By Riyadh Jalil Jumaa
The heart of Eurasia is witnessing a complex strategic geopolitical and geoeconomic struggle. Within this confrontation, Russia is attempting either to find a path toward a rapid military victory or to preserve its international standing as a major power seeking to reshape the structure of the international order. This, in turn, means accepting the conditions of peace by entering into direct negotiations with Ukraine.
On the other side, the European Union is working to reengineer Europe’s regional security architecture through a range of political, economic and military mechanisms. By its very nature, this means maintaining geographic pressure on Russia and increasing its economic and military attrition. Russian military leaders did not anticipate, at the beginning of the war in 2022, the scale of this attrition or its military and economic dimensions. NATO, however, found in that attrition a valuable opportunity to weaken Russia and constrain its ability to maneuver and expand.
After the Russian bear was lured toward the salmon grounds, following significant effort and pressure through the threat of Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it found itself in a shallow terrain clouded by uncertainty, having effectively destroyed its own route back.
During the first years of the war, Vladimir Putin achieved significant advances, reflected in Russian control over several strategic areas in northern and southern Ukraine, including Kherson, the city of Mariupol, and parts of Zaporizhzhia and Donbas. Yet that major advance soon collided with a counteroffensive that forced the Russian bear into rapid withdrawals and the loss of several strategic areas, including northern Ukraine along the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy axes, northeastern Ukraine in the Kharkiv region, and southern Ukraine along the Kherson axis.
This was followed by shifting fronts during 2023–2026, particularly in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk. Such carefully planned attrition was not the result of Ukraine’s military and economic capabilities alone, but also of NATO’s extensive military and economic support for Kyiv, in addition to direct assistance provided by European Union states through their territories.
Poland stands out in this context as a model of both deterrence and military support for Ukraine. With its significant economic weight and as one of the European Union’s largest spenders on its military arsenal, ranking first among EU states in this regard, Poland turned its territory into a bridge for direct military assistance to Ukraine.
Its territory has repeatedly faced attacks involving Russian drones as well as destructive cyberattacks targeting infrastructure, including hospitals, health centers and energy systems. Poland’s role in this conflict also reflects a preventive strategy aimed at securing its shared border with Belarus, Moscow’s strategic ally and a central component of its nuclear posture.
Against this background, the principal areas of Russian attrition in the Eurasian heartland, as well as the main areas in which the European Union has sought to establish strategic deterrence toward Russia, can be outlined as follows:
First: Areas of Attrition
The points of attrition affecting the Russian bear are no longer confined to the European continent. They have expanded to include the geographic and coastal belts surrounding the heartland — the “Inner Crescent” — particularly the Middle East, through the following arenas:
1. Syria
On September 30, 2015, Russia began its military intervention in Syria. The intervention came in response to the regime of Bashar al-Assad after its position had significantly weakened on the ground.
Russia saw this move as a geopolitical outlet toward warm waters and as an opportunity to build military bases on the Mediterranean, while at the same time reducing the military and economic pressure it was facing in Eastern Europe by benefiting from Syrian oil and other resources to help sustain the war in Ukraine.
This expansion, however, soon encountered new actors equipped with complex political and military tools.
France, a member of the European Union, began tightening pressure on the Russian military presence in Syria through diplomatic, political and military means.
Politically and diplomatically, France confronted Russia’s use of the veto and was among the first states to advance resolutions at the United Nations Security Council against the former Syrian regime, Moscow’s ally, while describing crimes committed by Assad against his own people as war crimes.
France was also among the first states to recognize the current Syrian opposition and provide it with military support.
NATO, meanwhile, did not remain a passive observer. Turkey and the United States joined France in efforts to exhaust and limit Russia’s role in Syria by providing military and logistical support to the Syrian opposition, culminating, according to this trajectory, in the withdrawal of Russian military forces from Syria in 2024.
2. Iran
The equation is somewhat different in the case of Iran.
The dynamics of mutual attrition predated the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. Iran had been a trusted strategic partner for Moscow in the war in Ukraine, providing substantial military and economic assistance in Russia’s confrontation with Kyiv.
On the military side, Iranian support took the form of low-cost drones, which Russian forces used extensively to strike several Ukrainian military targets, including vehicles and military positions.
Economically, Iran’s shadow fleet, consisting of 500 tankers, together with Russia’s shadow fleet of 450 tankers, according to statistics from Western research centers, played a major role in smuggling Iranian oil to Russia in an attempt to break and circumvent international sanctions imposed on Moscow by the United States and the European Union through illegal, indirect and complex mechanisms involving both the Russian and Iranian sides.
This arrangement gave Russia a form of qualitative advantage and helped sustain attrition in eastern Ukraine.
The equation changed, however, with the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. After Russia had relied significantly on Iranian oil transferred through the shadow fleet to sustain and prolong its war effort, it lost part of this valuable asset because of U.S. sanctions and the military maritime blockade imposed on Iran.
The United States was able to seize several vessels belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet and confiscate their cargoes, while Iranian military support to Moscow against Ukraine shifted into a major source of attrition and a defensive preoccupation centered increasingly on the Iranian system itself.
Second: Areas of Strategic Deterrence
Against the backdrop of the ongoing war, the European Union has reengineered its security and military architecture across several political, military and economic areas. These can be summarized as follows:
1. Reviving the Weimar Triangle
Amid the military and economic consequences of the war for European Union states, Germany, Poland and France called in 2024 for the revival of the Weimar Triangle and for greater coordination of positions toward the war.
The objective was to strengthen military and economic support for Kyiv, including through equipment and long-range weapons, in an effort to contain Russian expansion and establish deterrence along the continent’s eastern flank.
2. The Three Seas Initiative
The foundations of this initiative were formally established in 2016, bringing together 13 European Union countries in the fields of transportation, energy and digitalization.
Its efforts and achievements expanded significantly during Russia’s war against Ukraine, particularly in building ports, railway networks and energy transportation routes, as well as strengthening the protection of digital infrastructure.
The objective was to improve deterrence against Russian cyberattacks targeting digital systems and critical infrastructure.
3. The Missile Shield
In 2024, Poland built a missile-defense military base in cooperation with the United States in northwestern Poland, approximately 100 miles west of Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave.
The base contains interceptor missiles designed to counter long-range missile threats, as part of an effort to deter Russian missile threats against Poland and other European Union states.
4. The Eastern Shield
The Eastern Shield is one of Europe’s largest and most complex military projects.
Its foundation was laid in 2024, with completion scheduled for 2030. It consists of an integrated network of fortifications, shelters, observation towers and advanced air-defense systems.
More significantly, it stretches approximately 700 kilometers along Poland’s eastern border with Belarus, Moscow’s strategic ally.
5. Russian-Belarusian Military Exercises
At the center of the ongoing confrontation, Russia and its ally Belarus have conducted several military exercises involving a range of long-range strategic weapons.
Among the best known was the Zapad exercise in 2025, during which Russia showcased strategic weapons close to Poland’s border.
The demonstration that generated the greatest concern among European Union countries, however, came in 2026. During exercises with Belarus and several other participating countries, including India, Russia used nuclear weapons in exercises near the Polish border.
The message was clear: halt military support for Ukraine, or destruction could follow.
Conclusion
Europe is witnessing complex dynamics of security and military reengineering aimed at strengthening deterrence against Moscow.
Russia, meanwhile, is attempting to find direct and decisive mechanisms for managing the conflict without suffering further military and economic attrition, while also seeking to keep the confrontation away from the core of its own political system.
Moscow fears that the conflict could be brought into the heart of the Russian political system and lead to its collapse — an objective that, according to this analysis, the European Union does not dismiss.
European actors seek to shift the confrontation inside Russia as part of a long-term strategy of attrition and potential political fragmentation, possibly through a military coup led by senior officers dissatisfied with Putin’s policies and military decisions, followed by his prosecution, in an attempt to bring Russia into the European family and end the Russian-European conflict.
Putin, for his part, is fully aware of this objective and is attempting, as far as possible, to keep the confrontation away from his political system and from a Western model that he views as threatening the stability of that system.
He has therefore relied on threats or warnings that the European map itself could be erased should NATO continue its eastward expansion.
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