Russia vs. Europe: who really has the military edge?

When the mil­it­ary cap­ab­il­it­ies of indi­vidu­al European Uni­on nations are com­bined, they sur­pass those of the Rus­si­an Armed Forces, par­tic­u­larly in the air and mari­time domains. How­ever, Louise Sou­ver­bie, a research­er at the IRIS (Insti­tut de rela­tions inter­na­tionales et straté­giques), stresses that the Kremlin’s stra­tegic assets should not be under­es­tim­ated: “Integ­rated air and mis­sile defence (IAMD) sys­tems, as well as their deep strike cap­ab­il­ity, are real strengths,” before point­ing out that these Rus­si­an strikes have inflic­ted sig­ni­fic­ant dam­age in Ukraine since the start of the war. Indeed, the Rus­si­an mil­it­ary has demon­strated its abil­ity to strike mil­it­ary or eco­nom­ic tar­gets loc­ated well bey­ond the front line. Even without being deployed, these long-range strike cap­ab­il­it­ies can feed into a strategy of intimidation.

Russia’s bal­list­ic arsen­al is based on a range of mis­siles. With a range of around 500 km, the Iskander bal­list­ic mis­siles are the most widely used. The Kin­zhal mis­sile (range of 2,000 km) has been presen­ted by Rus­sia as invin­cible, although it has been inter­cep­ted on sev­er­al occa­sions by the Ukrain­i­an army. As for the Oresh­nik mis­sile that struck Dnipro last year, it is repor­ted to have a range of 3,000 to 5,000 km. The Rus­si­an defence arsen­al also includes inter­con­tin­ent­al mis­siles, primar­ily reserved for nuc­le­ar warheads.

The Rus­si­an Armed Forces have turned drones into a key asset. The Ira­ni­an-made Shahed mod­el, which is inex­pens­ive (cost­ing just a few tens of thou­sands of euros) and cap­able of strik­ing tar­gets up to 2,500 km away, has become cent­ral to their strategy. Accord­ing to Louise Sou­ver­bie, “the Shahed drone has shif­ted the bal­ance of power by cre­at­ing a cost asym­metry between offens­ive and defens­ive cap­ab­il­it­ies.” This dis­par­ity is also evid­ent in the Red Sea, in the con­flict with the Houthis.

To counter drone sal­vos, whose effect­ive­ness relies on a sat­ur­a­tion-exploit­a­tion strategy (sat­ur­at­ing defences with a salvo of low-cost drones or mis­siles, fol­lowed by exploit­a­tion and strikes using a few more pre­cise mis­siles), the EU must devel­op diver­si­fied inter­cep­tion cap­ab­il­it­ies to avoid rely­ing solely on par­tic­u­larly costly inter­cept­ors. “For example, the inter­cept­ors used in the Franco-Itali­an SAMP/T sys­tem, or the Amer­ic­an Pat­ri­ot sys­tem, each cost between €2 and 5 million.”

More broadly speak­ing, European states have acquired equip­ment based on cut­ting-edge tech­no­lo­gies, whilst Rus­sia has pri­or­it­ised quant­ity. In light of this, European defence forces are seek­ing to devel­op “multi-layered” air defence cap­ab­il­it­ies, com­bin­ing very short‑, short‑, medi­um- and long-range inter­cep­tion sys­tems and incor­por­at­ing less expens­ive solu­tions along­side state-of-the-art systems.

Whilst inform­a­tion com­ing out of Moscow should be treated with cau­tion, sev­er­al reports¹ high­light the rap­id and sig­ni­fic­ant growth in Russia’s defence pro­duc­tion capa­city. By shift­ing to a war eco­nomy mod­el, “the Krem­lin has man­aged to cre­ate a cent­ral­ised sys­tem, involving requis­i­tions, restric­tions on work­ers’ rights and the mobil­isa­tion of the entire Rus­si­an industry to sup­port the war effort, whilst invest­ing heav­ily in the cre­ation of new pro­duc­tion lines and even new pro­duc­tion sites. For example, Rus­sia now man­u­fac­tures Shahed drones (known as Ger­an in Rus­sia) itself at least two new sites in Tatarstan,” explains Louise Souverbie.

Des­pite the inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions in force, Rus­si­an industry has man­aged to secure its sup­plies of stra­tegic elec­tron­ic com­pon­ents. “A net­work of com­pan­ies has been estab­lished, such as in Kaza­kh­stan, to import tech­no­lo­gies and thus cir­cum­vent the embar­goes with little difficulty”.

In budget­ary terms, 6% of Rus­si­an GDP was alloc­ated to defence in 2025. By com­par­is­on, on the European side, Poland remains top of the rank­ings for mil­it­ary spend­ing (4.48% of nation­al GDP), fol­lowed by the Balt­ic states (Lithuania 4%, Latvia 3.73%, Esto­nia 3.38%), whilst France barely exceeds the 2% of GDP mark. The com­bined mil­it­ary expendit­ure of the 32 NATO coun­tries rose to a total of $1,588 bil­lion in 2025.

With the SAFE (Secur­ity Action for Europe) Plan, Brus­sels aims to act on two fronts sim­ul­tan­eously: pool­ing demand through joint pro­cure­ment of mil­it­ary equip­ment, and pool­ing sup­ply via indus­tri­al pro­jects involving com­pan­ies across sev­er­al European coun­tries, for example in the field of ammuni­tion³. “A range of tools has emerged since the out­break of the war in Ukraine in 2022 – ASAP (Act in Sup­port of Ammuni­tion Pro­duc­tion) for ammuni­tion pro­duc­tion, EDIRPA (European Defence Industry. Rein­force­ment through com­mon. Pro­cure­ment Act) for joint pro­cure­ment – but until now these schemes have relied on grants and remained on a mod­est scale,” adds the IRIS research­er. The SAFE Plan, adop­ted as a reg­u­la­tion in May 2025, pro­poses a new mech­an­ism and a new scale.

Long-term loans (up to 45 years) replace grants. With a budget of €150 bil­lion in loans, this mech­an­ism is part of the ReArm Europe plan (March 2025, since renamed Read­i­ness 2030), which envis­aged releas­ing €800 bil­lion for European defence. The Com­mis­sion has already approved the nation­al fund­ing plans of 16 coun­tries, includ­ing Esto­nia, Poland, Italy and Fin­land. This mech­an­ism is based on eli­gib­il­ity cri­ter­ia designed to sup­port European industry whilst main­tain­ing a degree of flex­ib­il­ity for cer­tain crit­ic­al capabilities.

Accord­ing to estim­ates by SIPRI (Stock­holm Inter­na­tion­al Peace Research Insti­tute), between 2020 and 2024, half of all mil­it­ary equip­ment is impor­ted from out­side the EU. Of these pur­chases, 64% are believed to come from the United States. To address this stra­tegic weak­ness, the eli­gib­il­ity cri­ter­ia for access­ing loans under SAFE are tar­geted: at least 65% of the value of the com­pon­ents of any equip­ment pur­chased must be of European, Nor­we­gi­an or Ukrain­i­an origin.

Eli­gible pro­jects are divided into two cat­egor­ies: “con­sum­ables and stand­ard equip­ment”⁴ (ammuni­tion, mis­siles, artil­lery), and com­plex weapon sys­tems (air defence and anti-mis­sile sys­tems, stra­tegic cata­lysts, AI, quantum tech­no­logy). For this second cat­egory, European com­pan­ies awar­ded the con­tract must be able to devel­op the product without the involve­ment of a third coun­try. “This clause aims to strengthen a form of stra­tegic autonomy by ensur­ing com­pan­ies’ abil­ity to adapt and mod­ern­ise European equip­ment entirely inde­pend­ently,” con­cludes Louise Souverbie.

Alicia Piveteau