For years, the threat of a Russia intent on expansion has loomed over much of Europe. It is not just the war in Ukraine. Moscow has also stationed military forces in friendly countries and fanned the flames of destabilizing political movements across the continent.
Now, as the Trump administration strikes a conciliatory tone toward Russia and pulls away from some of America’s oldest allies, European leaders who long enjoyed the backing of the powerful U.S. military sense an extraordinary moment of vulnerability.
For nearly 80 years, the United States has been the defensive and financial cornerstone of democratic security pacts created after World War II, in large part to keep the Soviet Union from marching across Europe. And even now, more than 80,000 American troops are deployed in Europe, some in a show of force right on Russia’s doorstep.
But with a widening chasm in the trans-Atlantic relationship, the Russia that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union has been given a big opportunity.
Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, has made clear that his interests do not stop at Ukraine. Experts say he envisions a Soviet-style sphere of influence extending deep into Europe. It is reminiscent of the Cold War, when Germany was split between Russia and the West, and about half a dozen countries were pulled behind the Iron Curtain.
The Soviet Union and Allies in 1989
“No state has upended the international order more in this century than Russia,” Jintro Pauly, a policy adviser for the Munich Security Conference, wrote in an analysis published at the forum’s annual meeting in Germany last month. “It has structurally destabilized its neighborhood and violated its neighbors’ sovereignty.”
A More Militarized Europe
Even if Mr. Putin wins a favorable peace deal in Ukraine, ending up with more Ukrainian territory than it initially seized in 2014, analysts say he would be ill-advised to test NATO’s borders. The alliance has more than twice the military forces of Russia, and European leaders are increasing defense spending and moving more swiftly than at any point since the end of the Cold War to ramp up weapons production.
If anything, the shift in tone from Washington has injected a new sense of urgency in Europe.
The American nuclear umbrella has protected Europe for generations, but both Britain and France have raised the possibility of extending their own arsenals to cover the continent. Germany’s incoming chancellor appears ready to start those discussions, as do the leaders of Poland.
Russian aggression has also ended up strengthening NATO. Mr. Putin has insisted that the military alliance withdraw from much of Central and Eastern Europe. Instead, it has grown.
Finland and Sweden, both of which had tried for decades to steer clear of superpower gamesmanship, joined NATO after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Now, as American support threatens to wane, both states are bolstering alliances in Europe.
“By sticking together between the Nordic countries, when times are good and times are worse, in the long run you gain something very important,” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson of Sweden said at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. “You have friends to rely on, basically.”
Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said it was doubtful that Mr. Putin would launch a full-scale invasion of a NATO country. But he might embark on what Mr. Gabuev called an “adventure tour.”
That might mean sending troops across the border into the predominantly Russian-speaking town of Narva, in Estonia. Or he could try to establish a so-called land bridge through the Suwalki Gap between Poland and Lithuania to connect the Russian enclave Kaliningrad with Belarus, a Moscow vassal.
Estonia, Lithuania and Poland are all members of NATO. If the alliance did not respond to a Russian incursion there, Mr. Gabuev said, then Mr. Putin could show the hollowness of a core NATO tenet, Article 5: the declaration that an attack on one member is an attack on all.
NATO’s top commander, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli of the United States, said that Russia intends to triple the size of its military after the war in Ukraine ends. It also plans to build up its military presence on NATO borders, particularly those with Finland and the Baltic states.
Already, Russia is suspected of launching a barrage of hybrid attacks — among them exploding parcels on cargo planes, undersea cable cuts and swarms of surveillance drones — to destabilize Europe.
“In words, intentions and actions, it’s pretty plain that this is not limited in Russia’s thinking to the conflict in Ukraine,” General Cavoli said at the Davos forum.
Finding Cracks in Political Systems
Moscow’s forays into Europe are not confined to the military. It has also sought to weaken its European adversaries by undermining their political systems.
In some cases, Russia is believed to have directly financed the election campaigns of candidates friendly to its interests. Other times it has fomented support for far-right or Euroskeptic parties, including through disinformation campaigns.
Russia’s political reach in Europe
In Germany, for example, politicians from the far-right party Alternative for Germany have been suspected by the authorities of getting backing from Russia. (Two prominent members have denied such support.) The party, known as the AfD, has long been viewed as extremist by other German parties and officials elsewhere in Europe and the United States. But on a trip to Germany last month, Vice President JD Vance chided Europeans for shunning far-right parties in comments widely interpreted as a defense of the AfD.
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has bucked NATO and E.U. support for Ukraine and kept up relations with Mr. Putin — to the rest of Europe’s dismay. President Trump has praised him as “a great man, a great leader.”
In Romania, the ultranationalist politician Calin Gorgescu has been barred from running in upcoming presidential elections. Last December, the country’s Constitutional Court said it suspected Russian meddling had supported his campaign, although it produced no solid evidence of it. Mr. Vance criticized that ruling, too.
And in Moldova, the pro-E.U. president, Maia Sandu, won re-election last October against a challenger she accused of being “Moscow’s man.” He was buoyed by vote-buying and other foreign efforts to influence the results, but after he lost, the Trump administration cut vital grants to pro-democracy, human rights and free press groups in Moldova that had been provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“Russia really is capitalizing on cracks in the European political system that already exist,” Mr. Gabuev said.
That will be even easier if Mr. Putin can rely on the United States as an accessory.
Putin Has Become More Unpopular in Europe
Disdain for Mr. Putin has increasingly hurt public perception of Russia and its political standing across Europe, according to polling from Gallup, which has asked people whether they approved or disapproved of Russia’s leadership annually since 2007.
Share of people that disapprove of Russian leadership
Do you approve or disapprove of the job performance of the leadership of Russia?
But pockets of support remain.
Serbia and Serb-led areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina maintain longstanding religious and cultural ties to Russia, even as they try to maintain a balance with the European Union. “Everyone here likes Putin and Trump,” Sasa Bozic, the owner of the Putin cafe in the Bosnian city of Banja Luka, recently told a New York Times reporter.
Serbia has traditionally had a close relationship with Russia, although its president, Aleksandar Vucic, has bristled at being described as a “little Putin.” Last month, Mr. Vucic sent security forces to raid the offices of activist groups that received U.S.A.I.D funding to document government corruption, human rights abuses and electoral fraud.
The Trump administration has since gutted U.S.A.I.D. And earlier this month, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., met with Mr. Vucic in Belgrade, where the Trump family seeks to build a luxury hotel on the site of the former Ministry of Defense, which was bombed by NATO 26 years ago.
Yet nowhere in Europe does Russia have as much of a political foothold as in Belarus, in a relationship that the Council on Foreign Relations has termed “an axis of autocracy.”
Belarus’s president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, tried for years to balance diplomacy between Russia and the West. But when political uprisings broke out in 2020, he was saved from being ousted by Mr. Putin’s economic and security support. He later allowed Russia’s military to use Belarus as a base of operations against Ukraine.
Mr. Putin recently described the ties between the two countries as “special, allied and truly fraternal.”
