Committee on Security and Defence Ordinary meeting Joint meeting Delegation to the EU-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee Delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Association Committee
Legend
Transcript markers
- text Sentence being played
- text Search result
- text Intervention cited by the link you opened
Click a sentence to play the video from that moment. Select text to quote it with the speaker, timestamp and link.
More options
SEDE European Parliament
Follow its sittings
Speaker 2
Reserves are rapidly depleting. This is having a profound impact on military industries, which, for the first time since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, had started to show very severe contraction of output. This January 2026, the last month that is reported, a contraction of production of finished metal products, which is a line in classification that includes weapons and ammunition, was minus 6% year on year this January, weapons and ammunition production. If you listen to the officials from the military industry, Sergey Chambers of Vandalia Kivtushenkoyev, the leaders of Rosteyech, the biggest conglomerate that, as per their own words, is producing about 80% of weapons supply to the battlefield in Ukraine. Rosteyev and the super majority of Russia's military enterprises are running at zero or negative profitability, which is also resulting just last week in the financial reporting of PSB, Promst West Bank, the key backbone bank that is entitled by Putin to finance and provide credit to military industries, it has shown losses last year.
According to international financial reporting, 19,000,000,000 rubles for the first time since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. And these losses were a result of a massive reserve buildup, which was supposed to cover up nonperforming loans by military enterprises. I can go on. I mean, there's so much more data yet. Another thing is that it is also frequently discussed in the West that Russia allegedly has limitless manpower to wage war in Ukraine.
I strongly advise you to look at this report, which my colleagues and I at the Free Russia Foundation have recently published, can be downloaded right now from the Free Russia Foundation website about Russian demographics. There's been a massive wipeout of young males from the Russian labor markets and overall population in the past 15 years, basically, since the beginning of the first round of invasion of Ukraine in 2014, which resulted in mass immigration and hundreds, at least hundreds of thousands of people have left the country. Also, these demographic processes were exacerbated by the war. As per official Russian data, in the past 15 years, Russia lost 6,000,000 men aged from 20 to 30, who were off the labor market because of the immigration, because of the war. And the demographic situation is rapidly deteriorating, moving closer to nothing short of catastrophic.
So this is not to say, I mean, all this debate about Russia's resources has been sort of centered on two extremes. One extreme which is arguing that Putin has forever resources and is resilient. The other extreme is that Russia is about to collapse tomorrow. It is not going to collapse tomorrow. There are still resources to fight, unfortunately, which urges a major call from Western democracies to tighten the sanctions, to introduce more sanctions, to more robustly enforce the current sanctions against Russia to continue to deprive it of resources that are used to wage the war.
But if you look at the dynamics, the dynamics is clearly going down in terms of economic, military output, manpower, anything. Russia is not in a position to wage war perpetually. Its resources are dwindling. International pressure works. And I strongly advise, because I see I have a lot of debates with Western policymakers on these issues.
Many of them are demotivated and somehow even demoralized reading a lot of the reports about Russia's resilience. These reports about Russia's resilience are at best premature and at worst part of Russia's own propaganda and psychological disinformation operation. Don't fall for it. Look at the real data. Despite a lot of stuff being classified, there's a lot of real data coming out of Russia, which is supporting the notion that countries are struggling fighting the current war in Ukraine. Pressure works.
More pressure is needed to deprive Putin of resources and make him stop the war. Given the current indicators, this is possible. It might not be fast. It might not be easy. But me and my colleagues, we're happy to provide a lot of data and indicators that support the idea that pressure works.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you. Thank you very much. And now, we move to Miss Ekaterina Schulman. She's online, who is intervening online? So, Miss Schulman, you have the floor for eight minutes.
Welcome.
Speaker 4
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak at this distinguished assembly. I would agree with the sentiment expressed by the previous speaker, and I would add the detail about the possible sequester of the Russian federal budget. Such a recommendation is in the latest report of the Russian accounting chamber, which is now headed by the son of one of Putin's closest friends, Boris Kovachuk. So we may expect such budgetary measures to be taken. However, when we hear or when we read the headlines about Russian resilience, about Russia's possibility of waging the war further, the considerations presented by Vladimir Milov, while all absolutely realistic, do not immediately concern these possibilities.
So they affect they genuinely affect Russia's middle term and long term future. But in the immediate present, there are still enough resources to wage the war, no matter how unsuccessful. This is one of the privileges of an autocracy. There is no electoral accountability. So you are not afraid of your voters, your electorate, calling out your unsuccessful or ineffective policies.
So you can drag on, fulfilling your wrong decisions longer than any democracy is able to. However, this authoritarian resilience is also not limited. My specific focus of research is the behavior of bureaucracy, of the Russian political system as a system for making and implementing decisions. So what can I say on this subject? During the previous four years, we have seen an evolution from the initial shock of the start of the war, which now post factum seems to have been as much a surprise to Russia's leadership, to the head of the government, or to the head of the central bank as it was to the general population and to an extent the international community.
However, during 2022, 2023, this shock was surmounted the system, adapted, and even entered a sort of euphoric phase, the, reveling in the joy of its adaptability. Both the population and the political machine realized or seem to realize that war is not such a bad thing. Nothing catastrophic has happened. The sanctions and international pressure have not resulted in an immediate collapse. There was a short-term period of military production-induced economic growth.
People were receiving more money both as payments for contract signers and their families, and higher salaries for those who work for the military industrial complex. So 2023, I would say, was this euphoric year. 2024 was the year when the country and its political machine adapted to the war situation as to a new normal. However, it was still sustained by the hope that the war will be over soon. There will be what is called an official language victory on our terms, on Russia's terms.
During 2024, this did not happen, but the limits of resilience have not yet been reached. It was the year of adaptability. However, in 2025, I think we have passed a kind of crucial watermark. So what happened in 2025? In the beginning of the year, there were very high hopes, again, both on the side of society and Russian political and economic elites.
There were high hopes of the end of the war, and the kind of end that will be profitable or at least, well, moderately profitable for Russia. These hopes were, of course, connected with American elections and the new American administration and its position, which was largely perceived inside the country as pro-Russian or at least much more pro-Russian than the position of the European Union, for example. These hopes were, as I said, high during the beginning of the year, winter, summer, and 2025. When these hopes were not realized, it was the same period when economic effects described by the previous speaker hit not just the federal budget per se, but also the general population. In 2025, several decisions were taken by the government that directly affected the largest threat of Russian society, and that is raising taxes, adopting measures that were, well, generally felt by the smaller businesses and free entrepreneurship of the country.
And that, again, hit home harder than anything that previously happened during this war, except mobilization in 2022. And the active phase, the so-called active phase of mobilization was very short. It actually lasted less than 1 month. People continued to be mobilized later, but this high tide was cut short for the reason because it was such a pressure for the system and for the society. So since this mobilization was ended, nothing happened that disrupted the daily life of a Russian citizen.
The preservation of this illusion of normality is very dear to any autocracy. They always pretend that everything is normal. They present a unified front both to their own societies and to the outside world. So this preservation of normalcy started to erode in 2020. In addition to that, and this is the last thing that I have to mention, the system started to eat itself.
We tend to pay more attention to those repressions which are directed at civil society. And that is only natural. However, repressions against the elites, arrests of the members of the nomenclature, large scale confiscations of assets. This is something that started happening immediately after the latest presidential elections in 2024. And in 2025, these purges, I think we can call them that, reached a new high.
I will not say that it destabilizes the system. However, it is the sign that the system is able to take and process decisions which are not beneficial to itself. The latest measures restricting Russians' access to Internet, blocking popular messengers, and generally depriving Russian cities of mobile Internet, which is an integral part of the daily life of the people, is another example of such decisions. This stage, when any political system is eating itself, starting to destroy itself by its own measures rather than by any outside pressure, has been familiar to people who have witnessed the last days of the Soviet Union. I will not say that we are there yet, but we see signs that show the approach of the system to the face of administrative dysfunction.
Let's call it that. I will stop here, and I will be glad to answer any questions that may arise.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. So, and finally, mister Jovis van Blade, you have the floor also for eight minutes. The floor is yours.
Speaker 5
Thank you. PowerPoint. Yeah. Okay. First of all, thank you for having me here, especially besides the co-panelists who I consider references in the analysis of Russian affairs.
It's a privilege to be here. Thank you. What I would like to do today is go to the essence of attrition warfare. And attrition warfare is a tragic way of warfare in the sense of, in essence, it is the comparison between how many people are killed compared with how many people you can recruit in order to sustain the war, which is a tragic, dramatic, and humanitarian tragic element to consider. So but I think it's interesting to see a couple of figures here, and I speak about the Russian side of the war.
If we look at the minimal figures of people Russian people killed in action is mid March two thousand twenty six, it's 203,306. These are bodies counted in Russia with a reference to a grave, that can be retraced back in Russia. Of course, this is not all. There are also missed in action people who are Russian people killed, and still are in Ukraine. And here is the figure of 180,000, and this is a figure that refers to the claims to the court that people claim their relatives are killed in action or death.
Here, we can assume that about 90,000 of these people are really people killed in action and still are in Ukraine. Bottom up, I mean, what I mean, round up, we can consider that more than 300000 people are killed on the Russian side. And allow me to ask you a very brutal and decent question. Is this a lot? And I think, we have to consider if we look at these figures.
We have, first of all, a humanitarian element. Russians are also people. When people in Russia are killed, there is suffering, there is loss, there is grief. But that's not the question today. The question of today is more a political and a strategic question related to this, people killed in action, Russians people killed in actions.
So we are not here to count bodies, but to understand the system that justifies them. That's an important element. For a suggestion from my side, Russian literature is interesting to look at how grief works in Russia, and I'll refer to the work of Svetlana Alexeyvich or Vasily Grossman, who can tell you something about grief in Russia itself. So this is not the point, as I mentioned. But if we look at the figures that I mentioned before, 203,306 minimum killed, I would like to ask your attention for the orange, the green khaki, and the purple parts of this donut graph.
These are the volunteers. These are the inmates, and these are the mobilized. What does this mean? These are the people who are not sufficiently trained in the professional armed forces. In other words, Russia is fighting this war with a mass army.
This is the structure of a mass army. People who are not fully trained for a modern war, but they are here for, you know, a war of attrition. And as I said, this is a sad calculation of people being killed in action. They are consumed. But this says something about the structure of the armed forces as the war is now fought in Ukraine.
There is another figure that I would like to draw your attention to: the 6,912 officers that are killed. And most of the time, we are looking for the generals and the, you know, the colonels who are killed in action, but this is not that important. The most important thing are the young officers, the lieutenants, the captains who have the tactical, leadership, and they are wiped out. And if you look to the preparation of a young lieutenant, it's about, in ideal terms, it's four to five years. In shortened terms, it's one year, but, you know, you can see that the recruitment and the formation of young leaders in warfare is a serious problem right now for the Russian armed forces.
But if we look to the what I call the grammar of great sacrifice in Russia, there is a political element. The regime has to justify the deaths, and they see it as moral proof, sacrifice as a collective investment and for states' legitimacy. And in that sense, suffering is strengthening the moral claim, and criticism becomes betrayal of the fallen, and exit becomes morally impossible in this case. You see here a picture of Vladimir Putin, and what is interesting to see, he has no ranks mentioned. He, it's a sign for me as he wants to show his solidarity with the masses of soldiers that are killed in action anyway.
Who bears the cost? Of course, there is a lot of what we see is that the disproportional losses in poorer regions, the prisoners mobilized and the volunteers, as I mentioned, the urban centers, comparatively, are comparatively insulated. So there is a myth of collective endurance. And what we see instead is aggressive sacrifice. The periphery absorbs the cost, and the center preserves stability.
I would like very quickly to mention three biases, I would say, of Western analysts on this element. I think we do, we project a lot of our own mindset and our own value system as one on the Russian side. And I believe that interpreting Russian through Western assumptions about loss, restraint, and politics is not a good way to understand the Russian way of warfare and to predict what will happen. Another element is oversimplification. We explain the war through one dominant factor instead of interacting systems.
Secondly, the event-based. We are overreacting to spectacular events, instead of the structural military dynamics. I have no time to go to all these very specific elements, but let me put it this way. Not all wars that Russia is conducting are, for instance, high-loss wars. We have Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Georgia, Crimea, Syria with low levels of losses.
So casualties are not a universal political constraint. Mass debt tolerance is conditional, not a cultural destiny for the Russians. The Russians don't love to die. It is the Ukrainians who imposed this war of attrition to the Russians. And in fact, the war of attrition is actually a failure on the Russian side.
It was never the intention for the Russian side to conduct this kind of warfare. So it was imposed by the Ukrainian. Sorry. I don't have time. What are the strategic implications for Europe?
I think that pain does not necessarily, loss, I mean, does not necessarily limit behavior on the Russian side, and time does not work against Russia in the way we think, we project onto Russia. Of course, Russia is a fragile state, but there are, as I agree with the two former speakers, it is not limitless. The system has limits, but it's also not on the collapse and certainly on the problem of people killed in action. I keep it to this, so that we can go to the questions. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. Before giving the floor to city members, I would like to give the floor to Mister Will Nistro, chair of the delegation for Russia, for two minutes.
Speaker 7
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Adiakest. I would like to thank also the senate chair for associating our Russia delegation and also the Ukraine delegation in this important meeting. And it's obviously very timely for us to talk about how Russia is conducting the war. It will give us an insightful overview of the current Russian state of the economy, but also the Russian military mindset. And, it's also good to hear from mister Milov an update because we've heard you before in the European Parliament, but also an update on the Russian economy.
Speaker 6
And I think it's something we have to understand in Western democracies, that we need to have perseverance here as well and resilience. And I think that also relates to what mister Van Vlegel said, that Russia is in this for the long haul, they take a lot of losses when it comes to manpower because Putin is counting on Western democracies becoming weak and giving up on the sanctions and the pressure on the Russian economy. So I think from our side, I'll just give you a figure. If you think about how EU and the international sanctions have affected Russia, the German Federal Intelligence Service recently assessed that up to 10% of its GDP and half of its state's budget last year was dedicated to military spending. So obviously, this is something that is a long-term militarization and heightened risk for Europe, but it is also a sign of weakness.
No state can continue with those kind of numbers of militarization because the rest of the economy is getting weaker. And I think that that's what we heard from Mr. Milov. So while the war in Iran and increased oil prices now reshuffled the cards again, what US is doing, giving Russia a free chance to cash in additional revenues. We have counted up to 6,000,000,000 in over two weeks. We have to keep up the pressure on the sanctions, and we have to make sure that US continues to also impose the sanctions and makes them stronger because in the long term, Russian economy is getting weaker, not stronger.
But also maybe, what we also from the Russian delegation side, it's very interesting to hear how the attrition war is affecting Russian civil society and Russian society at large. Putin controls the Russian economy, but also the state is very much a police state currently, so people can't oppose the government. But there must be signs of people feeling this hurt and this pain. So my question to Juan Plato maybe is, since you say that Russia can last this war for a long time because the government itself doesn't care about the losses. But if over 300,000 people are dead and hundreds of thousands are wounded, how about their parents and their families?
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. And now I give the floor to Piikka Tuberi, chair of the delegation of Ukraine.
You, chair.
Pekka Toveri
Thank you for the great pre briefings. I say that the basics haven't changed. We have to remember that Putin still believes that he can win this war, and this is not about Ukraine. This is about Europe. His aims to dominate Europe and have a buffer zone along his western borders haven't gone anywhere.
If Ukraine falls, we are in deep trouble here. Therefore, we need to support Ukraine more, and it's not about the money. When COVID hit Europe, EU countries used 2% of the cross national product of EU for COVID. We used 2.6% on the final financial crisis, 02/2012. We've used so far to support Ukraine maybe 8%.
It's about no. Not about money. We can afford this. It's about political will, which is always a problem. So we need to support Ukraine more, stop hunger sabotage, especially on Ukraine's EU integration.
And then, yes, we need to take away Russia's capability to continue by sanctioning more because sanctions work. Sanctions all the oligarchs, also those who have businesses here in Europe, stop imports from Russia, sanction third parties who allow, which allows Russia to go around our sanctions, and stop talks about normalization. That's because there's a war in Iran. The talks like what the Belgian prime minister talks are criminal idiocracy e idiotism to say that we should start, normalize our relationship with Russia to have cheap oil and gas because that money will be used to hit Ukraine and after that, Europe. Stop being stupid, be strategic, and think long-term. We can win this easily.
Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much, Pekka. And now I give the floor to the members for a first round of questions, starting with the coordinators, please, for 2 minutes each. So we start with Nicolas from the EPP. The floor is yours.
Speaker 9
Thank you very much, Christina. Thank you very much to all the speakers for the insights in a very volatile situation. I don't know if Putin thinks that he can win the war. What did ensure that he needs the war to continue, because they have no alternative. If he doesn't get a victory in this war, it will be a real blow for himself, for his kleptocracy, and for his regime.
That's why it's so difficult to bring him to the negotiating table, because he cannot come to the negotiating table without a victory in his hands. That makes all the things more difficult. In military terms, the war is lost. Imagine four years of war, more than 1,000,000 customer deals considering debt, injured, and missing, and you have not even occupied the Donbas region. There are parts of the Donbas region which are still under the control of the Luhansk regime.
In military terms, it is a disaster, total disaster. When he wanted a quick war, a risk week of a couple of weeks to topple the regime and to put the puppet there. Now, have an attrition war in which he has got some 100 square kilometers. Well, then what is the outcome for him? The outcome for him is to try to get a kind of fatigue from the West, from the European Union, to divide us the European Union for The United States, something that he has nearly got, and to think that we are going to give up before he himself.
That's why I think, and I concur with my colleagues, that we have to tighten our sanctions. The problem with the authoritarian regimes is that they are so opaque that you don't know what's going on inside. Nobody knows. I mean, it can collapse any time or not. Remember, the Berlin Wall that collapsed without shooting a single rifle.
Nobody thought about it: the implosion of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Nobody anticipated this. We cannot anticipate this kind of event, but we think one. We know one thing for sure. The regime is weakened, the war's military terms are lost, and Putin needs something to offer the people at the negotiating table.
Let's tighten the sanctions, increase the pressure, so that the calculation for him will come out negative. Thank you very much.
Speaker 10
Thank you very much, Chair. And thanks to our interlocutors for their excellent analysis. I share your insights. I also share what Pekka said about what we need to do because we are ultimately also our own worst enemy by not doing what we know deep in our hearts that is needed and that can make us win the war, can Ukraine make Ukraine win the war. But I also want to warn a little bit against overly optimistic sounds.
And I want to challenge you a little bit because we have been here before. They have been passing by summers when we said no. But in September, Russia is really going to collapse. So we need to be wary of that, because there's always a new lifeline. And in this case, we were presented with a lifeline for Russia two weeks ago because the real problem is now the Iran war, because the prices are going up, and it helps Russia to put off a deeper economic impact.
And therefore, cannot sit back and think that, well, peace will somehow happen. So we need to be very clear-eyed on that. Only with rising cost and pressure, there is an incentive for Putin to want to end the war. My three questions. To what extent is Russia still dependent on the circumvention of EU sanctions?
So in a percentage or in a share of the imports. What further actions can be taken in the private sector to undermine Russia's war economy? Because I think we have to reach out almost weekly, there are reports in European media of companies still just doing business with Russia as if it's normal. We need to do something about that. And my last question is on the recruitment.
We adopted a resolution last week that's the best we could do on saying, look, this should end with recruiting in Africa, in Asia, and so on. But where is Russia now recruiting most of the people from still? Maybe you have an insight on that. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. The next will be Pierre Romain from the Patriots. Florisios.
Thank.
Speaker 11
You, Chair. My first question to Ekaterina Schulman. I think she was right to point out the limits of a vision focused on the Russian economy. The sanctions have an impact on the Russian economy, but an essential question is, are these impacts enough to change the aim of Russia's war? Will these sanctions change Putin's vision for this war?
On the other hand, more broadly, another question is, is there a problem of our understanding of the vision that Russia has for this war, the Russian powers, of course? Are we not focusing too greatly on a rational economic side of the war if saying that if these resources are impacted by sanctions, then they will give up their war objectives? Isn't it to a greater degree that the ideological objectives are Putin's focus? Are these economic indicators not a way for us to trivialize this other aspect? A second question to Mr.
Van Blodel, saying that the periphery is paying the price to keep a stable center. Is it that the minority in Russia is paying for the ethnic Russians? Is it that the results for these economic aspects are serving the war? Or is this a voluntary policy from the Russian side to sacrifice the periphery for the center? Is this just incidental, or is it a deliberate political choice?
Thank you.
Speaker 12
Yeah. Thank you, chair. Thank you to all the speakers for very interesting presentations. Economy, of course, is a very important factor to be able to fight. But as I was born in the Soviet Union, I remember that you cannot understand Russia with the mind.
And at this point, the war in Russia is, like, driven by money, basically. Of course, there are also maybe some people who fight for the idea, but in general, it depends on money. And when we talk about Russia's resilience, and I'm sure my couple of colleagues will tell you much more why you are wrong and why Russia.
Speaker 12
Unbeatable. But the one factor is kind of correct that basically what you need for a war is a diesel and cannon fort or basically a couple more people and Ukrainians have ammunition, and Russia has it and, like, doesn't count it. But, again, until now, it is driven by money and by economy. But what is the chance or what is the possibility that Russia will fully, like, switch to idea war, like, with full mobilization and all that kind of things. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much for the renew, Petras. The floor is yours.
Speaker 14
Thank you, chair, and I do thank you all the speakers of this excellent panel. To start from Vladimir Milov, would you please explain to this audience, which is probably not to the point, what the Putin's administration does to improve the so-called demographic situation. It's shocking that the schoolgirls are promoted to have babies, I mean, out of the marriage and at all. But could you explain a bit the kind of philosophy behind? Because it's barbaric in many instances as such.
Speaker 13
To Ekaterina Schulman. Yakaterina, I do commend your podcast. It's always a pleasure to listen to very substantiated and very deep analysis you provide on the situation. Could you please be more specific on, for example, on the morality of so-called power structures. FSB grew generally at of the Russian Federation.
Do they still sustain kind of support for the system? Or you can notice certain cracks in their towers. And to probably all of you, I have a question about the message of your Russian opposition to the population. I heard some debates about sanctions policy towards Russia. I hope it's over.
I'm not sure at all. But, is there anything, as you know, important coming from the Russian opposition being abroad sent to the Russian population, asking them to apprise, I mean, to, you know, to boycott or to do something in order to really oppose Putin's regime. But my general message is, let's stay calm. Let's stay with Ukraine, support Ukraine, and we will be much stronger. Thank you.
Villy Søvndal
Thank you very much, and thank you very much for all your key financial ratios to Mister Milov. I think they all point in the same direction, meaning that what we do is right. And what we are, if we're doing even more, they would point even more in the good direction. What also impressed me was your point that 6,000,000, if I understood you right, 6,000,000 young men have left Russia the last fifteen years. Probably a lot of them, they're well-educated ones.
It's a massive loss for a country. I have two actual questions. One is, how much does it weaken or how much does it help the Russian economy that the oil and gas prices are at the level they are now? Could you just give us some kind of relation how much that means in economic terms? And another question about weapons.
Since weapons now are going to the Middle East, Europe cannot buy the weapons we used to be able to buy. How much can Ukraine produce themselves or coproduce with European allies? Will that be able to close the gap so that Russia, sorry, Ukraine could reset what the low, what is lost, because of the Iranian war? Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. And the next will be Lea Anderson from the left. The floor is yours.
Li Andersson
Thank you very much, and thank you also to all the experts for the excellent presentations. And I really like the point about trying to avoid this analysis of the two extremes, thinking that there is endless resources or imminent collapse. Because what that also means then for EU policies, of course, is that EU also needs to sustain its own policy of pressure and of sanctions in a coherent way and also in a patient way, to kind of trust, it also to create pressure on the Russian economy and on Putin. And many of the colleagues have already referred to the war in Iran, but none of the experts really commented on the effect of that on the bigger picture. So I would also be interested in knowing if you think it changes the effects it will have on oil and energy prices.
Does it change the big picture looking at Russia's resources, for example, at the moment? And how you would evaluate, I think it's very worrying now that you are hearing more and more from different places in Europe that the war in Iran means that we should change our policies when it comes to sanctions or when it comes to energy policies within the European Union, aimed at reducing fossil fuel dependency. So, I would also be interested in hearing your analysis on this.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. And the last will be Mr. Neuhel from the ECN. The floor is yours.
Speaker 17
I'm going to speak German. Thank you from my side as well for the very informative presentations. I would like to talk about the demographic situation in Russia. In fact, Russia has considerable demographic problems, but the root is not in Putin's system, but the root of this is in the 1990s, the Yeltsin era. That's where you saw the drop in birth rates.
And it was only in 2000 that things started to recover. Then we saw in 2014 an equilibrium between birth rates and death rates. Then, with the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, we saw a drop in birth rates again. This is an indication that Russia can't succeed in this war. So I want to know why it's being waged, anyway.
With regard to the economic problems, it's right to have sanctions, and these have a great impact on the war economy, not just on Russia, but also in Germany. In 2023, 2024, '25, we had a recession, and prospects for 2026 are looking bleak in Germany. So how will this lead to a change in Russia's policies? Or will it do, we understand that Russia is willing to engage in further escalation? Those are my main questions. Experience shows us that states that understand themselves as major powers, when they are under pressure, are willing to escalate even further.
So those are my questions. So my question to the expert is, will Russia continue to escalate? Or do you think it's more likely that it will back down when it's under the greatest pressure? Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Now we go back to our experts, for five minutes each, and we will start with Mr. Milo for the replies.
Speaker 2
Oh, thank you very much. On this perpetual discussion, like, we be optimistic, pessimistic, and so on. When Christopher Columbus was sailing in his famous voyage to discover America, there were some sailors who were arguing that there is nothing there and we should turn back. So simply, refer to this story. If you basically, if you look at the discussion of the financial markets, just turn on the business television. They never say no.
We're gonna lose. There are only losses ahead. We should divest. The business is not worth it and so on. So this is when I hear that, yes, Putin still has a lot of resources.
He can mobilize. He can wage a perpetual war. He has a lot of resources. He can wage a lengthy war, which will be very difficult, but there are cracks which are visible, and they should encourage people of the free world who oppose Putin. And this is my message.
We're not there yet, maybe quite far, but we should not give up because the cracks are there. And on several specific questions about the nineteen nineties birth rates. This is the classical argument of Putin's propaganda. What happened, though, first, is the childbearing age of mothers had greatly increased. Most mothers are giving birth in Russia over 30 now.
So that nineties factor is not impacting as much as propaganda suggests. People prefer not to give birth because of something else. And there are studies which show that they just don't like Putin's policies. They are not confident in the future, which are birth ranges are plunging back to the demographic pit where they were in the nineties because of Putin who makes it even worse than, the nineties. And, this goes back to the question of how many people Russia can mobilize, and can it also recruit migrants.
We do address that in this big report by the Free Russia Foundation on demographics. Please have a look. We discussed this in detail. On migrants from Africa and elsewhere, so far, in terms of scale, these efforts to recruit people elsewhere have failed spectacularly. Best that Putin was able to recruit is in the tens of thousands.
To solve Russia's demographic challenges and to draft as many people for the war as he needs, he needs hundreds of thousands. We're not even anywhere near that. So that is it, it is very important to talk to countries of the global South and to engage in diplomatic efforts, trying to counter Putin's recruitment efforts in these countries. But in terms of scale, he did not get anywhere in the past four years, small likelihood that he will succeed. As far as Russia situation is concerned, please I mean, there's a lot of debate in the West that Russians are always obeying their leader.
They're ready to fight when government dictates to. Just look at the labour market. Simple as that. Labor market is screaming very openly to Putin. Don't do it.
We are like, fully exhausted. The whole industry is out of people. Agriculture, or logistics, or utilities lost 40 to 50% of the workforce since the beginning of the war. Police is empty. The one of the major crisis openly discussed in the Russian so-called rubber stamp parliament, police is out of personnel.
There's nobody to police the streets, because they all went to war. You know? So, in terms of mass mobilization, it is possible because Putin is crazy. Sorry. It is possible that he calls, like, for a big round of new mobilization that would kill the labour market.
Key ILL, no less. And this is it's not me. It's them. This is what the Russian entrepreneurs, industrialists are saying. Please don't.
This is why he never went for another round of mandatory mobilization in March despite many voices saying there will be a second wave very soon, but it never happened because of this. So I may be wrong, but please, when you analyze this, look at what the labor market is offering and what the businesses are saying. Businesses saying no. We can't afford that. And on the impact of these developments in Iran, very unfortunate.
Russians are cautiously optimistic because they need $90 per barrel until the end of the year average price to balance this year's budget to stabilize the current fiscal situation. Situation. So they need a protracted period of high oil prices. So they are cautiously optimistic about that. What they're more optimistic about is the United States burning the munitions in the Middle East.
They are openly cheering, and I think you can hear that, which has profound implications not just for military support for Ukraine, which is desperately needed, but also for the strategic future defense of Europe because it's relying on American arms and munitions. Big deal. So this is the number one thing that Moscow is happy about, is not oil. We have to see yet whether oil prices will stay high for long. But the US burning munitions, which might have profound security implications.
I'll stop here. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. The next will be Miss Ekaterina Schulman online, please. Perfect.
Speaker 4
For the kind words about our expertise. So some of these questions were specifically addressed to me, and I will try to answer them now. About the morality of the power structure, specifically the FSB, GRU, and other military structures, whether we see the cracks or not. Well, I have mentioned the purges and the arrests and the confiscations. These mainly target civic bureaucracy, original administrations, civic governmental structures, original businesses, and the like.
The FSB and other structures are rather the beneficiaries of this than otherwise. However, they are also being hit from time to time, although to a much lesser extent than the civic bureaucracy. These are also very close structures, so we cannot really know what's going on inside. Vladimir Milov has mentioned the lack of personnel at the MVD. Yes.
It is a problem. And another structure that has been complaining about the same issue recently is the Russian penitentiary service. So the prisons are also understaffed. This is the genuine problem. It affects the labor market, as has been mentioned.
It affects governmental structures as well. There has been a lot of mention here on this floor about Russia's demographic dynamics. And, yes, I agree that the 90s are not really to blame. We have low birth rates, period, approximately every 25 years since the beginning of the twentieth century. This is the echo of the demographic losses of the first half of the 20th century.
Additionally, Russia has entered the phase of the so-called second demographic transition, as well as other developed countries. But unlike other developed countries, it has not experienced a comparable increase in the length of life and especially the length of active life. So our real demographic curves is not so much low birth rates as early mortality, specifically, particularly early male mortality. And, of course, war and emigration are not making things better at all. But like with Russia's economic resources, this is again mortgaging the country's future to continue the policies of today.
I have also been asked about the Russian authorities' rationale for continuing this war, whether it's rational at all, or whether it's based on ideology. Russia is an autocracy. Authoritarian governments have only one raison d'être, preservation of power. So continuing the war, it's into the future, but allows us to preserve the status quo. On the other side, too long continuation of the war is eroding the status quo, showing those weaknesses and those strains that we have tried to describe during these meetings.
I have mentioned that the system makes decisions that are detrimental to its own stability. This is also not an unheard-of thing. Autocracies do that. They operate on insufficient information. They exist in information bubbles.
They have a negative selection process in their personnel because loyalty rather than effectiveness is being rewarded. So they make wrong decisions. They can persist in these decisions because they have the country's resources at their disposal. They monopolize power. So they can do wrong things longer than democracies, but they also pay the price.
So there was also the question that I think was addressed to me about the possibility of escalation. I think that is connected with the question about the possibility of another wave of large-scale mobilization. I agree that it is not impossible. However, during the previous three years, since the end of the last wave of mobilization, the so-called selective mobilization, I have seen the development of the right instruments to replenish Russia's stock of manpower without doing, again, this risky exercise of mass mobilization. I will not go into details of this of how these instruments were developed, but they can consist of the combination of carrots and sticks, restrictions, surveillance, tighter control over Russia's human resources, and also benefits, payments, and nonfinancial benefits to those who signed the contract and to their families.
Right now, we see a nationwide campaign to encourage students to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense to work in the so-called drone battalions. However, it's evident to, well, anyone who is aware of how things are done that signing a contract with the ministry of defense makes you the property of the ministry of defense. And whether you will be employed in a drone battalion or in a so-called midstorm is entirely up to your commandment. So this going after students is making them anxious, and they are not answering enthusiastically to this campaign despite large promised payments. And it is also making nervous the families because students are, by definition, people who want something for their future rather than just get some money and die tomorrow.
There has been a question about Russia's recruitment policies, which I think is also connected to this subject, where the poor regions and ethnic minorities have been targeted or whether it just happened to be so. I will not agree that ethnic minorities are specifically targeted, but it so happens, and the fact says a lot about Russia's national policies, that regions inhabited by ethnic minorities are also the poorer ones. And the recruitment campaign targets for the whole four years, the unprivileged, the poorer, the lesser educated, people with no resources, people in precarious situations, socially deprived, and the like. So the central Russian regions are also hit because they're very poor, and the demographic situation there is one of the worst in the country. However, I don't think that it's a kind of genocidal policy as has been often described.
I think it just again happens for a reason that ethnic minorities are poorer, but they are hit because they are poor and unprotected, not because they belong to a certain ethnicity.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. And last, but not least, Jarvis Van Blade.
Speaker 5
Thank you. I will keep it quite short. I think, in all of debates about, this is a disastrous war for Russia and so on, I think we should a little bit refrain our question in our analysis in the sense of the Russian armed forces are never an efficient army, but they are effective. And an effective armed forces, what does it mean? That it is, despite all the toxic problems they have, they keep fighting.
And this is what we see. They keep fighting for as long as it takes, right now. So the question should be not, or to predict the end of the fighting and so on, but we have to ask the question, how is it possible that the system keeps fighting? Yeah. And this is something that is very far away from the Western mindset, and this is what I want to emphasize.
Again, if we project our way of thinking on the Russians, it's wrong, in my view. It is an effective war army. It keeps fighting, not because necessarily the people, the Russian people, want to fight, but because the system enforces it. That's the point. So we have to ask the right questions.
Another paradox, for instance, if you ask the people in Russia, which institute you have the most trust in, the second is the army. The first is obviously in public opinion. This is what people say in public, not what they really necessarily think. But in any way, the first is the president, mister Putin. The second is the army.
This is for us unbelievable that an army that consumes so many lives, that is so toxic, we know, that it has this high esteem as an institution. Nevertheless, it is not. If you look to reality, for instance, conscription, everybody wants to avoid conscription. The majority of young men want to avoid conscription. So you come to a paradox that a very high esteem, but nobody wants to serve. Unless and here I come to the point also, and I subscribe to the point of professor Schulman is that we have to cope with the rationale of the desperate in Russia.
Those who have, you know, for the first time in their life, the possibility to have social progress due to the money provided by the military and going to war. They want to risk, and this is a dramatic choice. You know? They want to risk their lives in order to improve their lives in Russia. It says something about the society that functions this way.
You know? So there is a rationale behind the recruitment. Is this endless? No. It is not endless because we see indeed that the bonuses have to increase.
This also has to do with what mister Milov said about the labor market, but we have, you know, they have to increase. So there is pressure on the recruitment system. And, I think there is one thing that Putin wants to avoid, is this mobilization. I think this is a very, how can I say? This is a red line for him, I believe.
And this has to do with my former point that he knows well that, you know, society as a whole is not eager to serve in the army as they know it. Russians know the Russian military much better than we do, and they know what they are stepping in, you know, from the population. So, again, there is this contradiction, this paradox that people don't want to, you know, serve in reality, but the facade of the highest team is a paradox that we have to cope with, and we have to look through it. So we have to go look deeper into what is going on. This means, again, not oversimplification of what is Russia, what is in Russia happening, not projection of our, you know, our world of how military works on the Russians.
And finally, please, don't look all, don't look always at the spectacular. I think the secret of our analysis is in the banality of life of Russians. The everyday life of the Russian is going to tell us what will be, you know, the end of this, the end state of this war. I thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. It was really a very important discussion. And so, thank you very much. And sorry, colleagues. I know there are.
Madam President.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Questions. No. Sorry. Madam president, euro mister Brown with.
the usual.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Mister Brown, it's not your moment now. You sorry. We have now ten twenty, and there are many colleagues who have questions, not only you, mister Brown. And so, thank you very much.
It is impossible.
Speaker 24
If everything is possible. I tell you I'm the chair, and not you. So I close this, and thank you very much for all the experts. This is the position of the European Parliament. You are no one.
Okay?
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
So, colleagues, take a seat. We continue. This way. The good message is we are a democracy. So please, colleagues, mister Brown, bye.
Speaker 22
Good to see you. You see, this is a defense committee. Sometimes there are.
concern.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
So dear colleagues, please take a seat. We will continue our focus on Ukraine. But from a different angle, you can learn from Ukraine to build Europe's strategic defense readiness and lessons for the EU new defense instruments. This is a follow-up to our recent mission to Kyiv, where we had the opportunity to learn from Ukraine's Western experience and innovation in adapting its defense industry in response to operational realities. During our visit, we had the opportunity to meet some of the experts present today.
So I have the pleasure to welcome Hannah Hrobko, Co-Founder of the International Center for Ukraine Victory and Chairwoman of the National Interest Advocacy Networks, ANTS, Maria Kuzerenko from the Comeback Alive Foundation, and Oleana Halushka. Halushka. Halushka. Halushka, cofounder of the International Center of Ukraine Victory, who will intervene remotely. I will immediately give them the floor, starting with Sana Hopka.
You have the floor for 8 minutes. And thank you very much for that you are here. And, please, the floor is yours.
Speaker 28
Dear madam president and honorable members of the European parliament, let me express my gratitude for organizing this panel and also for your recent visit to Kyiv. This is crucially important that you are in the capital of the most influential capital in the world with the new technologies, seeing this and the spirit of our people. So in January 2025, during the inaugural meeting of the SELI committee, I presented a paper titled Countering the Access of Evil Warfare Alliance, Lessons from Ukraine and Challenges for European Security. Even then, we warned that the nature of warfare was changing rapidly. Today, we see this transformation clearly in the Middle East, swarms of drones, Shahid-type attacks against critical energy infrastructure, and the widespread use of low-cost but highly effective technologies increasingly supported by Russia and China.
Speaker 26
If you want peace, you might say prepare for war. If you want peace, Russia must be defeated. Because after twelve years of the largest war in the European continent, the crime of genocide which Russia is committing against us is an attack on humanity. It demands a comprehensive international response to defeat Russia, restore international law, and hold perpetrators accountable. So today, we present two new papers.
First, it's the Russian war in Europe as a global laboratory of modern warfare. And second, stronger Europe united front, where we are discussing the AI technologies in the battlefield, and my colleague, Olena, will present it. But let me start by describing the new paradigm. Every major integration project in Europe's history has its own raw materials. After 1945, that raw material was coal and steel.
Speaker 27
They defined power in that war. The founding fathers of European integration understood this and built the architecture of peace around them. Today, the raw material is different. It's algorithm, it's drones, and above all, it's the feedback loop between prototype and the battlefield. Whoever controls this loop will shape the next generation of security.
Speaker 26
Right now, the loop exists in Ukraine, not in the Pentagon, not in Brussels, in Ukraine. Ukraine has become a global leader in the use of AI on the battlefield and the first country in the world to scale up both the production and combat deployment of ground-based robots. Twenty years ago, Europe watched the birth of the digital economy and believed it could catch up through regulations. Today, it regulates platforms it did not create. The same mistake must not be repeated in defense technology, and the window to act is far narrower.
Our authoritarian systems pose one advantage over democracies, speed of decision making. The only effective response is not simply more resources, but a shorter learning cycle. Ukraine already lives inside this circle. Every twenty-four hours, the frontline provides feedback that no testing group can replicate. Ukrainian resilience has become a convenient phrase in Europe.
It allows admiration for Ukraine without requiring Europe itself to change. As madam president of the European Commission mentioned during the Munich Security Conference, repeating Ukrainians change or die. But resilience only holds the line. Integration wins the war. Worse, if a Ukrainian company can sell defense technology faster to the Middle East or the Gulf than to the European Union, that is not Ukraine's problem.
It's a structural problem in Europe. An engineer in Kyiv who has spent three years testing technologies in real combat will not wait for lengthy tender procedures. He will go where the decisions are made quickly. And with him will go knowledge that no simulation can reproduce. Rethinking Europe's security frontier.
Europe still thinks is the follow in the following terms. There is the European Union, and there is Ukraine, a partner with which it could cooperate in defense. Even the boldest proposals, safe, EDIP, and or build with Ukraine, remain within this logic: partner, neighbor, or other. But reality has already changed. The eastern border of European security does not run along the Polish-Ukrainian border.
It runs along the Dnipro in the south and the steppes of Donetsk in the east. And it has been there for twelve years whether Brussels formally acknowledges it or not. The paradigm, therefore, cannot be integrating Ukraine into the European defense mechanism. The paradigm is this. The frontier already exists.
Europe simply does not yet control it. This raises a fundamentally different question for this chamber. Not how much are we willing to invest in a partner, but rather how long will Europe manage its own security frontier through an intermediary. No serious state and no civilization allies alliance builds its defense architecture by delegating control over its own frontier to another country while calling it support. It's either integration or it's an illusion of security.
Europe increasingly fears the unpredictability of the United States. Excessive dependence on a single ally for critical capabilities, air defense systems, drones, electronic warfare creates strategic vulnerability. If that ally's priorities change, Europe's security architecture could face severe disruptions. Your Europe's agency independence remains a political aspiration, but it must become an operational reality. Do not wait for ruins.
After the World War, after the Second World War, devastation pushed Europe towards integration. From those ruins emerged the coal and steel community, a project that made a new war between European countries structurally impossible. But integration born from ruins is the most expensive form of integration. Do not wait for the new rules. Instead, build a new union capable of victory in the technological age of warfare, and do not be afraid to win.
Most of the demons that paralyze decision making exist only in our minds. On the battlefield, there is only cold calculation, technology, and the speed of decision-making. The strategic value of Russia defeat, defeat of Russian imperialists. The defeat of Russia would not merely redraw borders. It would fundamentally change the calculation of every authoritarian regime currently considering aggression against its neighbors.
The exhaustion of Russian military potential will fundamentally change NATO's threat calculation for the next decade. This is not only a moral victory. It's a budget savings for every defense ministry in the alliance. So it's really important to understand that the world today, the world is watching the force against a sovereign member of international system. If the answer becomes yes, security costs will raise everywhere on the planet.
They already have. But we are still far from the limit for business, for supply chain, for insurance markets, for global stability. Russia's defeat will not magically restore international law, but it will restore something equally important: predictability. And predictability in the global system always has a price. So Europe must learn from Ukraine in order to strengthen its own strategic readiness.
And in these papers, we explain all the warfare, how it's moved faster than a traditional defense system. But my request to you is keep sanctioning Russia, and we do expect the twentieth package. And the next one will be a hellish one to help to collapse the Russian war machine, confiscation of Russian sovereign assets. We started the campaign Make Russia Pay, and it has to continue. And, also, recognition of Russian aggression as a genocidal war against Ukraine as a war in Europe.
And, also, it's important to see Ukraine as a part of the new ecosystem, not just a partner who brings new solutions in modern warfare. Thank you for your attention, and thank you for inviting.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you. Thank you very much, Hannah. And the next will be Maria Kolchenko.
Speaker 29
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, madam president. Dear Madam President, honorable members of the European Parliament. One of the main lessons that can be learned from the Ukrainian experience is the principle that should be unshakable for security as such and European security: to call a spade a spade.
It is a wrong diagnosis that often prevents us from the right treatment. The fact that Ukraine spent the first eight years of the war proving that this was not a smoldering conflict with separatists, but an operation of the Russian armored forces under a false flag, which, however, did not exclude the participation of regular Russian Armed Forces in its pure form. In fact, led us to an even greater scale of aggression and ultimately to the catastrophe of 2022. We argued in the trilateral contact group in Minsk, in the Normandy format, that this was precisely the aggression of the Russian Federation. But Russia stubbornly tried to pretend that it did not concern it in any other way than as a mediator.
And this is exactly what the Russian Federation is doing here in Europe. Right now, when the Russian Federation is using the avatar of the Wagner Group to fuel the to further, conceal the true role of the general staff of the Russian armed forces in the classic sabotage against the countries of the European Union. It is beneficial for Russia to call this activity either the activities of the Wagner Group or the Afrika Korps, although in reality, the Afrika Korps is simply a rebranding of the name of the Wagner Group. And the Wagner Group is a structure directly subordinate to the General Staff of the Russian armed forces. So if we replace the wording Varvnar basis with the basis incentives of activity of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, then a completely disappointing picture emerges of how far the Russian Federation has actually gone in its attempts to test NATO as an alliance for reaction.
Because in this case, we are not talking about private players. And according to Russian law, any PMCs are impossible in principle. This discussion has been going on inside the Russian Federation for quite some time, but it does not lead to legislative changes nor does it lead to the elimination of the article of the criminal court for mercenary activity. We are talking about regular units of the Russian military intelligence, which in fact means sabotage work of an enemy state on the territory of Europe on an ongoing basis. Russia has mastered the technique of public distancing from the nature of its own aggressive actions.
When this technique does not work, Russia resorts to another technique that it loves, externalizing the concept of security as such. This is a try to present an attempt and at its own aggression as only self defense or defense of its own interests, which were violated one way or another. This is exactly how Russia's initial armed aggression against Ukraine and Crimea was explained. Supposedly, the residents of Crimea and Sevastopol needed to be protected from the alleged anti-constitutional coup. This is exactly how the ultimatums of the Russian foreign ministry were put forward in 2021, but already addressed to Ukrainians, European partners, and NATO as an alliance, with demands to return to the borders of 1997 because NATO expansion allegedly prevents Russia from feeling safe.
Now sabotage actions against Europe are explained in a similar way. They say that Europe's assistance to Ukraine poses a threat to Russia, and therefore, it considers itself entitled to violate European security. However, such distortions of reality cannot be categorically allowed even in a negotiations format at the level of public rhetorics. Acts of aggression by the Russian Federation cannot be bought off by externalizing security. Another important lesson from Ukraine to Europe is that Russia's war against Ukraine is not only and not so much tanks and not direct combat operations as such.
In 2014, Europe and the world were confused by a banal operation under a false flag in the form of little green men in Crimea. And, Russia did not let the world recover from the first shock and intensified on a pseudo legalistic approach. Supposedly, it was about some kind of expression of will, the right of people to self-determination, and referendums. However, no legalistic explanations by Putin could and cannot dominate international law. Although it was precisely this approach that was finally enshrined by Russia with the so-called constitutional reform of 2020.
It is precisely on such confusion that Russia can, will, and be betting, that if aggression against Europe is dressed not in camouflage but in gray clothes. What if we are talking about another pseudo republic under the pretext of protecting this or that ethnic minority, for example, on the eastern borders of Europe? Shooting up an artificial rally of this or that minority by representatives of the Russian special services is much cheaper than a full-fledged military operation. Then, consequences will be fatal. Loss of control due to confusions, discrediting NATO as a defense alliance, which in any case will spend a significant amount of time on reaction.
And this is just one example. This could also be attempts to repeat the famous march on Slatina, but now along the European route. In 1999, this was also an attempt to mask its activities literally by repainting four armed personnel carriers SK4. It was then that deputy minister of defense of the Russian Federation, Yunusbet Yevkurov, gained his authority and a kind of fame in the eyes of the world's military intelligence. And it is Yevkurov who is now overseas the activities of another instrument of the Russian Federation, which is designed to reformat the world order in a way that it's beneficial to Russia, the African core.
And this instrument, in turn, points to another lesson from Ukraine. War is global. This was proven by both the food crisis of 2022 and the challenges to maritime security created by this stage of the war. And there are no separate actions by Russia in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in North Africa, or on land and at sea. There is a comprehensive approach that Russia uses.
Due to a project projection of the force, Russia also receives political opportunities to enter a particular region. After all, when it comes to the Africa core, it is not only and not so much about fighters on the ground, but about the work of political consultants, media workers, diplomats, and their joint efforts. The most dangerous enemy on the Russian side does not necessarily have to be in uniform. Sometimes it is the military advisers who can wear both uniform and suits, as Suravikin is currently dying doing in Algeria, moving between Algeria and Libya, but not limited to these countries. Often, it's a well trained person in civilian clothes who establishes connections, sells the services of people in uniform, and ensures the desired results for Russia in international platforms, for instance, in the UN.
Often, these are people who manually organize migration crisis with the help of the refugees from Libya. Sometimes there's a specialist who wins elections for pro-Russian candidates and so on. Sometimes there are Rosatom specialists who start Trojan horses in the form of energy projects, after which, one way or another, representatives of the Russian intelligence service enter the countries in the medium term. Sometimes it is Nikolay Patrushev himself who now has the monstrous structure called the Maritime Board of the Russian Federation. It unites the activities of the Russian special services among all ministries and the heads of the maritime regions of the Russian Federation.
And, actually, it is Pat Roshev and president Putin himself who are responsible for these activities of the shuttle fleet, which is used not only to avoid sanctions against energy carriers, but also as a platform for future technical intelligence. And it is these people who will try to impose their KGB vision of the future of the Arctic on the world. One way or another, war has many dimensions. War can be dressed in different ways, both in uniform and in diplomatic suit. By all, this is war.
Russia's war against Ukraine and Europe is always about the need to see the vertical of subordination of direct actors and all about the need to have the courage to call things by their rightful names. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much, Maria. And now we turn to Oleana Haluska, who is online. You have the floor. Oleana, for 8 minutes. Welcome.
Speaker 30
Good morning. Madam chairwoman, distinguished members, it's a great honor for me to take part in this hearing today, though remotely. And let me start with three myths about this war, which I'm very often hearing in talks with foreign partners. Myth one is drone warfare is happening only because of the lack of ammunition and missiles. And if a NATO country is attacked, they will defend with more sophisticated and expensive platforms, like jets or artillery.
Myth two is that time is on Europe's side, and myth three is that supporting Ukraine is too expensive for Europe. Let's break down those myths in detail, starting with the first one, the war of the future. Ukraine's experience clearly shows that future wars are robotic wars. Small chip technologies deployed at a huge overwhelming scale can threaten the most advanced heavy platforms we are used to. Large numbers of drones can destroy a tank worth millions of dollars.
Speaker 31
Maritime drones endanger big warships. Long range drone strikes can get to and reach strategic targets deep into the enemy rear. Ukraine's technological race is made possible by literally nonstop twenty-four-seven interaction between frontline unit soldiers, many of whom established their in-house R and D labs and weapons producers. This enables development, testing, and fast upgrades of military technologies under battlefield conditions in real time. How will this warfare further evolve?
Likely towards swarms of low-cost drones operated by a minimal number of soldiers, expanded kill zones that are saturated with robots both in the air and on the ground, AI-enabled targeting that will reduce the time of reaction to minutes or even seconds, and a technological race where advantage won't last years or months but weeks. That sounds pretty much like science fiction, but that's already the reality we are living in. And in the war of the future, the production of what I call the boutique weapons that are extremely precise, very expensive, but produced at a pace of maximum hundreds of units per year, that's the best to nowhere. And Ukraine, in fact, has become the world's only democratic full-scale laboratory of modern warfare. And while authoritarian regimes are learning very fast from each other, we have seen this already in the Middle East.
Madam Khobko referred to this as well. But are our partners doing enough to learn from Ukraine's experience? And that brings me to myth number two. Time is not on Europe's side. It is on the side of those who are learning and who are adapting fast, and furthermore in action.
Speaker 30
And today, that's the coalition of authoritarian regimes. Yes. Russia is struggling. Yes. Russia is facing a lot of issues, including financial problems.
Speaker 31
But, unfortunately, one thing it is doing really well, and that's learning, copying from Ukraine, developing their own solutions, and scaling them up on the industrial basis. And as an adversary of the free world, Russia is right now, at this moment, as I'm speaking, gaining an asymmetric advantage over you because they are getting combat experience and technology that is improved and refined in battle. Even with the political will, Europe cannot reproduce in peacetime the cycle that Ukraine is going through because we are in war. It is impossible to get this experience during the drills or exercises without being present on the ground. It is impossible for your weapons to stay updated if they are not continuously tested, upgraded, and improved in real time in battle.
At the same time, while waging a conventional war against Ukraine, Russia is already actively undermining Europe, as madam Kucherenko has explained greatly in detail. This is not a hybrid activity. This is phase zero of war. And across Europe, we still see hesitation. Leaders often downplay the significance of Russia's attacks instead of using them as a mobilization factor for their societies in order to increase defense spending and commit to the support of Ukraine's victory.
Instead, we are hearing the calls, such as the latest one from the Belgian prime minister, to normalize relations with Russia immediately at this moment, as Russia is committing genocide of Ukrainians. And we are still hearing the question, for how long can Europe afford supporting Ukraine, which brings us to the myth number three, funding. Values aside, there is a very clear financial ratio for Europe to support Ukrainian victory, allowing even a partial Russian victory will cost Europe significantly more. Recent research by Norwegian think tanks, NUPI and CoRisk, published last year, estimated the cost of action versus the cost of inaction. Over the next four years, even partial Russian victory would cost Europe nearly €1,600,000,000,000 in refugee costs, reinforcing Europe's eastern flank, and sustaining Ukraine's resistance.
Supporting Ukraine's victory would cost roughly half of that amount. And Europe has the resources, but it is not using them strategically. And, yes, I'm speaking what madam Hovko has already referred to. Russian Central Bank assets, frozen assets, this money can finance Ukraine's defense and long-term reconstruction, can scale up European defense, production, and can reduce the burden on European taxpayers. According to international law, which we are very often hearing from the European partners as an argument against using these funds, the aggressor must not only stop its violation, but it must compensate for the damages.
And latest World Bank estimates point that Ukraine's reconstruction will cost €500,000,000,000, much more than the frozen Russian assets themselves. If Europe is serious about strategic autonomy, then Russian money must finance our joint security. Actively managing these assets through the model similar to the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund would ensure stable long-term financing for Ukraine's rearmament, long-term fortification, and economic growth for decades to come. So what would I call you and ask you today? First, please explore alternative models of the use of frozen Russian assets through the transfer of this money to a separate fund.
Second, please prepare for the war of the future. Invest heavily in the battle tested robotic solutions that proved efficient in battle in Ukraine. And third, integrate Ukraine into Europe's defense industrial base. Be present in Ukraine, not and be ready for the brave steps. We hear the discussions about boots on the ground, SkyShield after the war, but those solutions are necessary now, because it's not about us anymore.
It's about your competitive advantage and your preparation to deter Russian aggression. Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much, Olena. You couldn't hear the applause from the colleagues. So, I will now give the floor to members for a first round of questions, starting with the coordinators, for two minutes each. Nicolas Pascal de la Parto, the floor is yours.
Speaker 9
Thank you very much. I cannot but agree very much with everything that has been said and put forward for the European Union. Lessons learned. Politically, we have learned very tough lessons. We were ignoring the signals from Putin's Russia.
We didn't pay attention. We didn't want to look reality in the eyes when he invaded Georgia, when he waged two wars against Chechnya, when he annexed illegally Crimea. We prefer to look otherwise to other and now we were waking up in the worst possible way with the war in the continent. I think that these political lessons to wake up from the zone of comfort have been learned, and now our leaders are united in creating a European strategic defense readiness and a strategic industrial and technological base. From the military point of view, the lessons are obvious.
We have to engage with our Ukrainian friends. We have to integrate them as soon as possible in our European integrated defense structures, not because we want to help them, but because we want to help ourselves from them. They have better experience, better methods, better field-tested, and that's why we have to exchange our know-how. We have to integrate them in a way that it is a win-win situation. We have, of course, to engage in and to continue financing the war effort in Ukraine.
We have to use the asset, the Russian assets frozen in the European Union. This is clear. We have to find a way. It will not be easy, but it is a necessary step forward. We have to use this as a fund, as proposed, as a Norwegian World Fund or something similar, in order to help the Ukrainian reconstruction in the future.
In addition to this, we also have to keep clear that we are committed with Ukraine. We have to say our public opinions, what is at stake, what is at risk, there is our security, is our freedom, is our model of life. Then let's draw the lessons, the political, the military, and the strategic lessons. I think that they are clear for all of us. Let's apply this, implement them in a quick way.
Slava Ukraine.
Mhmm.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
thank you very much. And the next will be Sven Mixer from S and D.
Speaker 33
Thank you. Thank you very much. Very impressive. I agree with everything. I think that all of us were very impressed during our recent visit to Ukraine, particularly with the, well, evolution of the drone technologies and drone production, that has taken place over the past four years in Ukraine.
I think it was beyond impressive. We are ready to be impressed, but we were much more impressed than expected. Now how to sort of take these lessons learned over here in the European Union? I think that's a bit of a challenge because, obviously, the drone and counter-drone technologies feature very prominently also in all our defense initiatives. But the scale, I think, is rather different when you think of Ukraine now producing over four and a half billion drones annually and Russia possibly even exceeding that.
That figure, when we talk about drone defense here in Europe, we usually talk about it in a context of hybrid or counter terrorist operations. And it's, I think, paradigmatically a little different whether you talk about countering four or five drones that are disrupting the operation of a civilian near airport, or you are talking about tens of thousands of drone drones swarming your defenses. And I think that one thing that is very difficult to do is to replicate the pace or the speed of the invention, is the innovation cycle in that we are seeing in Ukraine during a long drawn out high intensity war where you basically burn out or the additional material is enormous, and you need to replace tens of thousands of inventory items every week, and you then integrate the battlefield experience. So what's your advice? How can we actually sort of match the scale of a threat in Europe that is operating not actually yet according to the sort of wartime mentality and therefore cannot sort of match the speed of innovation cycle that we see in Ukraine.
Thank you.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. The next will be Pierre Romer from the Patriots. Thank.
Speaker 11
You, chair. I'll be speaking French. If you can hear the interpretation. Okay. Before I make my point, I've just seen the latest news from Donald Trump about NATO and the Strait of Hormuz.
He says that since no European allies want to help them, nor do any of the Asian allies, then he concludes that this is a one-way alliance. And he says we don't need the help of anyone. I think that's only likely to enhance the idea that the idea of American security is even weaker than it was in the past. I'm just referring to this because Missus Hopko referred to the fact that allies may have varying priorities, which vary over time. And so there's a risk with relying on an ultimate security guarantee from any ally.
We see what's happening in the Middle East. America is bringing over assets from the Far East. And so anything happening in Europe or Ukraine is going to be at least the third in line in any new American strategy. So in Europe, we focus a lot on strategic autonomy. I'd just like to hear what Ukrainians think about this idea of European strategic autonomy.
I think that today and in the future, even more so, Ukrainians are going to be the most fervent defenders of European strategic autonomy for a very simple reason, which may seem to be contradictory at the start. But Ukraine has been dependent on aid from the outside, but they are actively seeking ways to no longer be dependent on anyone, not the Americans and certainly also not Europeans. The Europe, the Ukrainian defense industries are trying to make up for any shortcomings or areas of dependency. And so they're trying not to be dependent on anyone in their defense strategy for the future. So I would just ask you what you would say, or what would you reply to any European countries who seem to be frightened of this strategic autonomy?
Because they think that if they say that they want to be independent, particularly from America, then that's going to encourage America to move away from Europe even further. So what's your reaction to that, and particularly in light of the Ukrainian experience?
ECR, Aleksandra?
Speaker 34
No. Thank you very much. It was very valuable to listen to your presentation. I think we can find a lot of inspiration, no doubts. You know, Russia is an aggressor, and it's a top interest of Europe to contain this aggression.
The Ukraine is a victim, and it's in our interest to help you. And I think here, you have the MEPs, who feel this, the same for years and are trying to convince the other to do more than we are doing. But, you know, the world is complicated, and it's going to be more complicated. The interest of the other players are not necessarily the same. So, we should take this into account, too.
So, and with your plea, you know, Europe, you must integrate Go and all. Are you really convinced that without the US, we can do it now? That's my question.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. And the next will be Pedra for renewal.
Speaker 14
Thank you, chair. Congratulations on your impressive trio and presentation. So once ladies speak about warfare and lessons to be learned, we have to be serious. Otherwise, we will make a double mistake, not just stop learning, but be ignorance. You know, it's a major disadvantage of mankind.
It brings to further mistakes, definitely. Looking at the Russian warfare, you know, just recently, I read one more book on defense of Luhansk Airport. And I was already forgotten, those so-called humanitarian corridors or so-called white trucks, what Russians used to bring everything, ammo, you know, equipment to intervene on Ukrainian territory, and then to attack them further on. So not to speak about green men, about disinformation platforms, and the rest. We've been learning by, you know, being too late sometimes, definitely too late.
Speaker 13
But my general question, I mean, it's not your first time to make interventions to meet European and probably international, for us, politicians, militaries, whatever.
Do you have?
Speaker 14
A feeling that we are learning? I mean, is Ukraine's example somehow inspiring enough to make transformation, not just listen, but to understand and to make further actions in order to transform? And here I come with the open question. Of course, it's excellent, I mean, to have you on panel, but maybe there should be some cell established here in, I don't know what country, I mean, Belgium, Germany, whatever, for this transferring of experience of Ukraine, you know, of different kind. I'm sorry for the delay.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Thank you very much. And for the Greens, Willie, the floor is yours.
Villy Søvndal
Thank you very much to all three of you for a very good presentation. I think, basically, there are two ways of winning a war. One is a military way, and the second one is an economic way. And you touched on both of these in your presentations. Two of you mentioned the frozen Russian assets.
I think in this room, we very much agreed that we should spend these. Last I visited Kyiv, we were told that there is a lot of capacity to produce more weapons than you do today. So the lack is not of capacity. The lack is in finance. Is that still the case?
Could you just elaborate a bit upon that? Upon the set of leads, which is the economic way of tightening the grip on Russian economy, I think more is done than was before. I see more ships being stopped now, which means it's getting more expensive to transport oil that way, but we still have to continue to make this better. And the last question is to Olena about the most innovative military you have. I'm elected in Denmark.
We started very early to co-produce with Ukraine. Could you say a bit more about how that is developing and which further steps countries in Europe could take to not only finance, but also coproduce weapons. Also, it's very important just now in a situation where a lot of the weapons in the world are going to Iran and the Middle East. Is it possible to close some of this gap with Ukraine production or coproduction with Ukraine and European states? And just a statement to end, I think you are very right that it's very expensive not to give the help that's needed to Ukraine now because we are going to pay very expensive, Europe for decades if this war is not won in the way that Russia has driven back to the international borders.
Ask anything about this video — I analyse its transcript to answer.