Russia is stepping up its attacks on European countries, testing how far it can go. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, argues that this reflects weakness rather than strength. “The threat is real, the threat is serious,” she tells David Rennie at an event on the sidelines of the... UN General Assembly. Whether the threat materialises depends on how Europe responds. Read how Russia’s attacks on Europe are growing more brazen:show more

Kaja Kallas says that Russia’s escalating attacks on Europe reflect Moscow’s weakness rather than its strength. It is a convenient formula. But history shows that weakness and danger can coexist perfectly well. For decades, great powers have tried to avoid fighting one another directly. Instead, they fought through allies, proxies, weapons, money, intelligence services, and the territory of third countries. Korea. Vietnam. Afghanistan. Later, Syria. These were very different conflicts, and reducing them to a single formula would be misleading. But one pattern keeps returning: great-power rivalry is usually paid for most heavily by the people whose land becomes the battlefield. The Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 after almost a decade of war. The government Moscow had supported survived for several more years before collapsing in 1992. The United States ended its direct military involvement in Vietnam after the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. Two years later, South Vietnam collapsed, and the world watched the helicopter evacuation from Saigon. More than 58,000 American servicemen had been killed. In 2021, Afghanistan delivered another version of the same lesson. Washington had spent years building and financing a state and its security forces. Yet in August, provincial capitals fell one after another. President Ghani fled. The government and security forces effectively collapsed. The Taliban entered Kabul. Syria became an even more complicated version of the same game. Russia, Iran, the United States, Turkey, and other outside powers spent years backing different forces while pursuing their own strategic interests. Bashar al-Assad’s government depended heavily on Russian and Iranian support. It eventually collapsed in December 2024 after a rapid rebel offensive — a strategic blow to the influence of its external backers. Now the centre of confrontation is Ukraine. Putin himself has gone as far as saying that, in his interpretation of history, “all of Ukraine is ours.” The West describes its support for Ukraine in terms of sovereignty, European security, and the international order. At the same time, the strategic interests of states have not disappeared: energy, logistics, defence industries, trade, and influence still matter. And now something fundamental has changed. Europe is no longer simply watching this kind of struggle unfold somewhere else. Cyber operations. Sabotage. Attacks on critical infrastructure. Information warfare. Airspace violations. These are no longer distant events. They are becoming part of Europe’s own security environment. So perhaps the question — “Is this Russian strength or Russian weakness?” — is simply too narrow. The more interesting question is this: Are we watching a new game? Or the same old game of great powers — only moving closer to home? Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Syria all offer an uncomfortable lesson. Great powers often enter conflicts with simple explanations: security, freedom, stability, historical justice. They usually leave with consequences far more complicated than anything they promised at the beginning. Kallas is right about one thing: the threat is real. But perhaps the most important question is not how strong Moscow is today. It is whether Europe truly understands what kind of historical game it has already entered — and what happens when the board is no longer somewhere far away, but increasingly on its own soil.

@kajakallas @DSORennie Peace is the need of the hour wether it's in Europe or middle east for Europe middle USA & the entire world is affected eg after a decade of war the solution is on table talk why not now @realDonaldTrump @EUintheUS

@kajakallas @DSORennie Kallias calling out weakness when things get tough is bold framing for this escalation. Seems like they're betting on overreaction rather than deterrence right now.