'One Can Expect Russia to Seek to Reclaim What It Once Owned.'

In an interview this week, NATO Military Committee chairman, Italian Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, said that Russia is threat number one and that from it “one can expect an ambition to restore what it possessed before—the period before the collapse of the USSR”. When asked to clarify whether he meant the Baltic states, he replied: “not only them”.

The journalist reminded the admiral that officials in all three Baltic states had recently said there was no immediate threat “here and now”. “I think they are precisely the ones who feel the situation best,” Dragone replied. “So I trust them.”

Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, cited different figures in the same days. According to him, over the past four months Ukraine has been killing or wounding 30,000 to 35,000 Russian soldiers every month, 95 percent of those losses are the work of drones, and the casualty ratio is one Ukrainian to five Russians. From this, Stubb drew the conclusion that “the tide has turned”, and that Ukraine now needs Europe more than Europe needs Ukraine.

Two weeks earlier, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk had spoken of a possible Russian attack on a NATO country within “months, not years”. In Athens, Emmanuel Macron described Article 42.7 of the EU treaty as a mutual-defence obligation that leaves no room for ambiguity. The Council of the EU approved a 90 billion euro loan to Ukraine for 2026—2027.

Each of these statements was made separately, in different capitals, for different audiences. They do not add up to a single coherent picture of the war.

If it is true that Russia is losing 30,000 to 35,000 men a month, that almost all of those losses are being inflicted by Ukrainian drones, and that the tide has turned, then it is unclear what resources this same Russia would use to attack a NATO country within the coming months. An army losing a thousand men a day on the Ukrainian front does not have a spare contingent for a second campaign. An industry exhausting Soviet-era armoured stocks for the current war cannot simultaneously equip a force for a new invasion.

If, on the other hand, Russia is indeed preparing to restore the borders of the USSR—that is, planning operations against the Baltic states and beyond—then the thesis of a turning tide collapses. A state capable of attacking several NATO countries in the foreseeable future is not described as a state losing its current war.

These are not two angles on the same reality, but two different realities to which European leaders are referring in parallel. Each is being used to justify the same set of decisions—continued financing for Ukraine, higher defence budgets, and faster European military integration.

There is a substantive point in Dragone’s remark about the Baltic states that largely passed unnoticed.

The journalist confronted the admiral with a simple fact: the governments of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—that is, the very countries that, in Dragone’s logic, ought to be the first targets—recently said they do not sense a direct threat “here and now”.

The admiral replied that he trusted precisely them, because they “feel the situation best”. But those very countries are the ones saying they do not see a direct threat. NATO’s Military Committee chairman invoked an assessment that contradicted the statement he had made just a minute earlier.

Perhaps it was simply an unfortunate formulation. Perhaps not. The structural fact argues for the latter version: those geographically closest to the Russian army describe the situation more calmly than NATO’s military leadership in Brussels. Baltic rhetoric is more concrete, more pragmatic, and free of invocations of the borders of the USSR.

If Tusk is right and only months remain before a possible Russian attack, the expected response of European governments would take a certain form. Emergency mobilisation programmes. The redirection of civilian budgets towards defence. The return of armies to wartime readiness within weeks, not years. Forced acceleration of industrial contracts. Heightened readiness on the EU’s eastern borders.

What Europe is doing in reality looks different. Germany’s 100 billion euro Sondervermögen fund was adopted back in 2022 and is being spent on a timeline running to 2027. The ReArm Europe programme, worth up to 800 billion euros, is designed as a four-year cycle. Poland is keeping defence spending above four percent of GDP—an enduring condition, not an emergency measure. The law reforming the Bundeswehr, the Wehrdienstmodernisierungsgesetz, will not come into force until January 2026. The 90 billion euro loan to Ukraine is money for 2026 and 2027.

All of this is real action, and it would be dishonest to ignore it. But its calendar is peaceful, industrial, bureaucratic. A state genuinely expecting an invasion in a matter of months does not build its defence industry on a 2030 horizon and does not pass a new conscription law that will take effect a year later. It declares a state of emergency, mobilises reserves, and redirects the civilian economy.

None of that is happening in Europe. The gap between the speed of the rhetoric and the speed of practical action remains unexplained.

European leaders do have an explanation, and they voice it—though in other contexts.

In April, Kaja Kallas said Russia must not think it can “outlast” Ukraine. Ursula von der Leyen described the 90 billion euro loan as a “doubling of support for the Ukrainian people” in response to a doubling of Russian aggression. In this framework, Ukraine is not an external recipient of aid, but the first line of European defence. Its army is holding Russia there, where European armies are neither ready nor willing to fight.

From this premise follows an entirely rational short-term priority. Not to build a new regular army at home within a few months, but to sustain the financing of the Ukrainian army and keep it combat-capable for as long as possible. Every euro sent to Kyiv buys more defence per unit of cost than a euro invested in domestic conscription or domestic production. The Ukrainian army is already fighting. The European one is not.

This logic carries a political price. Loans worth tens of billions, the extension of military programmes, and cuts to parts of social commitments—all of it requires constant justification before the voter.

None of this eliminates the Russian threat to Europe. Drones over Polish territory. Sabotage operations in Germany, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states. Arson attacks on logistical facilities that European counter-intelligence services link to Moscow. Cyberattacks on state and private infrastructure. All of this is happening, all of it is documented. Russia is acting against Europe through low-intensity means, and that reality is not disappearing.

But a gap emerges between the low-intensity signal and the high-intensity rhetoric. Drones and sabotage are a level of threat that calls for counter-intelligence, infrastructure protection, and a systematic response to hybrid operations. They are not a level of threat that calls for talk of months until a major war or of restoring the borders of the USSR. The natural question therefore arises: by what scale is this rhetoric being calibrated—by the intensity of Russian actions, or by the political tasks it is meant to accomplish.

If the statements of Tusk, Dragone, and Stubb were an analytical response to the situation at the front, they would be consistent with one another and with the pace of the practical decisions being taken by European governments. They are not.

What does exist, however, is something else. These statements are made when a new loan has to be approved, support for governing parties maintained, a new defence spending package justified, or access for Ukraine to EU institutions without voting rights explained. Stubb’s “turned tide” and Dragone’s “borders of the USSR” are two different tones aimed at two different audiences.

The first is addressed to a voter who must be persuaded that the investment is paying off. The second—to a voter who must be persuaded that the investment is necessary.

The main practical question remains unanswered. If NATO’s Military Committee chairman believes Russia is preparing to restore the borders of the USSR, and Poland’s prime minister speaks of months until a possible attack, what exactly are European governments doing to prevent it? Not “what they promise to do by 2030”, but what is being done right now, in this quarter.

If the answer is “we continue to support Ukraine”, then the issue is not preparation for a future war with Russia, but the financing of a war already under way. And that makes it clear why the temperature of threat rhetoric rises in those weeks when the next tranches need to be approved, rather than in those when the situation at the front changes.