna.
During an interview with Newsweek at the Estonian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, Tsahkna discussed a range of topics related to European security and Russia’s ambitions toward its western neighbors, but he stressed that Estonia and other NATO members have much to learn from the conflict.
Why It Matters
U.S. President Donald Trump made a peace deal for Russia and Ukraine a key goal of his second administration, initially claiming he would quickly end the conflict but soon admitting that the situation proved more complex than he had thought.
However, the administration has brought a 28-point peace plan to the table after discussions with Russia, offering an off-ramp to both countries. European leaders ultimately determined that Ukraine would give up too much if it adopted the first peace plan, including relinquishing land under Kyiv’s control to Russia in exchange for weak guarantees not to attack Ukraine in the future and capping Ukraine’s military at roughly two-thirds its current size.
European leaders used the plan to craft their own counterproposal, which offered similar terms but to Ukraine’s greater advantage, including limiting the military size to a level closer to 90 percent of its current force and stronger guarantees to protect Ukraine and NATO as a whole against potential future Russian aggression.
This interview took place on the day the Trump administration announced its peace deal proposal for Russia and Ukraine, with details of the deal at the time still unknown.
The Important Lessons
From these aggressions and the overall conflict with Ukraine, European nations have four lessons, according to Tsahkna:
- First, that nations cannot be afraid of fighting back against Russia, “whatever it costs”;
- Second, that “you need to bring out all atrocities” committed by Russia or other aggressors, which Tsahkna said proved a turning point for global support for Ukraine after everyone saw “these crazy things Russians did against civil people”;
- Third, that all must support the territorial integrity of sovereign nations, especially in the face of “escalation,” to give “decisive support and give everything that is needed so you could stop it”;
- And fourth, that Europe must now realize that Russia is a threat and that investment in military capabilities cannot be ignored – something that NATO allies have credited Trump with focusing on.
“I’ve said many times that Europe has been behaving as [an] old fat cat [for] years and decades,” Tsahkna said.
“This is reality that it’s not even [just] the eastern flank, but [people in the southern] part of Europe understand real life, that war may come to Europe, European Union war is already in Europe in the meaning of Ukraine,” he continued. “Of course, there’s a huge cost to everybody, mainly Ukrainians, also Russian people are paying.”
But that means that Europe must also be wiser about how it spends that increased funding, particularly in light of Ukraine’s incredible innovation in warfare, which Europe must use to guide its spending for future conflicts, according to Tsahkna.
“If we’re now going to spend trillions of euros [on] European defense, we need to understand that the plans [we make] for the next decade, and the money comes in now, next year,” Tsahkna said. “We must make the right decisions, what kind of capabilities we build up.”
Russia Pushing Europe’s Limits
Part of the problem, according to Tsahkna, is that Russia has used the fear of escalation to continue pushing its agenda while keeping NATO members—especially the U.S.—from pushing back or interfering, which resulted in gains in Georgia and Ukraine.
Europe responded by trying to economically tie down Russia and Vladimir Putin, but it proved a “big mistake,” with Russia instead gaining control over Europe due to the dependence on Russian energy that Europe developed.
“Now, we are struggling a lot, but happily, we have now decided in the European Union that we get rid of this energy import from Russia,” Tsahkna said.
Russia’s Hybrid Warfare
Perhaps the clearest and most discussed lesson Europe has recently taken from the Ukraine conflict, Tsahkna said, is how Russia has changed its approach to warfare, instead “committing hybrid warfare” that includes attempts to confuse or provoke nations without direct military action.
Earlier this month marked a tense turn in the conflict as NATO allies accused Russia of carrying out sabotage against Poland, causing an explosion along a rail line that was key to supplying Ukraine’s forces from the Polish capital of Warsaw to Lublin, a city just next to the border with Ukraine.
“We see it all in different levels, but we need to understand that this is already—maybe not war—but this is an aggression already happening—not in classical ways, but in hybrid ways, and we need to face it, we need to take measures, and we need to draw the clear line that if Russia is crossing that,” Tsahkna said.
Tsahkna said Russia has enacted “heavy violations of the sovereignty principle” that are trying to “push the red lines and also testing our societies, stressing them in the meaning of putting more pressure on and testing our unity, mainly between Europe and the U.S.”
“All these kinds of actions are taking place constantly, and we are not talking about Estonia or Poland, we’re talking about already Germany and many other countries in the middle of Europe,” Tsahkna said.
“These are attacks from Russia. Now, the question is finally, when we say that this is now Article Five and this is real aggression.”
Article Five refers to NATO’s fifth article that declares an attack on one member of the alliance is an attack against all members, but can only be invoked by the member directly injured by such action.
Tsahkna argued that “these are very dangerous things that Russia is doing, and if we list everything [that] we have had in Europe during the last more than three years…maybe we could ask already Article Five.”
But these tests have instead strengthened European resolve and revived readiness among the various NATO members, and Tsahkna said that whereas those same nations might have used more caution in the past, now “if we see the immediate threat to our sovereignty and military threats, we will shoot them down.”
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