The people gathered at the conference, hosted by the London-based think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), were not warmongers; they were people in the know. Current and former members of the armed forces, government and NATO officials, researchers and defense industry professionals whose thinking is based on the widely accepted intelligence assessment that Russia is preparing for the possibility of a direct conflict with Europe.
The only way to prevent that from happening, they say, is to make sure that if a war were to break out, Europe would win.
More investment into chronically underfunded European defense is key, but security experts are increasingly warning that a big shift in mindset is needed across the board too. It is time, they say, for European governments to get their citizens on board and make it clear that the time when Europe was able to ignore the threat of war is over.
“I think that there is an indication that societies are willing to have this conversation, but I think that we are also seeing governments that are still not quite confident enough to have that conversation with their publics,” said Sam Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London and an expert in democratic resilience.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/11/europe/mark-rutte-nato-chief-russia-europe-intl
NATO chief warns European allies they could be Russia’s next target
There is a growing consensus among experts that Russia is already
waging a hybrid war on the West by conducting sabotage operations and injecting chaos and disinformation into domestic political discussions. They point to the overwhelming evidence, including
repeated incursions into NATO airspace by Russian planes and
drones and GPS jamming in the Baltics, to disinformation campaigns, and sabotage attacks against
critical infrastructure in multiple countries that have been traced back to Russian secret services. Russia has consistently denied involvement.
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