IN THIS ISSUE

§01 · In focus — Defence, military, security
§02 · The local view — Berlin, Riga, Warsaw, Vienna and Zagreb
§03 · The podcast — Listen to the latest episode and join the conversation
§04 · From the newsrooms — Recent reporting from the lensEU network

§01 · IN FOCUS

Europe’s history exam: Can we move faster than fear?

For many years, Europe’s defence debate was strangely comfortable: full of strategies, summits and declarations. Beneath it lived an unspoken assumption: war is something that happens elsewhere, and Europe’s task is to manage risks, not truly prepare for the worst.

That assumption is over.

It collapsed in Ukraine’s trenches, under the ruins of cities destroyed by Russian missiles, in the Baltic Sea, where undersea cables and pipelines have become strategic targets, and in capitals where sabotage and cyberattacks are no longer hypothetical.

For Europe’s eastern flank, this is not a new realisation. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland did not wake up on 24 February 2022 and suddenly realise that Russia could be dangerous. We knew it long before. Much of the rest of Europe is only now learning the same language - not always willingly, but more clearly than before.

This is also how SAFE - the European Union’s new Security Action for Europe instrument - should be understood. But for the Baltic States, the discussion does not start with loans or procurement tables. It begins with the threat that never disappeared after the Second World War - and that too much of Europe was too willing to treat as history after 1991: Russian imperial power.

The Baltic memory is not paranoia

For Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, Russian aggression did not begin on 24 February 2022. It did not begin in 2014 with the occupation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine’s Donbas either. In our historical memory, the Russian threat is far older: soviet occupation, deportations, the destruction of lives, the suppression of language and culture, and the attempt to break the state.

Russia has never been simply a “complicated neighbour” for the Baltic States. It has been an imperial state which has changed flags, leaders and ideologies, but has too often retained the same instinct: to see the freedom of its neighbours as its own loss. This experience lives in our families, cemeteries, archives, deportees’ stories, language policy and everyday security thinking.

That is why defence policy in Latvia and the wider Baltic region is not a paper exercise. It is a response to a concrete historical lesson: an aggressor must not be appeased through concessions, as too many European leaders once believed, because an aggressor too often interprets concessions not as peace, but as an invitation to continue.

The question is not how ambitious Europe’s declarations sound. The question is whether Europe is finally ready to act on the fact that the Russian threat is real, long-term and structural, rather than a temporary deviation of Putin’s policy.

Even if Russia stopped the war in Ukraine tomorrow, withdrew from occupied territories and returned Crimea, Europe would have no right to return to its old comfort. The transformation of an aggressor state is not proven by press conferences, memoranda, peace agreements or new faces at the long Kremlin table. It is proven only by long-term, verifiable and consistent actions.

The Baltic lesson is uncomfortable but simple: Russia cannot be trusted because it says it has changed. Russia can only begin to be trusted if it proves, for decades, that it no longer behaves like an empire. And even then, not with enthusiasm, but with caution.

Europe has already seen the price of self-deception. After the soviet collapse, too many believed history had ended. After the 2008 war in Georgia, many continued to trade and hope. After Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea, many still searched for “normalisation”. After 2022, there is no longer any excuse.

For Latvia, defence is not an abstract budget line. It is air defence over cities, ammunition stocks, secure communications, protection of ports, power grids, railways, data centres and borders. It is the ability to detect and respond to hostile action before it grows into crisis - or war.

That is why SAFE matters here - not as a Brussels acronym, but as one practical test of whether Europe is ready to turn this historical lesson into capabilities. 

A SAFE loan will not save Europe. Discipline might.

SAFE offers up to €150 billion in EU-backed loans for faster defence investment, mainly through joint procurement. But the real subject is not SAFE. The real subject is European credibility. Will the EU finally do what it says: buy together, produce faster, arm seriously and treat Russia as the long-term threat it has already proved itself to be?

The almost €3.5 billion available to Latvia under SAFE is both opportunity and responsibility. Drones, counter-drone systems, air defence, border reinforcement and support for Ukraine are not abstract policy choices. They are the practical reality of a country that cannot afford illusions.

Sabotage is how war enters peace

The word “sabotage” has returned to Europe’s political vocabulary with uncomfortable force. It now belongs in the same sentence as undersea cables, ports, energy systems and cyber infrastructure.

Sabotage is meant to blur the line between peace and war. When missiles hit a city, the nature of the attack is not in doubt. A severed cable is different: it can be disputed, delayed, denied, wrapped in technical explanations or blamed on accident. That ambiguity is the point.

Hybrid warfare works because it exploits hesitation. Democracies want evidence, legal clarity and proportionate responses. These instincts distinguish democracies from aggressors. But hostile actors know how to use them against us.

Europe’s defence debate can no longer be separated from resilience. Tanks and missiles matter. So do repair vessels, cybersecurity teams, ammunition stocks, public communication and public trust in institutions.

Security is no longer only what happens at a military base. It is also what happens at a telecommunications company, a port authority, a municipality, a school and a newsroom. The role of trusted media is not to militarise public life or turn every incident into a conspiracy, but to explain the pattern without feeding fear. Europe is less safe than it wanted to believe - but not helpless.

Without security, there is no stable welfare state. Without defence, there is no protected democracy. Without industrial capacity, there is no strategic autonomy.

There is no cost-free security

This shift requires political honesty Europe has often avoided. Money does not grow on trees. If Europe wants to spend much more on defence, that money will have to come from somewhere: social promises, green transition budgets, other public investments, or higher debt and taxes. There is no painless version.

This is where the defence debate becomes politically dangerous. Radical populists will promise Europeans the one thing serious politicians can no longer honestly promise: that life can continue almost unchanged. Bigger pensions, cheaper energy, no difficult reforms, no trade-offs, no sacrifice, no consequences. In its own way, this is also appeasement - not towards the Kremlin directly, but inside our own societies. It tells voters that the world has changed, but Europe does not have to.

That is a lie. And it has to be challenged plainly - by politicians and by trusted media.

Europe does not need the next Orbán or Fico selling voters the fantasy of a cost-free future. It needs politicians willing to say the uncomfortable thing: tomorrow will not automatically be better. Spending 5% of GDP on defence, or moving towards a wartime level of readiness, will not allow us to keep every social guarantee, subsidy and political comfort exactly as it is. Something will have to give.

Russia already lives in a war economy - and will continue to live in that logic even if the dictator in the Kremlin one day has a different surname. Europe cannot defend itself with peacetime illusions against a Russian state that has chosen war as its organising principle.

Europe can still spend more and spend badly: create instruments, preserve old habits and announce readiness while procurement remains slow, fragmented and politically cautious.

Deterrence is built, not declared

Success will not be measured by signed agreements or impressive sums. It will be measured by whether soldiers receive capabilities faster, whether European factories expand production, whether Ukraine is treated as a source of battlefield knowledge, and whether frontline states are heard when they say urgency is not rhetoric, but daily reality.

That is why European Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius’ phrase about Europe building a “hard-power reality” is useful. We do not lack strategies; we lack capabilities. We do not lack declarations; we lack ammunition, air defence, drones, secure communications and factories that can produce fast enough. Too often, Europe lacks the political discipline to act as if the threats it describes were real.

Deterrence is not created by declarations. It is created by capabilities, credibility and time. Europe has already lost too much time. But it has not lost the ability to act.

The larger question is whether Europe has truly understood something: not merely reacted emotionally to the war in Ukraine, but politically and industrially accepted that the Russian threat will be long-term. That means ammunition, drones, air defence, border reinforcement, cyber resilience, critical infrastructure protection and the ability to produce in Europe, rather than hoping that we can simply buy everything from outside Europe.

For the Baltic States, this is not hysteria. It is experience. And very often, that experience has been more accurate than Western Europe’s diplomatic optimism.

The old European comfort rested on the belief that security could be taken for granted. The new European realism must rest on the understanding that security has to be created - politically, militarily, industrially and socially.

SAFE will not make Europe safe by itself. No instrument can. But it can help answer the question Europe can no longer avoid:

when fear finally arrived, did we merely describe the threat - or did we build the capacity to deter it?

— Toms Ostrovskis, editor-in-chief, TVNET GRUPA

§02 · THE LOCAL VIEW

§03 · THE PODCAST

SAFE : Can Europe Rebuild its Defence Together ?  

“This episode explores the European Union’s new €150 billion SAFE programme, designed to help Member States strengthen their defence capabilities through joint financing and procurement. It examines how countries such as Croatia, Latvia and Poland are using the initiative, while highlighting debates over spending priorities, industrial benefits and strategic autonomy.”

§04 · FROM THE NEWSROOMS