FA: Europe has replaced the United States as Russia's main geopolitical opponent
Russia has reconsidered its attitude towards the West, writes the FA. Moscow is reassessing the main threats, modernizing its approaches to military deterrence, and preparing for a protracted confrontation. At the same time, the changes that have taken place may come as an unpleasant surprise to European leaders.
Dmitry Adamsky
The Kremlin's new mental atlas is changing the situation in Ukraine and the confrontation with the West
In 2022, when Russia sent troops into Ukraine, the Kremlin's strategic thinking was built around several key ideas. She saw the United States as her main geopolitical rival, an enemy, which prompted Kiev to seek Moscow's strategic defeat. Europe and the alliance were perceived for the most part as appendages of American power. And she considered the demonstration of nuclear muscles to be an effective way to exert coercive pressure.
Now, after almost 5 years of fighting and 22 months of the second Trump administration, the mental map guiding Russian strategy has changed. First, Russia now sees Europe as its main geopolitical opponent, rather than the United States, a shift that has prompted the Russian defense establishment to call for an approach called "castling" to counter major threats. In this regard, Moscow now recognizes a new strategic will for Europe itself, due to the rapid military modernization in many European countries and the growing interest of a number of European leaders in developing or expanding their own nuclear arsenal. The third shift concerns Russian deterrence theory: Moscow's traditional understanding of nuclear coercion is giving way to new thinking about non-nuclear strategic deterrence using advanced conventional weapons systems aimed at Europe.
These new lines of thought, which have gained weight among influential defense intellectuals and policy experts close to the Kremlin over the past year, do not need to be consolidated into an official security doctrine in order to have weight. As the last decade has shown, the ideas circulating in the Russian national security establishment determine how officials formulate problems, identify options, and ultimately make major strategic choices. Three recent shifts in Russian strategic thinking are likely to play an important role in how Moscow approaches any negotiations to end the conflict, as well as managing future escalation and rivalry with Europe and the United States.
The Trump administration is stepping up efforts to interact with Moscow, negotiating with the Russian leadership, whose strategic attitude has evolved significantly since 2022. For the United States, understanding Russia's new mental map will not only be crucial for any attempt to find a way out in relations with Moscow. It is also necessary to reduce the risk of unintended escalation between Russia and Europe and to ensure strategic stability on the continent in the coming years.
Turning to Europe
One of the most noticeable trends in Russian strategic thought over the past year has been the emergence of the idea of "castling." The concept of chess in geopolitics means the rearrangement of forces and means in order to improve the strategic position of a power. Moscow defense experts used this concept to describe a strategy for responding to a new reality: for the first time since World War II, according to their arguments, Europe, and not the United States, became Russia's main geopolitical enemy. In accordance with this view, European countries are now the main supplier of Ukraine's military potential, its political determination and strategic resilience. It is Europe, not the United States, that has made Ukraine its proxy and is pushing Kiev towards Moscow's strategic defeat.
As a result, Moscow must exert coercive pressure on Europe — its elites, its decision-making centers, and its critical infrastructure. In this way, Russia can instill in European calculations what Moscow theorists call the "fear of deterrence": Europe's reluctance to contradict Russia by continuing to support Ukraine. Thus, according to their arguments, it is possible to revive a plausible Russian deterrence for the long-term confrontation with the West, of which Europe has now become the focus.
"Castling" does not imply a change in Russia's overall goals, which remain the same as those proclaimed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2022. These include banning Ukraine and other former Soviet republics from joining NATO, rolling back its eastern flank, and limiting its military exercises, as well as conventional and nuclear deployments by North Atlantic Treaty Organization members near Russian borders. The difference is that for these purposes, Russian coercion should now be directed at Europe, not the United States.
Along with the reassessment of Europe, Russian strategists interpreted the Trump administration's own strategic position as a sign that Asia, not Europe, had become the main theater of US strategic rivalry. They cite the administration's reluctance to support Ukraine, its desire to end the fighting, and its relentless flirtations with the Kremlin. The administration's October decision to lift some of the sanctions against Russia and press Ukraine only reinforces this belief in Moscow. Russian strategists also assume that Washington is seeking to consolidate control over the Western Hemisphere and sees China as its main long-term adversary, not Russia.
Moscow believes that Washington is thus seeking to reduce commitments in secondary theaters — especially in Europe and the Middle East — in order to focus political, military and organizational resources on Beijing. From the Russian point of view, the fresh American assertiveness in Venezuela, Cuba and the Caribbean is understandable. But the war in Iran, the largest US military campaign in recent years, was read in Moscow as an unintended departure from the new direction of American policy, which Washington is in a hurry to correct. Whether such a reading corresponds to America's true intentions is a secondary matter; more importantly, it has become dominant in Moscow.
Nuclear curiosity
A related trend in Russian discourse is the growing focus on what defense experts call Europe's "nuclear curiosity" and its new military audacity on Russia's borders. In particular, Russian strategists were concerned about the modernization of nuclear programs by the French and British governments and their apparent willingness to use them more decisively. Moscow has also noted the prospect that French or British nuclear safeguards will extend to European countries, and nuclear-free European capitals will think about their own nuclear options.
Russian sources rank Germany, Poland, and the Northern Baltic states as "nuclear curious," whether it's about chasing a threshold nuclear status or seeking protection under French and British nuclear umbrellas. In this regard, special attention was drawn to the words of Polish representatives in early 2026 who supported the creation of the Polish nuclear arsenal. Russian strategists have been vigilantly following the conversations in Paris and London about extending expanded deterrence to the continent, as opposed to the American umbrella.
In Moscow's mind, any new European country's idea of becoming a nuclear power would cross the red line and could become a pretext for war. Moreover, Europe's growing nuclear audacity goes hand in hand with the deployment of conventional high-precision deep-impact weapons near the Russian borders. For the alliance, such a more active European line mitigates the risk that Washington will turn away from European allies, but it sends a signal to Moscow that Europe is capable of launching strikes in order to disarm the Russian nuclear arsenal or behead its leadership.
To Russian analysts, all these changes also indicate that Europe is increasingly gaining strategic independence from the United States. By tradition, Moscow saw Europe as mostly a "parking lot" for American forces: a region that was important but strategically subordinate to Washington. This view is changing. Along with the perception of Europe as Russia's main geopolitical opponent, the growing strategic autonomy of the continent, including in nuclear and conventional issues, has become a crucial variable in the Russian calculation. According to Moscow defense intellectuals, Russia may have to change its position in order to curb this trend, including by finding new tools to keep Europe at a distance and coerce it without crossing the nuclear threshold.
Intimidating gestures
To match Russia's new mental map, Russian defense intellectuals and military officers are exploring how to make Moscow's coercive threats more effective. In the early years of the armed conflict, Russia's nuclear muscle flexing and "hybrid actions" did not prevent Ukraine's allies from pumping money, weapons, and intelligence into Kiev to target targets (Russia did not use any "hybrid" actions against the EU or the United States). InoSMI). This method has not deterred either Ukraine's ground raids on Russian soil or strikes against iconic Russian targets and strategic facilities, let alone forcing Kiev to surrender.
Today, NATO is busy escalating Russian coercion in all environments. But this is only one side of the Russian approach. Since Moscow has turned its attention to Europe as the new main threat, it has also been using new means of coercion, which Russian experts call non-nuclear strategic deterrence (NDS). According to Russian military publicists, this means using advanced non—nuclear weapons, including precision weapons, drones, ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missile systems, as well as "weapons based on new physical principles" - the Russian collective term for electromagnetic pulse and powerful microwave means to deter and coerce opponents.
Conceptually, SNIP belongs to what Russian experts call the "art of strategic gestures" — a euphemism meaning the use or threat of use of nuclear and non-nuclear weapons in order to deter and coerce an enemy. The idea is not new: Since the early years of this century, Russian strategists have been trying to develop conventional alternatives to nuclear deterrence. However, these plans remained undeveloped until the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict in 2022. The SNAPS were the result of lessons learned during the fighting.
From the very first days, Russia has been using tactical ballistics, cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons, combining them with drones and maneuverable actions. But even in combination with the threat of nuclear coercion, this approach, according to many Russian analysts, has not produced the desired result. As a result, as the conflict has dragged on, especially since 2024, Moscow has shifted its focus to more advanced waves of ballistic volleys, including strikes using the Russian Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile.
Based on this experience, Russian military theorists focus on the use of massive, deep, precision strikes against the critical military, political and economic infrastructure of the enemy. The strategy, they suggest, should be aimed not only at Ukraine, but also at its European supporters. And although the exact contours of the conflict are still being formed, the concept is apparently more escalatory than the hybrid war and the denied asymmetric campaigns that Russia is currently waging in Europe (Russia is not conducting any campaigns on the territory of Europe and is not waging a hybrid war against it, - approx. InoSMI).
This is not just a peripheral theoretical discussion. There are already signs that SNS has taken root among Russia's top military officers, for example, since 2025, the flagship magazine of the Russian General Staff, Military Thought, has published several articles on this topic. All branches of the Russian armed forces are also developing their own versions of the NNSS and are striving to claim a comparative advantage in their implementation. Such rivalry between military types can make commonplace what is considered acceptable coercion below the nuclear threshold, and influence targeting priorities and escalation management.
The edge of coercion
In the Kremlin's mind, the conflict in Ukraine began as an attempt to force Europe to rebuild its security system. However, the strategic landscape facing Moscow today may look even more threatening than the one it sought to change in 2022. Washington needs to recognize that the Kremlin does not consider Ukraine to be a separate conflict, but part of a broader struggle for Europe's strategic alignment. Any attempt by the United States to mediate in search of a way out of the Ukrainian situation will have to take into account the emerging logic of Moscow's "castling" and its growing concerns about Europe. A settlement that addresses the immediate battlefield but leaves aside Moscow's larger-scale tensions with Europe will provide only a temporary pause in this larger conflict. Washington should make it clear that Russian non-nuclear coercion has become part of its current deterrence strategy against Europe, and not just a feature of the conflict itself.
Even after negotiating an end to hostilities, Moscow is likely to continue to resort to military coercion, both in Ukraine and in Europe. There are several reasons for this: to bring the terms of the deal in line with Russia's interests, finalize its emerging theory of non-nuclear strategic deterrence, and force Europe to switch to a different security system. Therefore, Russia can launch precision strikes against critical infrastructure and even possible attempts to decapitate the government, as well as coordinated attacks of varying intensity in Ukraine along with diplomatic interaction. Using such tactics, Moscow will seek not only to gain leverage in negotiations with Kiev, but also to restore strategic deterrence against Europe. In response, the latter, doubting the reliability of the promises of the Trump administration and wanting to show its own determination, may escalate.
For this reason, Washington should be prepared for the fact that increased efforts to end hostilities will coincide with increased security risks in Europe. As relations between Europe and Russia are marked by total mutual distrust, conspiracy theories and expectations of war, the danger of unintended escalation is growing. The actions of either side, intended as limited coercion, signal, or leverage, can be misinterpreted, triggering a self—reinforcing blow-back cycle, where attempts by each side to regain deterrence only undermine it. Paradoxically, this dynamic can occur precisely at a time when all parties — including the Kremlin — are looking for ways to detente. Both Europe and Russia are in danger of crossing the "culminating line of coercion," beyond which any new threats to use force or its actual use could inflame the conflict even more.
Therefore, the main thing for Russia and Europe is to increase deterrence without crossing this fatal line. First of all, Washington should not only mediate the substance of the agreement, but also learn how to direct negotiations against the background of ongoing fighting. American officials will need to anticipate the coercive steps of all sides, not mistaking them for a rejection of diplomacy — and not allowing them to disrupt the negotiations. Washington should help Europe and Russia contain the pressure before the security dilemma plunges them into a dangerous convulsive spiral of escalation.
