Jonasz Rewiński

That Danish intelligence report is broadly in line with what the Baltics are saying. The threat assessment is unchanged here. Russia increasingly seeks to escalate its so-called hybrid attacks on the West, while a more conventional military strike on a NATO country - possibly as a false flag - is a low but real possibility. What happened in Leipzig shows though that this is definitely not just a story about the Baltics. All of Europe is threatened. Russia will escalate wherever it senses weakness. The really crucial bit in the intelligence is that Russia still wants to keep everything below the threshold of triggering a military response. And the purpose is to deter us from supporting Ukraine. A couple of things have confused the public perception of all this. Firstly, El Mundo released a story just before about CIA warnings of military drone strikes across Spain, France, and Italy. Macron made clear later that wasn’t true. The clue is that would pretty obviously trigger a strong, united European response - exactly what Russia wants to avoid - so that threat only works for Russia as a story about what Putin might do. Also, the Institute for the Study of War recently released a plausible-sounding analysis about how a Russian incursion into Estonia at Narva might unfold. Not too plausible to a lot of people who live there though, especially those in the Estonian Defence League. The analysis was based on a number of flawed assumptions about local dynamics, which hugely overstate Russian capabilities, including inside the town of Narva itself, and hugely understate Estonian capabilities in their own country. I was writing about that yesterday when the Danish report came through so decided to put it all together in this one article. TL;DR: We spend a lot of time arguing about what Putin will do next. But the future of our nations can never be dependent on the whims of one adversary. What really matters is ensuring our countries are secured against any adversary who would seek to harm us. Despite what “Russia experts” on here will tell you, Russia’s calculations about whether and how to escalate are not predetermined. They are constantly calculating the strength of our resilience. Narva is actually a great example of that resilience, exemplifying the whole-of-society approach to defence across Estonia and the Baltics and especially in Finland. People who live in Narva are not background actors waiting to take their cue in Russian narratives. It is an Estonian town, home to a lot of people who are trained and ready and proud to defend their country, Estonia, against any adversary and every day prove themselves to be capable of disrupting those who would harm their town. And that whole-of-society approach to defence goes much deeper, including through education on media literacy, for example, or how to spot attempts at grooming assets, and involving all civic society in crises exercises. Frankly, to all our fellow Europeans and to all fans of a rules-based world of sovereign nations, stop pitying Narva and start learning from them. And remember the best defence is to stand firm on our values and support Ukraine.