The trend that places the Russian-Ukrainian war at the epicenter of the debate about the Russian threat to the liberal world order is almost unintentional. This trend is not fallacious, nor is it out of step with reality, whether temporally or geographically speaking. In fact, this war is the ultimate exponent of a real and palpable demonstration of Vladimir Putin’s expansionist and revisionist intentions. What this trend could cause, however, is a dangerous blurring of focus on other of the Russian leader’s targets, in which, it must be said, he has been investing more or less silently. In just a few seconds, a simple “zoom out†exercise on the map of Europe allows you to list several of these targets. But, it is also important to highlight, the wishlist of Putin is not limited to this map, as we will see below.
1.
If we start with history, we don’t even need to go far from Ukraine to see that there is a clear attempt to influence recovery of the new Russia over territories of the former Soviet Union. The former republics of Azerbaijan, Moldova and Georgia are the most flagrant cases, where the so-called “frozen conflicts†have been giving the Kremlin a “plausible†justification for not cutting the umbilical cord with these countries. We say that these conflicts are frozen because, since 1991, they have been waiting for a solution to the void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union, into transformed nationalism. The existence of minorities (many of them Russian) with separatist claims in these countries offers Russia the perfect reason to sponsor rebellion, disorderly groups and militias, responsible for large pockets of political and social instability at its doorstep. of NATO.
2.
No Baltic Seawhere the Russian geopolitical appetite needs no explanation, the Kremlin recently opted for a provocative strategy, which has yet to be precisely clarified, of a “border review†. For geographical reasons, naturally, Sweden and the three Baltics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) are the most concerned with this far-fetched idea, which may even be nothing more than a test at the levels of anxiety of the Atlantic Alliance. Even if this is the case – especially because, officially, the Kremlin denied the intention of expanding its border in these waters – the Chief of Staff of the Swedish Armed Forces, Micael Bydén, left an important warning about the dangerous Russian desire to reach To the Swedish island of Gotland. It can be said that this island is to the Baltic as the Azores are to the Atlantic. This means that, since March 2024, when Sweden became a member of NATO, the Alliance has materialized an important approach to a set of key countries, considered by Russia as “near foreign†€ – a designation that presupposes that Russia must have a special, closer relationship with countries that formerly belonged to the Soviet space. In a kind of cockfight, the Baltic inspires concern due to its neuralgic status that simultaneously combines geostrategic potential and historical sensitivity.
3.
Outside Europe, one of the great objectives of Putin’s Russia is, strictly speaking, a legacy of the old Soviet ideological propaganda: Ãfrica. Soviet influence and sponsorship in African and Latin American countries is, in fact, a paradigmatic pillar of the Cold War. Nothing new, therefore. Putin is, today, trying to recover this pillar, deepening and increasingly consolidating the Russian footprint in the African world, where most political regimes need the support of a strong external actor. Taking the place of this major actor for some regimes in Africa serves Russia’s interests in two ways simultaneously: first, by helping to expand its commercial market, its military presence and its diplomatic support abroad. ©m-borders; second, helping to combat the commercial market, military presence and diplomatic support of the West across borders.
4.
A cyberwar does not exactly occupy a tangible place in the planisphere, meaning that its potential as a threat is even more comprehensive than that of the aforementioned threats. Russia’s ability to remotely destabilize the West became especially famous in the 2016 US elections, when Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. But the Russian cyber threat is, in reality, much earlier than that date, although it is increasingly improving: Estonia, 2007; Georgia 2008; Ukraine 2014; Germany 2015; United Kingdom and United States 2016; France 2017; South Korea 2018; Poland 2019; Romania 2022. The range of experiences is vast to prove that the cyber weapon is also a weapon and, above all, to demonstrate that Russia uses it, we can say, with some frequency. However, there is not such a vast experience regarding our knowledge about the functioning of the Russian “cyber-departmentâ€. Why? Because Russia works simultaneously with official and unofficial groups and experts, some of them even illegal (hackers), making the preventive task of the West especially difficult, both to avoid attacks and to understand and master the strategies of their authors.
5.
Probably the only one even more comprehensive than the previous one is the ameaça nuclear Russian. The latter, without exception, calls into question all things as we know them, including human life. In recent times, Russia has been particularly insistent on nuclear blackmail whenever plans do not go as planned. One of the most recent examples of this behavior is the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine, which evidently scares the Russian leadership, leading it to the need to invoke the nuclear trump card. The same leadership has already confirmed that it has taken all the necessary decisions regarding the use of nuclear weapons, if the Atlantic Alliance sends human resources to Ukrainian soil. And although Ukraine tends to consider this as a strategy of bluff do Kremlinthe truth is that Russia is, firstly, a nuclear power and, secondly, it is led by a man who is available to start a conflict of this nature.
All these threats concern people, countries and regions outside Ukraine. It is, therefore, wrong to feed rhetoric that ignores the vastness of the Russian revisionist project, as well as its objectives not strictly related to Ukraine. At this stage of time and space, Ukrainian interests are also the interests of all Europeans and, ultimately, the interests of all lovers of the free world. These men, these women and these children – the Ukrainian people – are not the last line of this free world. Before, they are your front line.
