2026-05-21 01:50:00
For three years, Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development has been the Kremlin’s in-house optimist, with growth forecasts that sounded more like lullabies than cold analysis.
That has now changed.
The ministry’s updated macroeconomic projection, published on May 12, is the first official document to concede that Russia faces at least two more years of stagnation — and that there is no rebound waiting on the other side.
The numbers tell the story:
For once, the ministry is more pessimistic than the Central Bank — a reversal of the long-standing division of labor in which the bank played the bad cop and the ministry the cheerleader.
The official rhetoric is being adjusted to match. Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov has taken to describing the slowdown as “the natural price of curbing inflation” and “a phase of fine-tuning.” Vladimir Putin, who in April complained publicly about weak growth, has been offered a soothing narrative in which Russia is merely cooling down after the overheating of 2023–2024, and will resume its march once inflation eases and rates fall.
But the new forecast quietly disagrees with the soothing narrative. A cyclical pause does not last two years, does not depress investment, and does not coincide with stubbornly elevated inflation. The ministry’s published numbers reveal something its officials cannot say out loud: that the constraints on the economy are structural, and that they follow directly from the war.
Military spending has risen from 3% of GDP in 2021 to 8% in 2025. The defense sector runs three shifts, hoovers workers out of civilian industries, and is paid in advance. This was financed first from the National Welfare Fund, then from tax hikes, then from expensive domestic borrowing. Each of these liquidity wells is now close to dry. High interest rates are not, as the Kremlin’s friendlier critics like to claim, a whim of Central Bank governor Elvira Nabiullina — they are the inevitable response to a fiscal stance that pours money into the war economy while sanctions block the imports and technology that would otherwise absorb it.
The strong ruble, often paraded as a sign of resilience, is the other side of the same coin: a collapse in imports caused by sanctions, weak demand, and capital controls. The expectation of oil price falls is based on the notion that global demand will soften, and acknowledges that Russian crude trades at a discount. Expensive credit reflects inflation that the budget itself generates. None of this is cyclical. All of it is what an economy looks like when it has been cut off from Western markets, capital, and technology, and forced to spend on tanks instead of productive output.
The war in Iran and the Trump administration’s recent decision to issue general licenses easing some secondary-sanctions pressure on Rosneft and Lukoil offer the Kremlin a partial reprieve. Unlike previous Middle Eastern flare-ups, this conflict shows every sign of dragging on, keeping a geopolitical premium under the oil price for months rather than weeks. The Rosneft and Lukoil carve-outs, narrow as they are, take some of the chill off buyers in India, Turkey, and China who had begun retreating after October’s Treasury designations.
Together, the two developments give Russia a modest fiscal cushion just as the budget needs it most. The trouble is that the cushion is fiscal, not structural. Higher revenues can soften this year’s deficit; they cannot rebuild the investment climate, unblock technology imports, or repair the labor market. The ministry’s own assumptions — a $50-a-barrel Urals from 2027 onwards — show that even officials inside the system do not expect the relief to last long enough to kick-start growth.
The arithmetic of next year’s budget is uncomfortable. Built on the old, sunnier forecast, it now looks short on revenues by 2–3 trillion rubles ($28bn-$42bn), potentially doubling the planned deficit. Part of that gap will be plugged by the National Welfare Fund through the budget rule — the mechanism that saves excess oil revenues when prices are high and tops up the budget when they are low. The rest will have to come from spending cuts, higher taxes, or more borrowing, all of which Russia has already leaned on heavily over the past two years.
The squeeze will also reach into the tax system itself. Russia’s mineral extraction tax — the main lever for capturing oil revenues — was hiked in 2024 to replace export tariffs, but at low oil prices it generates progressively less, because formula-based deductions, the damper subsidy, and reverse excise payments hand a growing share back to the companies. The same design that smoothed the windfall when prices were high amplifies the shortfall now. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has hinted that the budget rule itself will be quietly rewritten — bureaucratic code for adjusting the parameters until the numbers add up. Defense and social spending are untouchable. Civilian investment, infrastructure, and Putin’s much-trumpeted “national projects” are not.
None of this is a collapse. Russia’s national debt is low at around 17% of GDP, the banking system is stable, employment rates are high, and wages are still creeping up. There will be no currency run, no debt crisis, no bread queues in 2027. The Kremlin will continue to fund its war in Ukraine. That, in a sense, is the point of the new forecast: it formalizes the trade-off Putin has chosen. Of the three things the government tries to do at once — finance the war, control inflation, and grow the economy — Russia can now manage only two. The third, growth, is being sacrificed.
The more important shift is conceptual. Until this spring, war and sanctions were officially treated as temporary shocks that would eventually pass. The new forecast moves them into the baseline.
This is the economy Russia now has: chronically slower than the global average, chronically short of cash for anything other than the army and the state, increasingly dependent on China, technologically lagging, and steadily losing the people most likely to do something about it.
It is not the picture of a country heading for the cliff. It is the picture of a country settling, with surprising equanimity, for a long, slow decline — and broadcasting to the world that while the state may endure, it will not prosper.
Alexander Kolyandr is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), specializing in the Russian economy and politics. Previously, he was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and a banker for Credit Suisse. He was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and lives in London.
More on this and other aspects of the Russian economy in a weekly summary produced by the independent publication, The Bell.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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2026-05-21 01:25:12
Without a strategy to build out the allied industrial base, the financial pledges made at the 2025 Hague Summit will deepen dependency on the US at a time when Washington’s focus is shifting to the Pacific.
Europe should instead prioritize its own industrial base, build a coalition with middle powers including the UK, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Ukraine, and Australia, and bring US defense firms in through co-production on European soil. The result would be a more balanced and durable transatlantic relationship.
The Iran war provides a warning of what will happen when Pacific demand for US weapons competes with European needs. The continent’s production shortages cluster in exactly the categories the war exposed: air defense interceptors, precision-guided munitions, and artillery rockets.
The US fired more than 850 Tomahawks during Operation Epic Fury. At the current production rate of 85 per year, replenishing them would take a decade.
Washington has warned allies of serious delays, and the Pentagon is now weighing whether to redirect European-funded interceptors bought through NATO’s Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) to replenish US inventory in the Middle East. Lithuania has already been told that ammunition deliveries will be delayed.
European industry struggled to scale up production even before the Hague pledges, and MBDA and Rheinmetall, two of the continent’s defense industry giants, have flagged looming ammunition shortages.
Without industrial capacity to meet the requirements of new budgets, additional spending will default to off-the-shelf platforms already facing delays on production lines. And most will come from the other side of the Atlantic.
About 51% of European NATO equipment spending between 2022 and 2024 went to the US, up from 28% in 2019–2021, according to Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank. In 2024 alone, US Foreign Military Sales notifications for European customers reached $76bn, four times the average since 2008.
While there’s widespread recognition that this needs to change. But while European spenders are responding to the Hague commitments in different ways, none are building systemic capacity.
Berlin is leading the way in shaking off its past reliance on the US, channeling spending into German industrial champions. Rheinmetall alone stands to receive over €88bn in potential orders, with Diehl, KNDS, Hensoldt, and MBDA Deutschland close behind. Berlin’s procurement plan, covering 154 major purchases in 2025-2026, allocates only 8% to US suppliers, a sharp shift from being one of Washington’s largest defense clients. But like other allies, it has turned to the US for high-end purchases of equipment like F-35 jets.
Warsaw is on a different path. It has ordered 32 F-35As and is spending heavily on US-built Abrams tanks and Patriot missiles. It is also the largest beneficiary of SAFE (Security Action for Europe) funding at €43.7bn ($51.3bn), pairing large-scale US procurement with maximal use of EU instruments.
Germany is building German capacity; Poland is layering big US purchases on top of European procurement funded by SAFE. Both paths share a flaw: they rarely coordinate orders (apart from some missile and artillery projects) or build supply chain diversity and resilience. Even after the war in Ukraine, collaborative procurement has remained well below the bloc’s own 35% benchmark.
Both of these approaches have their own logic. But they have a shared flaw: they rarely coordinate orders (apart from some missile and artillery projects) or build supply chain diversity and resilience. The industrial base the West needs is not yet being constructed.
The answer is for European firms to lead joint ventures with US partners that bring production onto European soil, combining American technology with European industrial capacity. And there are already good examples to follow.
Düsseldorf-based Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin announced a missile joint venture in Germany in 2025, with Rheinmetall holding the majority stake and a target of 10,000 missiles per year. COMLOG, which pairs Europe’s MBDA with Massachusetts-based Raytheon, is also opening a Patriot Advanced Capability-2 line to deliver 1,000 missiles.
Germany’s Diehl has also signed a memorandum with Lockheed to bring the production of PAC-3 MSE missile interceptors into Europe, with Spain’s Sener and Poland’s WZE already supplying components.
These are all categories in which the Iran war has exposed shortages. European firms lead, US partners contribute technology, and production happens where the demand sits, increasing capacity on the continent.
Some of the groundwork towards strengthening the European defense industrial base is already taking place. The EU’s €150bn SAFE facility has a 65% European content rule, which covers EU members, EEA countries, and Ukraine, and production by US firms on European soil is included in the threshold. The European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP), adopted in November, adds €1.5bn ($1.8bn) targeted at the categories the Iran war exposed: air defense, counter-drone, and ammunition.
But these instruments can be blunted: member states can invoke national-security exemptions to avoid EU joint procurement rules even while drawing SAFE loans, and there is a parallel risk that SAFE money simply substitutes for national budgets rather than adding to them. These instruments are the floor, not the ceiling, and the scale of the broader allied market is what will turn them into real capacity.
The point is not to choose between US suppliers and European factories, but to build production capacity across the alliance.
Luka Ignac is a nonresident Fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He focuses on the intersection of emerging technology, geopolitics, and defense, with a particular interest in defense innovation and EU-NATO cooperation.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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2026-05-19 22:22:08
The edge of Europe is replete with straits, estuaries, and choke points where tidy sums could be made charging ships to pass.
And since Tehran is making a reported $2m per oil tanker allowed through the Strait of Hormuz, and Indonesian Finance Minister Purbaya Sadewa last month suggested joining Malaysia and Singapore to charge ships using the Malacca Strait, what’s to stop them?
Europe’s waterways are kept open by treaty, but events in the Gulf, as well as the return of tariffs where they were once unthinkable, suggest such agreements may not be as solid as they once were.
If the continent were to decide on tolls, Turkey would be in pole position, since it controls both sides of the Bosporus, connecting the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
The route is the lifeline for Ukraine’s grain exports — and is also critical for all the other Black Sea littoral states, including Russia — but Turkey doesn’t need to break the law to close it, just abrogate a treaty. While free passage is guaranteed by the 1936 Montreux Convention, Turkey could exit the agreement and start imposing tolls simply by giving two years’ notice.
Things are more complicated at the other end of Europe, where a treaty from 1857 obliges Denmark to let shipping transit the Skagerrak, the gateway to the Baltic. There is nothing in that agreement, the Redemption of Sound Dues, allowing Copenhagen to leave it, unless the dozen other signature states agree.
Some of those states, including Oldenburg and Mecklenburg-Schwerin, no longer exist, but others would have a problem. The treaty only happened after Britain, France, and Imperial Russia each made a hefty one-off cash payment to Denmark in return for the free passage of shipping in perpetuity. If the Danes were to renege on the treaty, those states might want their money back, at the very least.
The situation is the same at the mouths of the two great rivers that bisect the continent. At one end, Romania and Ukraine are prevented from imposing tolls on the mouth of the Danube by the 1948 Belgrade Treaty, while at the other, the Netherlands stopped charging tolls at the mouth of the Rhine after signing the Mannheim Convention in 1868. As with the Danes, neither of those treaties has an exit clause.
A further problem for the Danes, Dutch, Ukrainians, and Romanians is that they are signatories to UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which prohibits marine tolling.
But the convention is not universal. A third of the world’s countries have not signed it, including Iran and the US, and free navigation is a fairly modern invention.
Indeed, for most of history, tolls were the norm.
The word “tariff” originates from the medieval practice of setting tolls for ships entering the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar, when both coasts were controlled by the Moors. Ships paid their tolls at the port of Tarifa, and the name stuck.
Iran’s Hormuz tolls have certainly got regulators worried. In April, the UN’s International Maritime Organisation declared that Tehran’s action had “no legal basis.” Days earlier, the European Commission had made its own statement re-committing member states to free seas.
Until now, Europe has been governed by a free-trade mantra, and it was the centralizing of European states and the abolishing of most tolls that is credited with its boom in wealth. For example, the Zollverein, the 1834 customs union that prefigured German unification, is credited with foreshadowing the country’s enormous economic expansion.
But times are changing. The Eastern Mediterranean is already the scene of periodic naval standoffs between Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus over control of lucrative offshore gas fields. Those are inside the 200 nautical mile economic zones guaranteed by UNCLOS to Greece and Cyprus, but Turkey, a non-member, claims a big chunk of that sea for itself.
Last summer, Turkish warships physically blocked a research ship off Greece surveying the route for a power line to connect mainland Europe with Cyprus and Israel. The EU-funded sub-sea cable would allow both countries to use gas, some from the disputed fields, to generate electricity to sell to Europe. The EU protested that the action was illegal, but has since put the project on hold.
And the on-land version of tolling is making a comeback, fueled by Trump’s tariff wars. If that is taken as a sign of the crumbling of the rules-based order, European nations blessed by geography with handy choke points may be tempted to cash in.
Chris Stephen is a former war correspondent with The Guardian. He has written on war crimes justice matters for publications including The Hill, International Institute for Strategic Studies, and Counsel, the magazine of the Bar Association of England and Wales. He is the author of The Future of War Crimes Justice (Melville House, London and New York) and Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic (Atlantic Books, London and New York).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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2026-05-19 21:51:42
The war in Ukraine has long since settled into one of attrition, but the conflict is no longer moving in Russia’s favor.
In January and February, despite steadily intensifying Russian pressure, Ukrainian forces liberated more territory than they had lost for the first time since the summer 2023 counteroffensive. The same was true for April.
Russia is unlikely to achieve at least one of Putin’s primary war aims, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on May 14. “The slowing rate of Russian advances and the challenging nature of the Ukrainian-held terrain in Donetsk [part of the Donbas region] make it unclear that Russia is capable of seizing the territory at all,” it said.
The previous month, Moscow had deployed a record number of drones, escalating attacks across both the frontline and Ukraine’s rear as it tried to force a breakthrough. Yet it failed to produce decisive results, and Russian forces have been unable to convert pressure into meaningful territorial gains or strategic advantage.
In a war of attrition, survival is a strategy. Each additional day that Ukraine withstands Russian attacks is not merely a matter of defense, it incrementally shifts the balance. The side that can sustain pressure longer, absorb shocks more effectively, and degrade its opponent over time will ultimately prevail.
Recent battlefield dynamics suggest Ukraine is not only holding but increasingly shaping the contest. Despite more effort, Russian advances have slowed significantly and, rather than collapsing under intensified assaults, Ukraine has denied Moscow the ability to achieve meaningful territorial gains.
Kyiv’s much-discussed “porcupine strategy”, of making the country too costly to conquer, is not just holding but maturing into something more deliberate: a systematic effort to raise the price of every Russian advance until Moscow can no longer afford to continue. That strategy may be paying off: Ukraine now says it is killing and seriously wounding more Russian servicemen each month than the Kremlin can recruit.
Crucially, a major Russian aim has been to make life intolerable for civilians and businesses far from the front. That, however, has not become the vulnerability Russia had hoped it would.
Moscow’s winter campaign aimed to break Ukraine’s resilience through sustained strikes on energy infrastructure, targeting power generation, heating, and distribution networks. While these attacks inflicted real damage and caused localized blackouts, they failed strategically.
Ukraine adapted by rapidly repairing infrastructure, decentralizing energy supply, improving air defense, and leaning on European support to prevent systemic collapse.
The rate of interception of Russian attacks has risen sharply, and now is around 90%, reflecting rapid advances in defensive capability.
And Ukraine is no longer merely absorbing pressure, it is increasingly imposing it. The expansion of its drone campaign, both in scale and range, marks a significant shift in the character of the war. Ukrainian strikes now reach deep into Russian territory, targeting not only military assets but the economic infrastructure underpinning Moscow’s military.
Energy infrastructure has become a central battleground. Repeated strikes on oil refineries, export terminals, and pipeline nodes, from Tuapse on the Black Sea to facilities in the Urals, are not designed to deliver immediate collapse but to impose cumulative costs on Russia’s war economy, disrupting refining capacity, complicating logistics, and forcing the Kremlin to divert resources to defense.
A sustained Ukrainian campaign of drone strikes on ports and energy infrastructure, compounded by pipeline damage and tanker seizures, cut Russia’s oil export capacity by at least 40% in early 2026, creating the most severe oil supply disruption in the country’s modern history. This is attrition in its purest form: not a decisive blow, but a steady erosion.
Even where infrastructure is repaired or exports resume, the pressure persists. The point is not to eliminate Russia’s oil revenues overnight, but to make sustaining the war progressively more expensive and less efficient.
For Europe and the wider West, the conflict has also underscored a broader geopolitical lesson: energy dependence creates strategic vulnerability. The rapid diversification away from Russian energy since 2022 was not simply an economic adjustment but a security imperative that reduced Moscow’s leverage over European decision-making. Maintaining that resolve will be essential.
For the combatants, energy security has become far more than a supporting factor in the war, it is now central to the strategic balance. Russia’s ability to sustain military operations remains deeply tied to hydrocarbon revenues, while Ukraine’s resilience depends on keeping its own energy system functioning despite relentless attacks. This has transformed pipelines, refineries, ports, power grids, and export routes into instruments of war alongside tanks and artillery.
Domestic production of weapons, particularly drones, has expanded significantly, with Kyiv now reporting surpluses and exploring international cooperation and export opportunities. The country plans to manufacture 7 million drones this year, up from 4 million in 2025. This emerging industrial power reduces Ukraine’s dependence on external supply while allowing it to innovate rapidly.
Meanwhile, Russia’s structural advantages are proving less decisive than many assumed. While its economy remains larger, it is increasingly shaped by the demands of war: high interest rates, sanctions pressure, and a growing dependence on energy revenues.
Moscow is turning to covert mobilization efforts as its forces suffer unsustainably high losses and recruitment declines. Russia is also facing a growing burden in defending its own infrastructure, stretching air defense and resources across its vast territory.
In this context, Western support is the critical variable. Even as US support has become more uncertain, Europe has stepped up in a meaningful way, significantly increasing its contributions and, in aggregate, coming close to offsetting the decline in US aid.
European Union institutions now provide the backbone of financial and humanitarian support, and the bloc’s €90bn ($105bn) package is not simply financial assistance but a signal of long-term commitment that secures Ukraine’s ability to sustain the war. Other allies, including the UK, Japan, and Canada, are also contributing.
In an attritional war, predictability matters as much as scale. Consistent support can shape expectations on both sides, influencing strategic calculations in Moscow as much as operational realities on the ground.
The risk, however, lies in inconsistency. Domestic politics in Western countries, particularly the temptation toward transactional approaches or partial sanctions relief, could undermine the logic that is beginning to favor Ukraine.
The war is no longer defined by rapid offensives or decisive battles. It has become a contest of systems, of economic resilience, technological adaptation, and political endurance. Russia continues to escalate, but without achieving a breakthrough. Ukraine, by contrast, is learning to endure, and, increasingly, to shape the terms of that endurance.
In such a war, victory is unlikely to come suddenly. It will emerge gradually, through the accumulation of small advantages and sustained pressure. For Ukraine, the task is clear: to keep fighting, to keep adapting, and above all, to keep winning one day more.
Margaryta Khvostova is a PhD Candidate in Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Surrey, a PhD Fellow at the Centre for Britain and Europe (CBE), and Programmes Manager at the Centre for the Study of Global Power Competition (CGPC).
Professor Amelia Hadfield is Head of the Department of Politics, Founding Director of the Centre for Britain and Europe (CBE), and Associate Vice President of External Engagement at the University of Surrey.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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2026-05-19 21:15:35
The thing about dictators is that they can hang around for an awfully long time. The septuagenarian leaders of Russia and China meet today (May 19) for close to the 50th time since 2012.
No other leader has had the face time with General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Xi Jinping that Vladimir Putin has enjoyed. In total, Xi has met Putin more than twice as many times as any other world leader.
This is not just about form; it’s a relationship of substance. The trip coincides with the 25th anniversary of the 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship, a reflection of the length and depth of relations that have been forged over time between these ambitious autocracies.
The relationship has reached a new level since 2012. This is, in large measure, a function of the personal bond developed between Xi and Putin over this period. Since Xi became China’s paramount leader in late 2012, months after Putin returned to the Russian presidency, their two countries’ bilateral ties have deepened into a remarkably close and sustained leader-to-leader exchange.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is easier to see that as Putin was planning the 2014 occupation of Crimea and infiltration of eastern Ukraine, Xi was simultaneously adopting a more assertive and confrontational approach for China in the South China Sea. This belligerent posture was a sign of the more ominous ambitions these regimes harbored.
By the time of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the two leaders had achieved what might be described as a “shared consciousness.” In response to signals from the top, their respective bureaucracies gradually expanded linkages across multiple domains, including media and information, military cooperation, economic relations, and governance practices. And as these authoritarian leaders grew more emboldened, they articulated ambitions in ways that should have drawn more serious attention from observers in the West.
In February 2022, following a summit in Beijing, Xi and Putin issued a joint statement describing relations between China and Russia as a friendship with “no limits”. Days later, Moscow launched its unprovoked attack, sending tens of thousands of troops across the Ukrainian border and upending European and global security in a manner not seen since the first half of the 20th century.
Beijing has supported Russia’s war in Ukraine through dual-use exports of machine tools, gunpowder, and chemicals, alongside coordinated information operations. Beijing claims to serve as a neutral actor, but with its indispensable support, and that of other like-minded regimes such as Iran, North Korea, and Belarus, the Russian regime has sustained its war effort for more than four years.
China and Russia alike are providing support to Iran in ways that complicate the US effort there, including through economic lifelines, military and intelligence cooperation, drone tactics gleaned from the frontline in Ukraine, and information operations and propaganda.
For some time, many observers of China and Russia were skeptical that these countries’ relationship could deepen and endure. Much of the analysis drew on the historical wariness between Moscow and Beijing (including serious clashes between their armies).
Some see Moscow as unwilling to function as a junior partner in a “marriage of convenience”. But this is outdated thinking. It has become clear that Xi and Putin have developed a close working relationship and have a shared vision for how the world should be ordered. Both leaders embrace a creed that privileges state power over individual liberty and is fundamentally hostile to free expression, open debate, and independent thought.
To put this into perspective, Putin is now in his second quarter-century in power. Xi is in year 14. Neither plans to fade into the sunset. On the contrary, they intend to pursue their objectives for as long as they can. A forthcoming CEPA report — The China-Russia Meta Threat: The Architecture of Authoritarian Power — puts the stakes into context. The analysis identifies the autocrats’ formidable power over crucial economic, military, and other domains.
Nevertheless, these have evident vulnerabilities.
For example, Russia’s economy and governance structure are decrepit. Putin has mortgaged Russia’s future and is attempting to shape Europe’s as well. Despite relentless propaganda about its inviolability and inevitable rise, the Chinese system has deep, persistent problems that include massive youth unemployment, festering demographic gaps, a real estate sector crisis, and a political system that increasingly has few policy levers to meaningfully address these serious structural challenges.
At a time of intensifying strategic competition, it is a good time to take stock. The US will need allies to contest the divide and conquer strategies used by Moscow and Beijing, whose leaderships understand that alliances are integral to US power.
When they meet, Xi and Putin no doubt will take up ways to further their strategy of cleaving apart democratic allies. The Trump administration should recognize that it is squarely in the US national security interest to strengthen relationships with natural allies in the face of intensifying competition with the now mature China-Russia partnership.
This includes setting aside the notion of accomplishing a “reverse Kissinger”. If anything, the inverse has occurred: a weakened Russia has cast its lot with China, along with Iran and other authoritarian regimes, against the United States and its natural allies. Absent a concerted approach from the democracies, the autocrats will forge ahead with their ambition to establish a different world order.
Christopher Walker is Vice President at the Center for European Policy Analysis. This article is drawn from the forthcoming CEPA report – “The China-Russia Meta Threat: The Architecture of Authoritarian Power.”
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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2026-05-19 04:31:54
At 3:00 a.m., operators at a cable landing station lose visibility. Minutes later, backup generators fail. Traffic reroutes, creating congestion. What initially looks like a cyber incident quickly becomes something else: a coordinated attack on one of the land-based facilities where undersea cables connect to national communication networks.
Although hypothetical, the scenario highlights why governments should not focus only on safeguarding undersea cables. They should also protect cable landing stations.
Since late 2023, at least 11 undersea cables and pipelines have been damaged in the Baltic Sea. European officials and security analysts increasingly view the incidents through the lens of hybrid attacks. Investigations into several Baltic infrastructure incidents have focused on civilian commercial vessels — including ships associated with Russia’s “shadow fleet” and Chinese-operated carriers — suspected of dragging anchors across critical energy and telecommunications corridors.
In response, NATO has expanded maritime patrols for seabed monitoring. Suspicious vessels near critical infrastructure draw immediate attention.
Risks to vulnerable landing stations require similar, heightened attention. Cable cuts, while disruptive and potentially disastrous, have not yet caused a systemic internet collapse. Online traffic rerouted, and despite disruption, networks proved resilient. When multiple cable systems converge at a small number of onshore facilities, the risks of a broad outage to entire networks increase.
Yet until recently, many landing stations have been treated more as commercial telecom facilities than strategic infrastructure. Independent analysis points to landing stations as an overlooked part of the broader undersea cable security challenge. ENISA, the European Union’s cybersecurity agency, has warned that landing stations can be vulnerable to both physical and cyber threats, including sabotage, espionage, and disruptions.
Operations against deep-sea infrastructure require specialized vessels, technical capabilities, and access to difficult maritime environments. Enemies need to sever multiple subsea cables to create serious disruption. Cable landing stations, by comparison, are fixed sites. While some are heavily secured, others are not. They connect huge amounts of international internet traffic flow into domestic networks. Some handle multiple cable systems.
In the US, a small number of landing sites carry a large share of transatlantic traffic. Many are located near ports, industrial zones, or commercial telecom infrastructure that were not designed with today’s security environment in mind. Interfering with routing systems, operational technology, or power infrastructure at key landing points could trigger a domino effect. The threat is not just physical sabotage. Landing stations create opportunities for cyber intrusion, espionage, and attacks that combine physical and digital disruption.
How to respond? Governments would benefit from developing clear national standards for securing cable landing stations, including physical access controls, authorized entry requirements, perimeter security, and reliable backup electrical power. Policymakers should also look at whether some systems can be rerouted through additional or geographically dispersed landing points. Alongside increased physical security, cyber defenses should be strengthened to prevent malicious software or unauthorized access from disrupting network management systems.
The most exposed part of the network may not be the cable at the bottom of the ocean. It may be the infrastructure waiting for it on land.
Barbara Paoletti is a former US Department of State senior policy and program advisor. Her work has focused on national security, cross-border regional engagement, and strategic infrastructure issues across Europe, Asia, and Africa, including digital connectivity, cybersecurity, emerging technology, and energy security. She has experience working within the United Nations and the OSCE, as well as across government, industry, and multilateral partners.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
A Roadmap for Europe-US Tech Cooperation
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