A new cold war is sweeping across Europe – with global repercussions

The last three and more years have seen the bloodiest war on European soil for the better part of 80 years.

With it has come rhetoric of disturbing belligerence and a military spending spree that has engulfed the whole of Europe.

Ostensibly, the conflict is between Russia and Ukraine. In reality, it has lasted as long as it has, and brought into play such a vast arsenal of destructive firepower, because the stakes are much higher and perhaps less visible than the bilateral dispute.

As we shall see, this is the single most dangerous geopolitical confrontation since the end of the Cold War, which is not to downplay the mayhem caused by Israeli military aggression in the Middle East or the seriousness of a possible Sino-US collision.

The costs borne by the two sides over the last three years shed light on the gravity of the situation.

Official figures are scant and unreliable and, to make matters worse, Western sources tend to focus on evidence that supports the generally upbeat Ukrainian narrative. It is, nevertheless, possible to distill in broad outline the military dynamic and scale of this conflict and its far-reaching consequences.

There is no denying the costs Russia has incurred on the battlefield.

According to the thorough and regularly updated analysis conducted by Mediazona in collaboration with BBC News Russian Service, named Russian military personnel killed between 24 February 2022 and 5 June 2025 numbered 111,387. Using a different calculation based on excess mortality among men, its estimate of the number of deaths to December 2024 rises to 167,000, which suggests a current total close to 250,000.

The Russian economy has also come under pressure, but given the sustained sanctions imposed by Europe and the US, it has fared better than most Western analysts critical of Russian policies have consistently predicted.

That said, Russia’s economic growth, which averaged 4% in 2023-24, will slow down appreciably this year and the next. Sanctions, falling oil prices, and a shrinking workforce are taking their toll, and the massive increase in military spending, though it has created employment opportunities, is stifling Russia’s productive civilian sectors.

On the Ukrainian side, the picture is bleak, In February, Zelenskyy told US news outlet NBC that more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and some 380,000 wounded. Independent Ukrainian war correspondent Yuri Butusov indicated in December 2024 that his army sources estimated some 70,000 dead and 35,000 missing. Other estimates are even higher, and the death toll has risen considerably over the last six months.

Casualties on the battlefield are only part of the damage the war has inflicted on Ukraine, its people, its economy and its social and political institutions. In its May update, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights placed the number of civilians killed since February 2022 at 13,341 and the number injured at 32,744.

As of February 2025, 10.7 million Ukrainians had been displaced, that is just under a quarter of Ukraine’s pre-invasion population of 44 million. Over the same period, the Ukrainian economy has shrunk by 22%.

More telling, perhaps, is the damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure. As of 2024, Ukraine was left with its transmission infrastructure substantially disabled, 64% of its electricity generating capacity destroyed or occupied, and its thermal capacity reduced by 80%.

Why have the two adversaries been prepared to absorb so much pain and for so long? For the Ukrainian leadership, it has been a matter of preserving itself and the country’s territorial integrity, safe in the knowledge that the NATO powers would come to its rescue.

In Russia’s case, Putin decided that NATO’s relentless expansion and the coming to power of a Ukrainian Government committed to NATO membership had crossed a red line. His response, beginning with the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, was predictable. Eleven years later it remains unchanged.

The Russian memorandum released less than two weeks ago during the ceasefire talks in Istanbul restates the Russian position and sets out a long list of demands, four of which are worth highlighting:

• Full rights and freedoms for Russian speakers in Ukraine;

• The complete withdrawal of the Ukrainian military from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which Russia presently occupies, though not fully;

• Ukrainian neutrality, including a pledge not to join military alliances or coalitions and a ban on any military activity by third countries on Ukrainian territory; and

• A halt to the supply of all arms and provision of intelligence data from Western sources.

What these demands make clear is that the war is first and foremost a conflict between Russia and NATO. The addition of Finland and Sweden as NATO’s newest members in 2023-24 has merely strengthened Russian resolve.

So have Ukraine’s increasingly daring attacks on Russian airfields and war production facilities, notably the recent Operation Spiderweb which targeted and successfully hit several of Russia’s strategic cruise-missile and nuclear-weapon carriers.

It is hard to believe that such a complex operation 18 months in the planning could have been attempted without intelligence and targeting support from US and UK security agencies.

All of which has reinforced the Kremlin’s view that Ukraine is serving as a NATO proxy, and that Western military establishments are intent on inflicting maximum damage on Russia’s strategic and economic interests.

Russian anxieties have deepened, given the scale of US and European military and financial aid to Ukraine. Total US aid is estimated to have reached US$175 billion. Additionally, last December, the US provided a US$20 billion loan to be paid back with interest from frozen Russian assets. As of May, the European contribution amounted to just under US$200 billion.

In this unfolding strategy, states are not the only players. Much of this aid has been military related. Important beneficiaries have been the arms manufacturers, notably Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, that supply Ukraine or replenish domestic weapons stocks. According to one estimate, US aid to Ukraine has funded the arms industry in more than 70 US cities.

Other notable beneficiaries include the major oil companies that have profited from higher oil prices, the inevitable result of sanctions aimed at Russia’s oil exports. According to one estimate, BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies have made record profits of more than US$380 billion since the invasion.

Side by side with the transfer of arms to Ukraine has been the massive increase in European military spending, invariably justified by reference to the threat posed by Russian aggression. Over a remarkably short period, EU member states’ defence budgets have risen sharply from €218 billion in 2021 to €326 billion in 2024, with a further increase of at least €100 billion projected by 2027.

In March, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, issued an urgent call for Europe to re-arm, and help turn Ukraine into a “steel porcupine”. To this end, she announced the ReArm Europe Plan, including a €150 billion European fund, designed to facilitate increased defence spending by EU member countries.

For its part, France has approved a record defence budget for 2025 (€47.2 billion). Germany has committed to raising its troop strength by 60,000 under new NATO targets so as to be ready to be at war with Russia by 2029.

Two weeks ago, the UK Government, responding to what it called “threats” posed by “growing Russian aggression”, unveiled a radical defence overhaul. New investments in nuclear warheads, a fleet of new submarines and new munitions factories were intended to bring the country to “war-fighting readiness”.

The horrific Ukraine war may be a harbinger of things to come. Narrowly conceived but powerful political, economic and military interests are driving Europe to war-fighting strategies that can only end in tears. Civil society in Europe needs to awaken from its slumber.

Joseph Camilleri

Joseph Camilleri is Emeritus Professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, Convener of Conversation at the Crossroads, and Co-Convener of SHAPE (Saving Humanity and Planet Earth)

First published in Pealrs and Irritations 21 June 2025.