Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL's newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe's Eastern neighborhoods.
I'm RFE/RL Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I'm looking at NATO's perspective on the winter war in Ukraine and its efforts to counter the growing hybrid threats posed by China and Russia.
Note to Readers: You can now listen to my briefings by clicking on the audio link below. We're actually using an AI version of my voice and would love to know what you think -- and, of course, what we can improve.
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Wider Europe Briefing: How NATO Is Preparing For A Grim Winter In Ukraine
Briefing #1: NATO Prepares For A Difficult Ukrainian Winter
What You Need To Know: The mood on Ukraine at the NATO foreign affairs ministerial in Brussels on December 3-4 can be described in one word: grim. Just listen to the normally chirpy NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte: "This could be Ukraine's most difficult winter since 2022." Or Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha, who told the press that the situation "is really very challenging. And I am [being] very diplomatic now."
A senior NATO official, speaking anonymously because they weren't authorized to speak on the record, made clear to me what has been apparent for a while now -- that Russia is increasing the tempo of its offensive operations on the battlefield, pushing back Ukraine on several fronts. And the rapid gains are now rather considerable, with NATO estimating that Russia could be advancing up to 10 kilometers a day. (Earlier this year, that would have been more like 10 meters a day.)
Russia's rapid advance has been made possible by taking advantage of flat, open terrain, for example around Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, before the worst of the winter mud arrives. The NATO official noted that Russia had "a significant advantage when it comes to equipment, ammunition, and manpower" -- on the latter, being able to call on 30,000 new troops every month. Add to this the increased air strikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure, which keeps the country's air defenses busy and ramps up psychological pressure on the civilian population.
It should, however, be noted that not all is going swimmingly for Moscow. Russian forces will soon run into more entrenched Ukrainian positions. And from September through November, Russian casualties were an estimated 1,500 a day, whereas Ukraine's casualty rates are thought to be around half that.
Deep Background: In one aspect, it's clear what Ukraine needs: more men and additional air defenses. On the first issue, most people I spoke to at NATO headquarters in Brussels agreed with Washington's recent assessment that Kyiv should lower the recruitment age to 18 from the current 25, while also conceding that this would be a tough political decision.
On air-defense systems, Ukraine has been the one doing the asking, with Foreign Minister Sybiha requesting 19 new ones to cover critical infrastructure. While nothing was promised, diplomats at the ministerial told me that they expected that at least some systems would be delivered soon.
Another predictable disappointment for Ukraine at the ministerial meeting was that elusive NATO invitation. In fact, the military alliance hasn't moved on that since the Vilnius NATO summit in 2023. There simply isn't unanimity on the issue so, at the moment, the best Ukraine gets is the same well-rehearsed phrases about Ukraine's "irreversible NATO path" and "a bridge to membership," a reference to individual members' security pacts with Kyiv and the alliance's mission to train Ukrainian soldiers.
But this fall there has been a renewed Ukrainian charm offensive, with some in Kyiv hoping that, at the ministerial meeting, they might even get an invite. Apparently the hope was that the two key skeptics -- the United States and Germany -- would be more amenable as the former will have a new administration in January and Germany will hold federal elections in February.
The Ukrainian foreign minister even brought along a copy of the Budapest Memorandum, agreed 30 years ago in 1994 and signed by the United States and Russia, which was meant to guarantee Ukrainian territorial integrity in return for the former Soviet republic giving up its nuclear arms.
The optimism, however, appeared misplaced. Already, ahead of the ministerial, senior NATO diplomats briefed the media that the alliance still remains divided on the issue of Ukraine joining the alliance and that such a "monumental" decision wasn't on the table.
The ministers were unmoved by Ukraine's persuasion. Speaking anonymously as they weren't authorized to go on the record, several NATO officials told me that the idea of Ukraine's membership was nipped in the bud during a dinner devoted to the war. The issue will certainly come up again, most likely in the run-up to NATO's next summit in The Hague in June 2025.
Drilling Down:
- What appeared to be on the minds of most diplomats and ministers is the potential for some kind of negotiation with Russia in 2025. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hinted in a recent interview with the British broadcaster Sky that he would give up some of the occupied territory for NATO membership.
- Rutte didn't speculate on this but simply noted that NATO had to "make sure that Ukraine, whenever it decides to enter into peace talks, will do so from a position of strength." Few would argue that Ukraine is in such a position now.
- In the meantime, various other ideas are floating around. Several NATO diplomats I spoke to confirmed media reports coming out of London and Paris that the two countries would be prepared to contribute with boots on the ground in a postwar Ukraine -- essentially as peacekeepers monitoring some sort of cease-fire.
- There have also been suggestions that Poland and the Baltic countries could join such a peacekeeping mission. This, I was told by diplomats, wouldn't be coordinated by NATO but rather between various NATO capitals and would show the United States that the European allies could play an active and useful role.
- The million-dollar question is how keen Russia is to make a deal. And many at NATO HQ think: not very much . Or as one senior NATO official told me: "We don't think [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is serious about negotiations. He may be willing to talk, but as long as he believes that he is winning, there is no incentive for negotiations. And he continues to believe that time is in his favor."
Briefing #2: How NATO Can Defend Against Hybrid Attacks
What You Need To Know: While NATO is thinking a lot about Ukraine, the military alliance is increasingly grappling with the growth of hybrid attacks on its 32 members, coming from Russia and China but also Iran and North Korea. At last week's meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels, a senior NATO official, speaking anonymously because they weren't authorized to speak on the record, mentioned the "sustained, ongoing daily attacks against NATO countries," which included cyberattacks, political interference, attacks on critical infrastructure such as undersea cables, and sabotage. One recent example is the damage to fiber-optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea, which some believe was sabotage.
Since 2016, NATO has stated that hybrid attacks against any of its members can trigger Article 5 -- meaning such an attack can be considered an act of aggression that must be repelled with the help of all allies. The threshold for Article 5 is sky-high; in fact, it's only been triggered once in NATO's 75-year history, after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that subsequently led to the war in Afghanistan.
NATO officials readily admit that hybrid attacks are tricky because they are not like conventional warfare. NATO traditionally deals with the protection of external borders, whereas hybrid attacks tend to happen inside allied countries -- and often on a regular basis. It is that ambiguity that makes everything tricky.
Many of the attacks, whether physical or online, are carried out by what appears to be private individuals although they can be traced back to Russia. It is too murky and hard to present absolutely conclusive evidence that attributes blame. And blaming whoever is responsible is not always advantageous. One senior NATO official told me: "What we don't want is that everything everywhere is attributed to Russia. It makes them look bigger and it creates anxiety. Always attributing is not necessarily a smart thing."
Deep Background: Many of these hybrid attacks also target private companies; for example, telecom operators that own undersea cables. And while NATO officials say that those private concerns are increasingly coming to NATO for help as they don't have the capacity to secure their infrastructure and respond, it's a huge gray area and, in many ways, unprecedented.
That Europe is vulnerable here is an understatement. Look at the damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline last year or the two fiber-optic cables recently severed in the Baltic Sea. In the first instance, Beijing admitted that a Chinese-flagged vessel was responsible but claimed it was an accident and refused to further cooperate in the investigation. In the case of the fiber-optic cables, various national probes are under way, although once again much of the evidence points to a Chinese boat being responsible.
Drilling Down:
- So what can NATO do? After the debate among foreign ministers on December 4, there was agreement to share more intelligence, conduct more naval exercises, and increase the alliance's presence in the Baltic Sea.
- But NATO officials are also well aware of the magnitude of the task. There are more than 1 million kilometers of undersea cable in NATO waters and about 50,000 ships in European waters at any one time. It is simply impossible to patrol everything, even the most critical infrastructure nodes.
- But NATO could become better at preventing things happening in the first place, making it harder for actors with ill-intent to get away with things -- or what one NATO official termed "to deny deniability." NATO is stepping up the use of artificial intelligence to spot unusual trends and track suspicious ships.
- Alliance members are trying a variety of defensive measures to protect cables, including using sensors to monitor data, burying them under concrete, and even laying down multiple dummies. Much of this was not done before, as the infrastructure was designed for peacetime.
- NATO is now busy working on a new hybrid-threat strategy ahead of The Hague summit in June 2025-- a document that will guide the alliance's actions on the issue going forward. The last one, from 2015, is outdated, with one senior NATO official noting: "It didn't envision this threat level. Malign cyberactions are on a different level now, the number of threat actors is bigger and the overall threat level much higher"
Looking Ahead
On December 12, the EU's home ministers will finally give Bulgaria and Romania the green light to join the Schengen zone by the start of 2025 -- 18 years after the two countries became members of the bloc. The pair already enjoys visa-free travel by air and sea as of March this year, but soon its citizens will be able to do so via land after the last holdout, Austria, agreed to lift its veto last month at a meeting in Budapest.
That's all for this week! Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on Twitter @RikardJozwiak, or on e-mail at jozwiakr@rferl.org.
Until next time,
Rikard Jozwiak
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