Editorial: Russia’s troubles are real — and they don’t free Europe but enlarge its responsibility

A shallow reading of Russia has always been Europe’s problem. For a long time it meant underestimating Vladimir Putin’s appetite for risk. It now threatens to mean underestimating his difficulties — and assuming those difficulties mean we can once again soften our own resolve. This is a mistake, and the cost falls on us.

The latest episode of Futucast puts the thinking in the right hands: the guest is Finland’s former Defence Forces commander, MP Jarmo Lindberg, and the conversation moves from intelligence work and media literacy to the front line of the war in Ukraine, the state of European defence, and the United States’ wavering ability to end the wars it has started. A tight hour-and-a-quarter package does what public discussion of this topic does far too rarely: it keeps the different layers separate.

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Source: Futucast #629 — Is Russia really in trouble? Guest Jarmo Lindberg, 11 May 2026 (in Finnish)

Begin with what Russia’s troubles actually are. Not imagined, not Western propaganda, but structural — and visible to the naked eye if one bothers to look. According to Western intelligence assessments, Russia’s cumulative losses in Ukraine have surpassed 600,000 killed and wounded, which is roughly the entire male population of a medium-sized European city for every two years of war. This is not repairable by strategic depth. This is demographic damage that accumulates, through the combined arithmetic of front-line deaths and a collapsed birth rate, so deep into the 2030s and 2040s that Russia’s own planning tables can no longer hide it.

Economically the picture is parallel, though paced differently. Russia’s GDP has not collapsed — sanctions have been circumvented skilfully, oil revenues have flowed through Chinese and Indian demand, and the war-economy ramp-up has lifted employment and demand in the short run. But inflation is pressing in double digits, the policy rate has been hiked to exceptional levels, the labour shortage is chronic, and high-value-added industry is eroding as the generation of competent engineers either moves to the defence sector, leaves the country, or runs out. The war industry produces in volume, but quality is a different story, and that shows on the front.

And yet — this is the point where European discussion usually stumbles. A weakened adversary does not mean the danger is past. A weakened adversary means he is more unpredictable, more willing to take a larger risk to save face, and more inclined to seek small wins where they come cheap. For Finland this means a rising — not falling — probability of hybrid influence, border probing, cyber attacks and information operations. Sustaining Putin’s domestic support requires something to look like a win, and when those are no longer found in the Donbas, they are sought elsewhere.

This is the context in which Europe must finally, seriously, take on the responsibility it has too long outsourced to Washington. The ReArm Europe initiative’s 800-billion-euro frame is the right direction and the right order of magnitude, but only the first move on the board. NATO’s 3-percent-of-GDP defence-spending target is in practice the new normal. Finland has done its part: NATO membership in 2023, a real-terms rise in the defence budget, an open discussion on reforming conscription, comprehensive continuous readiness on the eastern border. But one country’s choices do not replace European defence capability — they only supplement it. And it is precisely here that there is reluctance to take a hard look in the mirror: the state of Germany’s reserves, France’s industrial capacity, Italy’s political commitment to long and unglamorous work are all questions to which there are not yet sufficient answers.

More important still, defence capability is not only money and not only materiel. It is industrial base, trained workforce, supply-chain resilience and procurement speed, all of which have, across Europe and across the last decades, quietly eroded over years of peace dividend. European munitions production produces, in a year, a fraction of what the United States manages, and a smaller share still of what Russia has turned out under war-economy pressure. Changing this is not a matter of months. It is years — and it can only be done by treating as the workhorses the few European firms that can do this work, building around them an order flow that survives also into peacetime.

Alongside this runs the question of the United States, which the conversation with Lindberg did not skip. Washington’s ability and willingness to end wars it has started, or wars whose geopolitical pull it has taken on, has clearly weakened over the last decade. This is true regardless of who sits in the White House. Europe cannot build its long-term security solution on the assumption that the Americans will come to save the day as they have for the last 75 years. This is a cold ride, but true — and acknowledging it is the beginning of the solution, not the problem.

What follows from this for a Finnish company, a decision-maker, a citizen? First, that security policy is no longer a separate silo that can be delegated to the foreign ministry and the defence administration. It is part of industrial policy, of education policy, of energy policy, of business policy. When we talk about security of supply, we are talking about business. When we talk about artificial intelligence, we are talking about both civilian and defence use. When we talk about the green transition, we are talking about energy independence, which is also a security question. Among Finland’s growth companies there are already those who have grasped this — Iceye in satellite imaging, Patria in traditional heavy defence, and an increasing number of AI and cyber players in dual-use production. Their work is part of Finland’s answer.

Second, it must be acknowledged that media literacy is a security skill. Lindberg lifts this up in the episode, and it is not a small matter. The defensive capacity of a democracy depends on the citizens’ ability to distinguish sources, recognise attempts at influence, and tolerate the uncertainty that comes from not having a fast, certain answer to every question. The Finnish education system is internationally strong here, but its strength depends on active maintenance — not on the assumption that it holds up passively.

And third, most importantly: a weakening Russia does not free Europe. It enlarges Europe’s responsibility. The responsibility to recognise the unpredictability of a weakened adversary. The responsibility to build a defence and security-of-supply capability that does not rest on the American umbrella alone. The responsibility to do the structural work that no electoral term alone can complete, but which every electoral term can leave either a little better or a little worse. This is a generational project, and it has begun now — or it is left unbegun.

It would be easier to believe Russia’s troubles solve the problem for us. It would be more enjoyable if the United States were still the steady partner that paid the bill for the peace decades. It would be more pleasant if ReArm Europe’s funds were enough and the rest could be handled with old routine. But none of these is true. The price of European freedom has risen, and it is now paid in a currency Europe has long been unused to providing: in money, in decision-making speed, in industrial-policy boldness, and in the shared understanding that a freedom we do not build for ourselves will not remain our freedom.

To this it is time to admit: Europe can no longer outsource its own security to anyone else. Not to the United States, not to Russia’s troubles, not to yesterday’s peace. Only to ourselves.