Referring to Moscow’s airspace violations, Romania’s Defense Minister Ionuț Moșteanu told the audience that “this will happen more and more. This is my assumption given what happened in the last weeks. It’s easier for Russia to create a lot of trouble in our societies by just sending $10,000 drones.”
“Provocations will scale up. We still don’t understand how rapid we need to be,” echoed an EU official, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly.
Europe’s slowness in rearming is a frequent theme at defense and security conferences — and this week was no exception. Now, some officials hope the recent incidents will create a renewed sense of urgency in European capitals. “The drones are a blessing in disguise, at least people are realizing what’s a stake. Now the Baltic states can say: ‘We told you so,'” stressed a Western European lawmaker.
In the first years of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine, most talk focused on how NATO and the EU could help Kyiv, but now officials are increasingly realizing that Ukraine has something to teach them.
“Today in Europe, the strongest, most experienced army is the Ukrainian one. Not the German, not the British, not even the Turkish, but the Ukrainian,” said Lithuania’s former President Dalia Grybauskaitė, also describing the war-torn country as a defense production powerhouse.
But she issued a stark warning.
“Putin was not deterred by Ukraine. He’s not deterred by Europe, or even the United States,” she stressed. “That means the priority is no longer deterrence, but defense. That’s a huge different situation we’re in now.”
Jan Cienski contributed to this report.