Are Ukraine's neighbours also at risk?
Now that Moscow has effectively declared war on Kyiv, what about the rest of Eastern Europe? Could tanks soon be rolling into Estonia or Poland? Are more attacks in the offing? Commentators discuss what Europe must prepare for.
A dangerous precedent
Russia is about to impose the law of the strongest in Eastern Europe, warns political scientist Gérard Grunberg in Telos:
“The fact that Russia rejects the principle of an international community of sovereign states poses an existential threat to its neighbours, especially since Moscow is demanding that Nato withdraw from them. For what is happening in Ukraine is evident. If it suffices to invade part of a country to declare its regime illegitimate and destroy it, it follows that the phase we are now entering threatens to transform Eastern Europe into a jungle in which the only law is the law of the strongest. And right now the strongest is Russia.”
Reckon with hybrid attacks
Rzeczpospolita warns:
“It is to be expected that the physical attack on Ukraine will be accompanied by a cyberattack on key infrastructure - power plants, refineries, telecommunications networks, state systems - also in neighbouring countries. Nothing could increase the shock among Ukraine's neighbours more than system failures in hospitals, attacks on banking systems or even on such seemingly banal things as digital driving licences and identity cards. ... We are entering an era in which we as a society must learn together to be armed against hybrid attacks, cyber attacks and, not least, disinformation.”
This is not just about Ukraine
Politiken calls on the West to make sacrifices:
“Now we must show that conflicts can be won with anything but gunpowder, steel, bombs and blood. We must stand together. The situation demands decisive action on our part. And it demands that we refrain from thinking about how much of an invasion of Ukraine we can live with so we can salvage as much of our own prosperity as possible. Otherwise, Ukraine is just a prologue to a world in which authoritarian states like Russia take it upon themselves to decide who we must be - if we're allowed to be.”
Europe must reconfigure its policies
Europe must wake up now lest Russia further undermine the continent's security policy, Expresso warns:
“If the European response to this aggression in Ukraine is not strong and resolute, if Europe doesn't demand respect by reconfiguring its security and energy policies, all the countries of the former Warsaw Pact will feel a suffocating fear, and through this fear the extremist and pro-Russian forces will gain even more clout, making Putin's dream come true: to divide Europe along the old EEC borders. Putin knows what he wants in geopolitics. But what about us? Do we reduce geopolitics and the defence of values to our showers with water heated by Russian gas?”