European countries need to knuckle down and increase their military capabilities while Russia is still dedicating a chunk of its forces to its invasion of Ukraine, Sweden’s defense minister has said.
Although Moscow’s ground forces are being chewed up in the grinding war in Ukraine’s east, Russia has wound up its defense industry to backfill its constant equipment losses and regular strikes across Ukraine.
Entire swathes of the Kremlin’s military have emerged—so far—from more than three and a half years of full-scale war with its neighbor unscathed, but Russia’s defense industry has still worked hard to pump out more hardware and weapons. Russia’s allies, particularly North Korea and Iran, have helped restock Moscow’s shelves.
U.S.-brokered negotiations for a deal to bring an end to the war in Ukraine have been fraught with difficulty and often punctuated by public frustration on the part of President Donald Trump. Although Kyiv agreed to a U.S. proposal back in March, Russia has been reluctant to move on its demands, and the White House has not yet forced Moscow to bend through sanctions. There is little clarity on when a deal could be reached.
Referring to Russian equipment and missiles rolling off production lines, Stockholm’s defense minister, Pål Jonson, told Newsweek: “If it’s not going to be wasting those in Ukraine, then we have to make sure that these years now — when Russia is bogged down in and around Ukraine — that we really step up and intensify our armament production, and make sure that we transform economic clout into combat power.”
A Russian serviceman of the 275 self-propelled artillery regiment, 1st Guards Tank Army of the West group of forces prepares to fire a BM-27 9K57 Uragan (Hurricane) multiple launch rocket system amid Russia’s military operation…
A Russian serviceman of the 275 self-propelled artillery regiment, 1st Guards Tank Army of the West group of forces prepares to fire a BM-27 9K57 Uragan (Hurricane) multiple launch rocket system amid Russia’s military operation in Ukraine on May 30, 2024. This image was provided to AP directly by a third party and could not be independently verified.
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Evgeny Biyatov / Sputnik via AP
Europe is in the midst of what some have termed a historic rearmament, as many of NATO‘s continental members are caught in panic at what the U.S. turning away from Europe could mean for countries that let defense spending lapse at the end of the Cold War.
The U.S. has long propped up European militaries and provided the most expensive capabilities. But Trump and his administration have clearly signaled the U.S. wants to concentrate on meeting the threat it assesses China poses in the Indo-Pacific, and is expected to publish a review of its global military footprint in the near future.
NATO members pledged back in June to raise defense spending to 5 percent of GDP in the next 10 years, a major step for the alliance that had just months earlier discussed whether some members would hit the 2 percent benchmark previously asked of its member states. This 5 percent figure is split up into a 3.5 percent on what is termed “core” defense, like tanks or other hardware, and another 1.5 percent on related security and defense spending, such as infrastructure.
Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson speaks to the media after a ceremony marking the integration of the Swedish Mechanized Infantry Battalion into the NATO Multinational Brigade at the Adazi military base, Latvia, Friday, Feb. 7,…
Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson speaks to the media after a ceremony marking the integration of the Swedish Mechanized Infantry Battalion into the NATO Multinational Brigade at the Adazi military base, Latvia, Friday, Feb. 7, 2025.
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(AP Photo/Roman Koksarov
What isn’t quite clear is how much concrete progress has already been made to shore up European defense capabilities. NATO’s chief, Mark Rutte, said the alliance needed a “400% increase” in air and missile defenses, one of the areas NATO has conceded is a top priority for fresh gushes of funding.
“Russia is reconstituting its forces with Chinese technology, and producing more weapons faster than we thought,” Rutte said during an address in London in June. The NATO secretary-general said Russia was producing the same amount of ammunition in just three months that all of NATO generated in a year, and that forecasts put Russia on track to produce 1,500 tanks and 200 Iskander short-range ballistic missiles in 2025.
“Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO within five years,” Rutte added. Defense intelligence assessments on when Moscow could mount a large-scale military assault on a NATO country vary, but Danish authorities warned earlier this year that they believed the Kremlin could attack within the next half-decade if the alliance was perceived as divided and the U.S. a wild card.
Jonson has previously said Swedish intelligence has a similar estimate. It is “still a valid assessment,” Jonson said on Wednesday.
“Russia, right now, has its hands full,” said Jonson, who nodded to Ukrainian figures that have long indicated Russia has routinely sustained more than 1,000 casualties each day. Experts warn that countries in a conflict will inflate their enemy’s losses.
Moscow “doesn’t have much maneuverability right now,” Jonson said. “It can’t do many things [on] other fronts.”
But after a ceasefire deal, Russia would be able to bring soldiers back to the garrisons it emptied close to NATO’s eastern flank, Jonson said.
Countries forming NATO’s eastern barrier, pressed up against Russia, have long assessed that Moscow will resurrect the bases it emptied in the west, once its soldiers are no longer needed on the frontlines in Ukraine.
Estonia’s defense minister, Hanno Pevkur, told Newsweek in November that a ceasefire would afford Russia’s military “a lot of free force, which will be probably brought to our neighborhood.”
In late 2022, then-Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the Kremlin would overhaul Russia’s military structure while pumping up the number of service members over the next few years. Parts of the plan were to split Russia’s Western Military District into two districts, Moscow and Leningrad, and to grow the size of the military.
Divvying up the former Western Military District and its responsibilities this way helps Russia “to adopt a more effective military posture” against NATO’s Baltic and Scandinavian members, Nick Reynolds, research fellow in land warfare with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a U.K.-based think tank, previously told Newsweek.