People in Europe, mostly Western Europe—exceptionally so in Spain, and I think Italy—live on the Moon when it comes to Russia. Among some leftist circles, there is something of an atavistic reaction, not understanding that Russia is not the same as the Soviet Union, and that the Soviet Union was only the dreamland of socialism when seen from a thousand kilometers away. Then there is the same kind of complacency as at the beginning of Covid: first, no one was worried because it was happening in China. Then Northern Europeans were not worried because it was happening in Italy, and it would never happen there. Then, I guess, there is the unwillingness to see that the world is no longer what it was between 1990 and 2020, if it ever was. Then there is the feeling that the problems at home—whatever they are—are so much more important, that it is all happening really far away, and that, in any case, what consequences can this have for us? Okay, for personal reasons, I don’t have the privilege of having this dreamed distance.

Let’s start by defining what Russia is. Not the culture or the people. The state. Everybody knows there is a lot of mafia, corruption, and things like that, and everybody glosses over it. Russia feels so foreign that this does not touch the inner fibers of people. Now, let’s look at other things that are happening there. Children are getting military training in schools, being taught that there is nothing better in life than dying for the Motherland. All starting at age 3. In Russia, it is illegal to call the war a war. Doing so qualifies as “discrediting the Russian military” (up to 7 years in jail) and “knowingly disseminating false information” (15 years). Over 10,000 people have been prosecuted under these laws, and most of them sent to jail. A former Moscow municipal deputy was sentenced to seven years in 2022 for calling the war an “invasion” during a meeting. In 2024, he received an additional three years on terrorism-related charges. A former regional bar association chair was sentenced to seven years for “disseminating false information about the Russian army” and “inciting hatred” in social media posts criticizing the Russian military’s actions in Bucha, Irpin, and Mariupol. A 19-year-old student was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for anti-government graffiti and sharing online information about anti-war protests. A 14-year-old was sent to jail for 4.5 years for—allegedly incited by a provocateur—seeking information on incendiary materials and throwing a Molotov cocktail at a ruined building. Sympathizing with Ukraine’s Azov Regiment puts you in life-sentence territory. An 18-year-old has been in jail for a month and a half for singing anti-war songs critical of the Kremlin in the street—that again counts as “discrediting the Russian armed forces.” In April 2022, a 12-year-old drew an anti-war picture in her sketchbook at school. The next day, she and her father—who had custody—were brought to the police station, the father lost custody and was sent to jail, and the daughter was put in an orphanage. That is the Russian state for you.

Besides that, there is the complete control of information, the brainwashing. There is the dehumanization of the other. There is continuous talk about Russia being in a war with the West, with mentions of how few minutes this or that rocket would need to reach Berlin. But there is no war with Ukraine. Orwell calling. But it is okay to speak about a war with Ukraine if you are a propagandist and are going to argue for nuking Kyiv. Huxley calling. There is the absolutely crass racism. There are the war crimes. The thousands of children abducted from Ukraine and given for adoption within Russia. There is the torturing of prisoners. There are the Russian soldiers who refuse to participate in a suicidal attack and get tied to trees by their own comrades to attract Ukrainian drones. There are soldiers pushed into attack on crutches. That is the Russian state for you. You don’t need to argue with me that not all Russians are like this, but any conversation must begin by accepting that the Russian state is much worse than anything that has been seen in the West since the end of WWII, since long before you were born. Franco’s Spain was definitely a liberal paradise compared to Russia today. With a little bit of good luck, Mussolini’s Italy as well, although that might be pushing it. But it is disputable: there are way more political prisoners in the Arctic than there ever were on small islands around Italy. Please do me—and yourself—a favor and don’t try to compare the current Russian state with the US or anything else you want. With all its faults, past and present, the US has never tied its own soldiers to trees to attract enemy fire.

Okay, the Russian state is really horrible. We all agree. And so what? All of that is happening in Russia and maybe Ukraine, but any fear that something could happen to us is overblown. Well, let us agree on what we call “us.” If “us” is you and your dog, then you are, in a first approximation, right. You will continue eating lentils whatever happens in Russia or Ukraine. If that’s all you care about, then fine. That is, if you don’t care about what kids might be learning in the school by your house, about who gets to govern your country, about global warming, about income distribution, about consumer protection, and things like that. Wait, what does all this have to do with Russia?

Okay, you will probably agree that you might feel a bit different if you were living in Vilnius or Tallinn, right? But maybe you still don’t see what this has to do with you being worried about income distribution or consumer protection in your country. Okay, bear with me for a moment and suppose that Putin’s Russia were to do anything against another European country. Something that would count as an act of war if it happened in your country. Say, somebody invading Corsica if you are French. Now, it is not Corsica, but a little chunk of Estonia. What do you think would happen? Do you think there would be a war? Would Portugal, Spain or Italy be at war with Russia? Would the US? Who would go there? Since most likely you cannot even imagine it happening and actually somebody you know going to war, the consequence is that maybe the countries which are nearby would go to war, and Spain and Italy would send their best wishes to them. Maybe not; maybe the first day of the war the army is deployed somewhere in Eastern Europe. But you must agree that maybe these people would be on their own. And then the EU stops existing.

And why do you think that Western European borders are not militarized? Because you are smarter than people a while ago? I don’t. I am convinced that it is because the EU exists. And why is it that all members of the EU, with all their issues, are democracies? Why are there no military governments? It might look to you that I am dramatizing, but passing from dictatorship to democracy was a condition to enter the EU, and this is one of the reasons why they disappeared. Why do you think that they cannot appear again? Because you are going to the barricades to defend democracy? Seriously? If anything that amounts to war happens anywhere in the EU and the other countries don’t show overwhelming solidarity, then the EU is finished, and then the cards are dealt anew, and I would not take any bets on the effects that this has on income distribution in your country.

As I said earlier, for Western Europeans to ignore the effects of what is going on in Eastern Europe is akin to ignoring Covid when it happened in China, or even more dramatically, to being French and ignoring it when Bergamo was locked down: an idiotic feeling of security coming from a misplaced sense of superiority, xenophobia, and racism, if you ask me.

Okay, but you might be pointing to the elephant in the room. Why would Russia do anything against Estonia? Well, first, because with the US out of the picture—it seems a bit dreamy to trust the US right now, mostly if it comes from people who have always been very anti-American—the deterrence factor is possibly so small that Russia could think it could do something. Then, but I don’t think that this is that important, because Putin has a very particular picture of European history and might be thinking that he is just putting Russia in its proper position. What I think is much more important is that Putin has all the incentives in the world to make Europe look more like Russia. At least Eastern and Central Europe. For Putin, things would be much simpler if all those countries were governed like the countries in the Caucasus or like Serbia. At the very least, Russians could not compare themselves with much more prosperous countries next door, with systems where there is less income inequality and more consumer protection. And yes, since somebody would go to war, it would probably still be very costly for Russia. And a lot of Russians would die. But we are all seeing in Ukraine how much the Russian state cares about that. And one has to recall that it is not what one would do if one were in Putin’s shoes, but rather what Putin, who is in his own shoes, would do. According to my own rationality, and that of everybody and their mother in Europe, the war in Ukraine made absolutely no sense. Therefore, nobody believed Putin would start it. But, evidently, it did make sense according to his own rationality. And that is what matters.

I am not saying that it is certain Russia will want to do anything. I am just saying that it is very much not impossible. How likely? I don’t know. I guess that my feeling is that 50% is too high and that 5% is too low. It also depends on what else happens. Completely arbitrary, just to have a number to play with, let us pick one-in-eight. Now, are you willing to take a one-in-eight gamble for the EU to collapse? How much is it worth for you to have consumer protections and for kids in Spain or Italy to grow up in a democracy? How much do you care about fair trade, about regulations against child labor in other countries, or about being able to go and live and work elsewhere for a year as if you were going to Murcia or Livorno? Are you willing to gamble that one-in-eight? That, and many other things, because you will tell me how much Spain, Italy and Portugal would have to say about anything if it were not in the EU.

But what could one do? Well, one could basically take the problem seriously. Politicians do something about something when there is a punctual crisis or when the backswell of public opinion leads them to do it. Now, because it all feels far away and unreal, because what can happen to us, because of the admiration for Russia—something utterly ridiculous if what one is talking about is the Russian state, not the culture, the people, and such—, because of convenience, because a percentage in taxes, because two years more or less to retirement seem so important, or because there are undeniable problems in one’s own country, people do not take the whole thing seriously. And what do their politicians do? Listen and follow. And Italian politicians agree to dedicate money for military infrastructure, promising to build a bridge to Sicily. And Spanish politicians are liked for stating that Spain is not going to spend more on the military than it had already agreed to in 2005. And no, nobody thinks that investing in weapons is by itself a good idea. Everybody would prefer to be in 2005. And definitively nobody wants to use them—to do what, conquer Tula or Smolensk? And yes, there might be other ways to prevent war besides deterrence. But they must be ways that have any effect on somebody with Putin’s rationality, not yours.

But maybe the one-in-eight never happens, and it turns out that all the military investment was unnecessary. That the preparation for the case that it comes to it—that is deterrence—is seen as a waste of time and resouces. That the paper used by the Swedish government to distribute booklets telling people what to do in case of war would have been better used to make paper napkins. Still, the attitude of Spanish and Italian people is fully idiotic. I mean, do you think that people in Poland don’t know what Spain does? And how do you think these people are going to feel about helping out Spain and Italy when they need it? By ignoring it all, Western and Southwestern European countries are showing all but solidarity, and by doing that, they are digging under their own feet a hole that will be visible during the next crisis that they cannot ignore. I mean, I am pretty sure that the consequences of climate change are seen in Finland and Estonia in a more sanguine way than in Almería or Valencia.