Category: Ukraine War

The Week

Russia has spent a ‘substantial portion’ of its advanced missiles to destroy Ukraine’s energy grid

Peter Weber, Senior editor – November 17, 2022

Russia fired another round of missiles across Ukraine early Thursday, once more aimed primarily at critical civilian infrastructure, two days after launching 96 cruise missiles at Ukraine, it’s largest barrage in nine months of war. “Continued strikes at this scale are drawing deeply upon Russia’s reserves of conventional cruise missiles, as degrading Ukrainian’s national infrastructure has become a key element of Russia’s strategic approach to the campaign,” Britain’s Ministry of Defense said early Thursday.

Russia’s military “likely used a substantial portion of its remaining high-precision weapon systems” in Tuesday’s coordinated missile strike, the Institute for the Study of War research group assessed.

Ukraine says its air defense systems shot down 75 of Tuesday’s missiles and 10 of 11 Iranian-made attack drones. Ukraine also shot down at least two cruise missiles over Kyiv on Thursday. Others got through, killing at least five civilians in Zaporizhzhia province.

NATO, Polish, and U.S. officials said a Soviet-era S-300 rocket that hit Poland on Tuesday, killing two men, was likely a Ukrainian air defense misfire or possibly the remnants of a Ukrainian S-300 after it intercepted its targeted Russian missile. “Let me be clear: This is not Ukraine’s fault,” NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday. “Russia bears ultimate responsibility as it continues its illegal war against Ukraine.”

Russia’s “relentless and intensifying barrage of missiles” is systematically “destroying Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, depriving millions of heat, light, and clean water,” The New York Times reports. “With each loss on the battlefield, Moscow has stepped up its campaign the subjugate Ukraine by targeting civilian infrastructure.”

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, the national electric utility, told the Times on Wednesday that Russia’s military is using electrical engineers familiar with Ukraine’s Soviet-era energy grid to pick missile targets that will cause the most damage to critical infrastructure.

Through relentless work and shared sacrifice, “Ukraine has managed to find a way so far to weather the relentless assaults,” the Times reports. But after Tuesday’s attack, about 40 percent of Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure is damaged or destroyed, as are crucial water systems.

“The deliberate targeting of the civilian power grid, causing excessive collateral damage and unnecessary suffering on the civilian population, is a war crime,” U.S. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday. He added that while Russian can make Ukrainians suffer, its shot at conquering Ukraine is now “close to zero.”

Associated Press

A ‘barbed wire curtain’ rises in Europe amid war in Ukraine

Vanessa Gerat – November 17, 2022

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The long border between Finland and Russia runs through thick forests and is marked only by wooden posts with low fences meant to stop stray cattle. Soon, a stronger, higher fence will be erected on parts of the frontier.

Earlier this month, Polish soldiers began laying coils of razor wire on the border with Kaliningrad, a part of Russian territory separated from the country and wedged between Poland and Lithuania. Cameras and an electronic monitoring system also will be installed on the area that once was guarded only by occasional patrols of border guards.

The fall of the Berlin Wall more than 30 years ago symbolized hope for cooperation with Moscow. Now, Russia’s war in Ukraine has ushered in a new era of confrontation in Europe — and the rise of new barriers of steel, concrete and barbed wire. These, however, are being built by the West.

“The Iron Curtain is gone, but the ‘barbed wire curtain’ is now unfortunately becoming the reality for much of Europe,” said Klaus Dodds, a professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London. “The optimism that we had in Europe after 1989 is very much now gone.”

Fear and division have replaced the euphoria when Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall and broke off chunks of the barrier erected in 1961 by Communist leaders. It stretched for 155 kilometers (nearly 100 miles), encircling West Berlin until 1989, when East German authorities opened crossings following mass protests. Within a year, East and West Germany were reunited.

Some countries in the European Union began building border fences as a response to more than 1 million refugees and other migrants entering southern Europe from the Middle East and Africa in 2015 alone. In 2015 and 2016, Russia ushered thousands of asylum-seekers, also mostly from the Middle East, to border checkpoints in northern Finland.

When relations with Belarus deteriorated after its authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko was declared the winner of the 2020 election widely seen as fraudulent, the government in Minsk sent thousands of migrants across the EU’s frontiers in what Dodds called “hybrid warfare.” In response, Poland and Lithuania erected walls along their borders with Belarus.

Michal Baranowski, head of the Warsaw office of the German Marshal Fund think tank, said most security analysts believe Belarus coordinated its effort with Moscow, “in effect destabilizing our borders ahead of war in Ukraine.”

Fearing another migration crisis as a response to sanctions against Moscow because of the nearly nine-month war in Ukraine, European leaders have begun hardening their borders.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin announced plans to fortify parts of her country’s 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) border — the longest with any EU member. Moscow has threatened “serious military-political consequences” against Finland and Sweden for seeking to join NATO, and Marin said the fortifications would help defend the nation against the “hybrid threat” of possible large-scale and irregular migration orchestrated by the Kremlin.

The new barriers offer little protection from missiles or tanks. Governments instead expect the walls, fences and electronic surveillance to provide better control of their borders and to stop large migrant surges.

Dodds says Russia has been weaponizing migration for several years as it engages in a “civilization conflict with its European neighbors.”

Russia bombed and harassed Syria’s population in 2015 “in a deliberate attempt to create a humanitarian crisis,” he said.

“I think one of the difficulties we sometimes have outside of Russia is in actually appreciating quite how cynical, quite how calculating, quite how deliberate some of this work is,” said Dodds, author of “The New Border Wars: The Conflicts that Will Define Our Future.”

Russia’s use of migrants to create social discord in places like Poland, Lithuania and Latvia has led to those governments not offering them the chance to apply for asylum and refusing them entry in many cases — as has happened in other European countries like Greece and Hungary.

Those pushed back to Belarus have been subjected to abuse by Belarusian guards who initially helped them cross the borders, according to human rights groups.

Human rights activists in Poland have protested the the 5½-meter (18-foot) steel wall erected along 186 kilometers (115 miles) of its border with Belarus, arguing that it keeps out the weakest people but not the most determined.

Anna Alboth of the Minority Rights Group has spent months at that border and said she has seen people use ladders to scale the fence or tunnel under it.

Since the wall was finished last summer, about 1,800 migrants who made it inside Poland and found themselves in forests desperate for food, water or medicine have called Grupa Granica, an umbrella organization Alboth co-founded.

“It’s very difficult territory, the east of Poland,” she said. “There are a lot of animals. I had a situation where I went to one group and I stepped on people who were half-conscious. I am sure there were many people like this.”

She said she recently encountered groups of women from Sudan who appeared to be human trafficking victims, as well as medical students from Africa who were in their fifth year of studies in Russia.

“They said ‘Russia is falling apart and we want to live in a normal country,’” Alboth said.

A Polish government security official, Stanislaw Zaryn, acknowledged the border wall doesn’t stop everyone seeking to cross illegally, but added: “It does allow our forces to act rapidly and more efficiently, without the need to deploy as much manpower as before.”

Both that wall and the fence with Kaliningrad “convey a strong message to Minsk and Moscow that Poland takes the security and integrity of its borders extremely seriously,” Zaryn said. “I believe that Belarus and Russia will think twice before pursuing again the weaponization of migration.”

Dodds said he understands the impulse to build walls but warns that they rarely work as intended, often pushing migrants onto more hazardous journeys.

While militarized borders might be popular, they also tend to dehumanize desperate migrants, who often are willing to risk the danger of border crossings for a better life.

Building such walls and fences “sucks empathy and compassion from our societies,” Dodds said.

Jari Tanner contributed to this report from Helsinki.

Reuters

Russia pounds Ukraine in heaviest missile strikes of war

Max Hunder, Pavel Polityuk and Dan Peleschuk – November 15, 2022

KYIV (Reuters) – Russia pounded cities and energy facilities across Ukraine on Tuesday, killing at least one person and causing widespread power outages in what Kyiv said was the heaviest wave of missile strikes in nearly nine months of war.

Missiles rained down on cities including the capital Kyiv, Lviv and Rivne in the west, Kharkiv in the northeast, Kryvyi Rih and Poltava in the centre, Odesa and Mikolaiv in the south and Zhytomyr in the north.

A body was pulled out of a residential building that was hit and set ablaze in central Kyiv, and a senior presidential official said the power situation was “critical” after heavy damage to energy infrastructure.

In a video posted online, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned Ukrainians that more missile strikes were possible but added: “We are working, we will restore everything, we will survive.”

Power was knocked out in areas of several cities including Kyiv, Lviv and Kharkiv, and the national grid operator announced emergency electricity outages in northern and central regions, and in Kyiv.

Kyiv’s mayor said half of the capital was without electricity. The mayor of Lviv said 80% of the city had no electricity so lighting, water and heating supplies were off. City authorities in Vinnytsia in west-central Ukraine were told to stock up on water following damage to a pumping station.

“This is the most massive shelling of the power system since the beginning of the war,” Energy Minister German Galushchenko said.

Air force spokesperson Yuiy Ihnat said more than 100 missiles had been fired at Ukraine, surpassing the 84 fired by Russia on Oct. 10 in what was previously the heaviest air strikes.

The country’s biggest mobile phone provider warned of possible signal outages, and the transport system suffered disruptions in several areas.

SMOULDERING BUILDING

In the capital, a five-storey apartment block was left smouldering after being hit by what residents said appeared to be shot-down missile parts. Rescue workers and medics were quickly on the scene.

“I was in the apartment during the air raid warning. I saw a bright light in my window, and understood that something was coming. Then I heard the sound, as it was nearing,” said Oleksandra, 22, who lives in the apartment block.

“I saw from my window as the rocket was flying, a bright fire, and the sound of something flying very close by. I immediately went outside… I saw people were running out of our building and that there was smoke.

“The he last flat I lived in was also hit,” she added. “Thankfully I was abroad at the time.”

The attacks followed days after a humiliating retreat by Russian forces from the southern city of Kherson and coincided with a summit of the Group of 20 nations in Bali that was dominated by discussion of the war Ukraine.

“This is what Russia has to say on the issue of peace talks,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter. “Stop proposing Ukraine to accept Russian ultimatums! This terror can only be stopped with the strength of our weapons & principles.”

(Additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Alex Richardson)

Reuters

Teenager’s defiance sums up Ukraine’s resilience amid Russian onslaught

Felix Hoske and Anna Voitenko – November 9, 2022

Outages hit family living in the bombed out village near Kyiv

MOSHCHUN, Ukraine (Reuters) – In a village devastated by Russia’s abortive assault on nearby Kyiv in March, Kateryna Tyshchenko lives in a cramped temporary housing container next to the ruins of her fiancé’s family home that was destroyed by an artillery shell.

Tyshchenko, 18, shares the container with her in-laws, fiancé and her nine-year-old half-sister. Regular power outages caused by Russian strikes on Ukraine’s vital infrastructure mean they can only heat their tiny makeshift home sporadically.

Next week, night-time temperatures are forecast to drop below zero in the village of Moshchun, where some residents complain they have to forage for firewood in a forest that contains landmines in order to heat their homes.

Tyshchenko, who does not own a wood-burning heater, says she has no idea what lies ahead but she has no plans to abandon her home and village this winter even if things get much worse.

“Even if we don’t have power for good, we’ll endure it and survive. We just don’t want to be shelled – everything else we can endure. The most important thing is that the (Russians) don’t return. Apart from that, everything is fine,” she said.

With the war in its ninth month, Russia is pounding energy infrastructure with drones and missiles, leaving millions of Ukrainians without power and even access to running water in a country where winter temperatures regularly hit -15 Celsius.

Moscow said last month it had launched strikes against energy, military and communications infrastructure as retaliation for what it called a “terrorist” attack on Russia’s bridge to the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

Ukraine says the Russians are the “terrorists” and that it is fighting a defensive war for its survival.

Despite the hardships, many ordinary Ukrainians are enduring and adapting, and there is little sign for now of civilians turning on their leaders or pressuring them to negotiate a swift end to the conflict.

EMERGENCY BLACKOUTS

Moshchun, which is surrounded by pine forests and had a pre-war population of 800, was never fully occupied, but it was the site of fierce fighting before Russian troops withdrew in late March. Some 650-700 residents are still living in Moshchun, the local mayor said.

Tyshchenko fled Moshchun on March 4 and returned in April to find her home destroyed. Her own parents now live with friends while she moved into the housing container put up by volunteer activists in September.

Moshchun, located a few miles (km) north of the capital Kyiv, has been particularly badly affected by the Russian air strikes on nationwide infrastructure that began on Oct. 10.

Authorities say 40% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been seriously damaged, forcing them to introduce rolling blackouts. At such times Tyshchenko’s household cannot use their sole electric heater and mobile phone signals cut out.

“I hope some volunteers will bring us a firewood boiler before winter starts,” said Tyshchenko, who has been unemployed since the invasion. She has put off wedding plans until she and her fiance have a proper home.

“We didn’t have power at all for a month and a half (when we returned to Moshchun). We lived here without crying and complaining.”

A travelling dentist service operating out of the back of an ambulance visited the village this week, using a generator given to them by residents to power their tools because there was no electricity.

“Yesterday, the pain in my tooth got much worse. I was thinking of taking medicine, but I didn’t know which pills to take,” said Antonina Telychko, a 70-year-old resident who had a bad tooth removed in the ambulance.

“I thought I wouldn’t endure until the next day.”

PUBLIC RESOLVE

The public’s resilience may prove a vital factor in the war, as Russia tries to break Ukrainian morale and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy insists that peace talks can only resume once Moscow gives back all the land it has occupied.

Anton Gushetsky, deputy director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, said polling data showed 86% of Ukrainians still supported the idea of continued resistance against Russia.

The poll was conducted almost two weeks after Russia began its infrastructure attacks and there is no evidence, for now, of any impact on Ukrainian resolve to battle Russia, he said.

“The winter months could affect the situation and perhaps slightly more people could support negotiations… But we do not (currently) see a tendency to make concessions with Russia,” he said.

Tyshchenko is determined to stay put.

“My soul belongs here, it’s my yard, and living here means I can work in my garden and yard,” she said. “But when you stay with your friends, you can’t work in the yard because it’s not yours.”

(Writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Gareth Jones)

The Week

Russia’s ‘catastrophic’ missing men problem

Peter Weber, Senior editor – November 5, 2022

“Where have all the flowers gone?” asks the famous 1960s antiwar song. In Moscow today, The New York Times reports, the question is: Where have all the men gone?

The answer to both questions is, in part, the same: To the graveyards of soldiers. But a lot of the missing men of Moscow have also fled Russian President Vladimir Putin’s draft for his war in Ukraine. In fact, demographers say Russia may not recover for generations, if ever.

“Putin spent years racing against Russia’s demographic clock, only to order an invasion of Ukraine that’s consigning his country’s population to a historic decline,” Bloomberg News reports. Here’s a look at what demographer Alexei Raksha calls Russia’s “perfect storm” of demographic decline:

So where have all the young men gone?

Putin says his recent mobilization drafted about 300,000 men, 82,000 of whom are already in Ukraine. Another 300,000 Russians are believed to have fled to other countries to avoid the draft. The Pentagon estimated in August, before Kyiv’s autumn counteroffensive, that Russia had incurred about 80,000 casualties in Ukraine, including wounded troops. “I feel like we are a country of women now,” Moscow resident Stanislava, 33, told the Times. “I was searching for male friends to help me move some furniture, and I realized almost all of them had left.”

Aleksei Ermilov, the founder of Russia’s Chop-Chop barber shop empire, tells the Times you “can see the massive relocation wave more in Moscow and St. Petersburg than in other cities, partially because more people have the means to leave there.”

The urban professionals who could blithely avoid thinking about the war over the summer did get a rude awakening when the Kremlin started pressing them into military service. The ranks of Moscow’s “intelligentsia, who often have disposable income and passports for foreign travel,” have “thinned noticeably — in restaurants, in the hipster community, and at social gatherings like dinners and parties,” the Times reports. But ethnic and religious minorities in some regions have it worse.

In the remote far north of Russia and along the Mongolia border, in the regions of Sakha and Buryatia, mobilization rates are up to six times higher than in Russia’s European regions, according to Yekaterina Morland at the Asians of Russia Foundation. Indigenous people in those regions were “rounded up in their villages” and enlistment officers scoured the tundra and “handed out summonses to anyone they met,” Vladimir Budaev of the Free Buryatia Foundation told The Associated Press.

How has the male exodus affected Russian demography?

Russia already had a huge gender imbalance before the Ukraine invasion, dating back to massive battlefield losses in World War II, Paul Goble writes at Eurasia Daily Monitor. Results from the 2021 census are expected to show that Russia has 10.5 million more women than men, almost the same disparity as a decade ago — the double blow being that Russian men at “prime child-bearing age” are dying in Ukraine or fleeing Putin’s draft, which will “further depress the already low birthrates in the Russian Federation and put the country’s demographic future, already troubled, at even greater risk.”

“The mobilization is upending families at perhaps the most fraught moment ever for Russian demographics, with the number of women of childbearing age down by about a third in the past decade” amid the country’s broader population decline, Bloomberg reports. “While demographic traumas usually play out over decades, the fallout of the invasion is making the worst scenarios more likely — and much sooner than expected.”

Continuing with the Ukraine war and mobilization efforts until the end of next spring would be “catastrophic” for Russia, Moscow demographer Igor Efremov tells Bloomberg. It would likely bring birth rates down to 1 million between mid-2023 and mid-2024, dropping the fertility rate to 1.2 children per woman, a low mark Russia hit only once, in the 1999-2000 period. “A fertility rate of 2.1 is needed to keep populations stable without migration,” Bloomberg adds, and currently Russia is facing “immigration outflows” and serious questions about its “ability to attract workers from abroad.”

The war is bad for Ukraine, too, right?

Yes — and like Russia, Ukraine was already hurting demographically even before the invasion, Lyman Stone, a research fellow at the conservative Institute for Family Studies, wrote in March. “Both Russia and Ukraine have low fertility rates, but in recent years, Russia has implemented pro-natal policies that have helped the country avoid extreme fertility declines,” while Ukraine has been relatively lacking in such policies as it struggled through 15 years of war and political and economic upheaval.

Given Russia’s much larger population and less severe recent population decline, “Ukraine’s position compared to Russia’s is steadily eroding,” and “this trend will continue at an even greater pace in the future as the gaps in fertility rates between the two countries grow wider,” Stone predicts. But “core demographic factors like birth rates and migration rates,” while important, “are not destiny,” and Ukraine has “turned demographic decline into military rejuvenation” through alliance-building and the “sharp willingness” of Ukrainians to fight.

Moreover, if Russia succeeds in annexing significant parts of Ukraine, Putin will have succeeded in bulking up Russia’s population — but he’ll also be adding Ukraine’s “unfavorable demographics” to his own problems, Bloomberg notes.

Might there be a Russian post-war baby boom?

It’s possible. Sometimes wars “lead to higher fertility,” as when “sudden bursts of conception” occur as men deploy for battle, Goble writes at Eurasia Daily Monitor. “For example, monthly birth data from the 1940s clearly shows that U.S. baby boom began not as the G.I.’s returned from war, but as they were leaving for war.” After the fighting stops, he adds, “wars may trigger a surge of nationalist ideas making people susceptible to pro-natal ideas and policies, even as so-called ‘replacement fertility’ often leads families to ‘respond’ to high-casualty events by having ‘replacement’ children.'”

In the short term, though, “it is likely that in conditions of uncertainty, many couples will postpone having children for some time until the situation stabilizes,” Elena Churilova, research fellow in the Higher School Economics’s International Laboratory for Population and Health, tells Bloomberg. “In 2023, we are likely to see a further decline in the birth rate.”

And in the meantime, “downloads of dating apps have significantly increased in the countries to which Russian men fled,” the Times reports, noting sharp rises in downloads in Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, and Kazakhstan. “All of the most reasonable guys are gone,” said Tatiana, a 36-year-old Muscovite. “The dating pool has shrunk by at least 50 percent.”

Is there any way Russia can reverse its demographic spiral?

The most likely outcome is that “Putin’s war will cast a shadow on Russia for a long time to come — one growing ever darker the longer the war carries on,” Goble writes. Not only will the loss of Russian men to emigration and battlefield death “leave a huge hole in Russian society,” but “those Russian men who do indeed manage to return will experience enormous problems,” from PTSD and other health struggles to participating in a “proliferation of crime waves similar to those that followed the Afghan and Chechen wars.”

The shape of “Russia’s population pyramid” means “the birthrate is almost destined to decline,” Brent Peabody wrote at Foreign Policy in January. Putin has said he’s haunted by that fact, and “Russia’s need for more people is no doubt a motivating consideration for its current aggressive posture toward Ukraine,” even as “the idea that Ukrainians would sign up to be good Russians is largely delusional.”

Ukrainians may not sign up to be good Russians willingly, but thousands of Ukrainian children have been spirited off to Russia to be placed in Russian “foster families,” AP reports.

Ukrainian authorities say they are launching a criminal case against Russia’s children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, who said in mid-October that she herself had adopted a boy sized by Russian forces in Ukraine’s bombed-out Mariupol, AP reports. U.S., British, and other Western nations sanctioned Lvova-Belova in September over allegations she masterminded the removal to Russia of more than 2,000 vulnerable children from Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.

Demography, and assumptions about how nations will react to demographic changes, are not exact arts, Rhodes College professor Jennifer Sciubba wrote at Population Reference Bureau in April. For example, “for years, one common argument in the U.S. policy community was that Russia’s demographic troubles would curtail its ability to project power outside its borders.”

Obviously, the “geriatric peace theory” was not a good fit for Russia, Sciubba adds. But more broadly, “population aging and contraction are such new trends that we know little about how states conduct foreign policy under these conditions, and we shouldn’t expect aging states to act like aging individuals.”

Daily Beast

‘Final Destruction’: Russia Threatens Norway With Ugly Fallout

Shannon Vavra – November 2, 2022

Russia announced Wednesday that it views Norway’s work with other countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as provocative, warning that Norway’s efforts to bolster its military in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year will likely be the death knell for Oslo-Moscow relations moving forward.

“Oslo is now among the most active supporters of NATO’s involvement in the Arctic,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Wednesday, according to TASS. “We consider such developments near Russian borders as Oslo’s deliberate pursuit of a destructive course toward escalation of tensions in the Euro-Arctic region and the final destruction of Russian-Norwegian relations.”

In her statement, Zakharova also warned that any further “unfriendly actions will be followed by a timely and adequate response.”

The news of Russia’s complaints about Norway comes just a day after Norway raised its military alert level in response to suspicious drone sightings. Norway has arrested several Russians, including one son of an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s, and accused them of illegally flying drones in Norwegian airspace or taking photos in restricted areas as concerns abound about potential Russian attacks on critical infrastructure. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre warned Russia to cut it out, according to Norwegian broadcaster NRK.

NATO countries ought to be on alert to Russia’s aggression in light of the war in Ukraine, Støre warned Monday.

“Today, we have no reason to believe that Russia will want to involve Norway or any other country directly in the war,” Støre said. “But the war in Ukraine makes it necessary for all NATO countries to be more vigilant.”

Norway has previously hosted exercises and has long hosted rotational deployments of U.S. troops for arctic training. Russia’s announcement comes weeks after the U.S. Air Force participated in a combat arctic integration training exercise with NATO allies and the Royal Norwegian Air Force at Norway’s Ørland Main Air Station, according to the U.S. Defense Department. The allies worked to operate quickly across weapons platforms and systems to try to deter Russia along NATO’s eastern flank.

“The sum is that together, we can better defend not only Norway and the Nordic countries, but also Europe should the need arise,” Col. Martin Tesli, the 132nd Luftving Base commander, said in a statement.

The U.S. Air Force’s 90th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron deployed for the exercise was also able to work with the Air Force from Finland, which is in the process of joining NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow’s warning appeared to be just the latest Russian attempt to assert its own narrative as its relationships with countries across Europe and the West continue to deteriorate.

It’s not the first time Russia has tried to raise red flags over what it sees as provocative action from European countries and NATO cooperation. Moscow warned before it invaded Ukraine this year that it views the expansion of members in NATO—which was established to counter threats from the Soviet Union—as a threat to Russia. The Kremlin has maintained that Ukraine’s interest in joining the military alliance poses a threat to Russia, a claim it had repeated in recent days.

Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine and European nations is “the most serious security policy situation we have experienced in several decades,” Støre emphasized.

Norway has been working to help Ukraine defend against Russia’s invasion since the outset of the war. The country has sanctioned the Russian government in an attempt to get Moscow to back off from the war and had provided Ukraine with military assistance. The assistance includes an air defense system, Mistral surface-to-air missiles, thousands of anti-tank missiles, protective gear such as bulletproof vests and helmets, and armored vehicles.

Oslo has also sought to ramp up its military budget. Just last month, Norway proposed boosting its defense budget for next year by nearly 10 percent, according to Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram. A chunk of the increase is dedicated to weapons for Ukraine’s defense against Russia.

“Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is a threat to Norwegian and European security. The war has already had major security political, economic, and humanitarian consequences,” Gram said. “The need for military support to Ukraine is necessary, extensive, and time-critical. This budget strengthens the Armed Forces and stands up for Ukraine.”

Norway is also helping to train Ukrainian soldiers alongside the U.K. and has promised to provide Ukraine over $1.1 billion (in USD) in financial assistance over the next two years.

Norway isn’t the only nation Russia has protested in recent days. Late last month Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Moscow sees no point in maintaining diplomatic relations with Western states writ large.

Lavrov noted that Russia would like to focus its world diplomacy on countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, rather than work with the West.

“We will shift the ‘center of gravity’ to countries that are ready to cooperate with us on equal and mutually beneficial terms and look for promising joint projects,” Lavrov said.