The threat of Russian nationalism looms over Europe

The European Union’s foreign policy chief was unequivocal when he delivered a speech on defense last month in Brussels. “We imagined to be surrounded by a ring of friends after the fall of Berlin Wall. This world is being replaced by a ring of fire around us,” Josep Borrell said.

Borrell’s partners in the trans-Atlantic alliance should heed his stark warning. On its eastern frontiers, Europe faces an intractable national question that threatens to rewrite the continent’s security order: Russia is seeking to reassert what it considers to be its rightful sphere of influence in its war of aggression against Ukraine.

The fall of Communism has often been viewed as a peaceful process. The revolutions that swept across the Eastern Bloc in 1989 overthrew the Communist regimes without a single shot being fired, albeit with the exception of Romania. But it was also a sudden and unexpected rupture to Russian national identity with profound implications for European security. 

As Lynne Hartnett — an associate professor at Villanova University and expert on Russian history — told me, Russia has always been a contiguous empire in which the metropole and colonized territories share a common land mass. The erosion of what had comprised both the Imperial Russian and Soviet empire, according to Hartnett, involved an existential crisis about Russia’s security and identity.

A fragile sense of nationhood is one of Russia’s many complexities. The Mongol occupation between the 13th and 15th centuries meant that Russian national identity became preoccupied with national defense. And on the vast Eurasian plain with few natural boundaries, defense took the form of territorial expansion. Ever since then, the drive to “gather the Russian lands” has shaped Russia’s understanding of itself in what it sees as a hostile international system.

Vladimir Putin weaponized this conceptualization of Russia’s self-identity in launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Russian president famously lamented the Soviet Union’s dissolution as the “greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” and the demise of “historical Russia.” For Putin, Ukraine is merely an artificial state, which Lenin’s policy on nationalities in 1922 enabled to separate from Russia as the Soviet collapse took hold. 

But Russia’s neo-revisionism is not only a threat to Ukraine. The return of Russian expansionism has also left the Western Balkans vulnerable to Serbia’s national aspirations. Like Russia, Serbia is a country whose national consciousness intertwines with a historical struggle against foreign occupation. The deep attachment of Kosovo to Serbia’s identity traces back to the Battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389, when the Serbs fought against an Ottoman assault. 

NATO justified its intervention in Kosovo in 1999 on the responsibility to protect the rights of Kosovo Albanians against Slobodan Milosevic’s policy of ethnic cleansing. But for many in Serbia, NATO’s involvement in their country’s affairs is a source of resentment. This has fueled an irredentist political ideology in Serbia’s politics called the Serbian World. “The task for this generation of politicians is to form a Serb world, that is to unite Serbs wherever they live,” stated Aleksandar Vulin, Serbia’s newly-appointed pro-Russian deputy prime minister.

The grievances of Russia and Serbia towards a post–Cold War order that tore apart their respective national identities have reorientated the two countries towards China. Trade and investment have risen sharply between them. As a result, Moscow and Belgrade are emerging as key partners for Beijing in its geostrategic competition with Washington and what it perceives as American encroachment on the principles of state sovereignty and non-interference. 

China has made a tacit acceptance of Russia’s neo-revisionist intentions. While Xi Jinping insists that China is playing a “positive role” in finding a peaceful solution to Russia’s war against Ukraine, he also sees Putin’s full-scale invasion as an opportunity to reverse the unchallenged primacy of the United States in international affairs. China has refused to condemn the Russian assault and followed the Kremlin’s false narrative that NATO is to blame for the war. 

In Serbia, China and Russia are viewed as powerful allies that support its right to pursue an independent foreign policy. The EU has criticized Serbia for refusing to join international sanctions against Russia for its unprovoked attack on Ukraine. But this has not deterred Belgrade from building close ties with Moscow and Beijing, who staunchly support Serbia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. 

The resurgence of Russia represents the most significant threat to Europe since the Cold War, particularly with the implicit backing of a rapidly growing China behind it. Supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes will no longer suffice. Russian nationalism has returned to the European continent — and the West must adapt to respond to this geopolitical reality. 

Hugo Blewett-Mundy is a non-resident associate research fellow at the EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy in Prague.