As Ukraine has been showing success on the battlefield in holding back Russian advances and also pursuing its campaign of strikes deep into Russia, the EU is about to start the first disbursements under the Ukraine Support Loan, including for defense needs. At the same time, Russia keeps up its brutal attacks against Ukraine’s civilians, causing suffering and rejecting meaningful peace talks. Ukrinform sat down in Brussels with an acclaimed Belgian defense expert Roger Housen, a former colonel of the Belgian infantry with combat experience gained in the former Yugoslavia, as well as Afghanistan and Central Africa. He was a strategist at the Belgian Ministry of Defense and NATO in the United States.

The conversation also touched upon the perception of Russian hybrid threats in Europe and how both politicians and the population need to understand their urgency and build up resilience and defense capacities.

TO CHANGE THE COURSE OF WAR, INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY MUST DO MORE TO HELP UKRAINE

– You have frequently pointed out that there can be 'no peace without weapons' for Ukraine. Looking at the battlefield today, is the European Union's defense assistance genuinely keeping pace with Russia's war economy, or does the approach still needs structural adjustment?

– What I've noticed in the past two years that is that Ukraine has done a tremendous job in developing its own defense industry, and Ukraine is especially keeping up in a very special way thanks to its own efforts. Of course, everything the EU and the separate European countries are doing is helping.

But I think we first have as Europeans to thank the Ukrainian nation, people and leadership for the tremendous job they are doing. That said, even a limited amount of help whether it is military, financial or humanitarian assistance is helping Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian armed forces, but I'm afraid in order to change the course of this war, the international community, especially Europe, should do more.

THERE ARE THREEE FACTORS DETERMINING COUNTRY’S MILITARY POWER

– We have seen a massive evolution in Ukraine’s air campaign, particularly what analysts are now calling 'middle-strike operations'—systematic drone strikes targeting Russian air defense, fuel trucks, and radars within a 30 to 200 km operational depth. From a military standpoint, is this campaign effectively achieving the conditions required to break the positional stalemate?

– The military power of a country is what we, military, call the combat power of the armed forces times the potential of a country to continue the fight for a long time, times the will of the people to fight.

We have three factors which play their role in determining the military power of a country. And if you can reduce one of those three factors or all three of them you can win the war.

What Ukraine is doing now is especially attacking the potential of Russia to continue the fight by its deep strikes and mid strikes, and that's in my opinion the best way to change the course of this war. Because we are already since more than three years in a stalemate situation along the front line and the first factor - decreasing the will of the population, taking an account the surface and the number of Russians, might be a very difficult task.

So decreasing the potential of Russia to continue in the long run this war is the best course of action, and Ukraine understood this very well.

What we have been seeing in the past five to six months, that is the deep strikes first of all, and the mid strikes, are really hurting Russia by degrading the oil and gas infrastructure, by attacking the military industrial complex of Russia, by attacking all elements needed to continue this war in the long run. Ukraine can force Mr. Putin to stop the war and to start the negotiation round.

EXCEPT FOR BALTIC STATES, NATO IS TOO SLOW IN ADOPTING LESSONS OF ONGOING WAR

– Ukrainian commanders are adapting their tactics on a weekly basis. Yet, NATO doctrine is still heavily rooted in complex, multi-domain, air-superiority maneuvers. Are NATO protocols and national defense policies – particularly Belgium's – genuinely absorbing these hard-learned Ukrainian lessons on electronic warfare, decentralized command, and ultra-cheap precision mass, or is Western procurement and training still structurally too slow and rigid to adapt? 

– Almost all NATO nations, including Belgium, except for the Baltic states, are adapting too slow the lessons learned on the battlefield in Ukraine.

We still have what we call in English “red tape”, old habits. There's still that inertia within military organizations to adapt new doctrines, new techniques and tactics, to adapt new procedures, for instance for the acquisition of new equipment and weapon systems.

In all NATO nations they realize very well that we need to scale up that, we need to do much better, we need to follow the Ukrainian example, but the inertia on different levels and different fields is too big to adapt fast enough.

 FOR MOSCOW THERE’S BROAD CONTINUUM BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE

– Every European citizen is effectively a target of modern Russian hybrid operations. What specific vulnerabilities in Belgian and European infrastructure in general worry you the most right now, and how do we convince a civilian population that they are already in the crosshairs?

– That’s a million-dollar question – how to convince our populations? That's also a reason I published my new book, the Twilight War, two weeks ago, to improve the awareness within Belgian population, within the Belgian society, and hopefully also in our neighboring countries, that Russia is attacking Europe with hybrid activities, by attacking our infrastructure by using digital weapon systems.

In our European mindset, a country's either in war or in peace, and there's nothing in between. But for Moscow there is a broad continuum between peace and war, and in that shadow, gray zone between war and peace the Russians are executing or applying a lot of instruments to weaken us, to increase polarization to increase kind of Here within our societies to degrade our potential to defend ourselves.

The main issue is increasing the awareness both within the population and among our politicians to resist, to do something about it, to reinforce our resilience and to develop a strategy to hit back, to no longer accept those kinds of attacks.

UNTIL A MAJOR INCIDENT INVOLVING CASUALTIES OCCURS, BELGIANS ARE UNLIKELY TO DEMAND DEFENSE BOOST

– Do you think it's working more bottom top or top bottom? As in any democracy, politicians are dependent on public opinion, that's why maybe experts like you, who are not tied politics, could also help raise awareness from the bottom to top.

 – Knowing my fellow citizens and knowing how politics is operating in my country, I'm afraid that we first have to be confronted or we first have to face a very serious incident with casualties before the awareness is big enough to act. That's how it works in Belgium.

 I'm afraid that's how it also works in most Western European countries. Only after such incident will we have a bottom up demand from citizens, as well as pressure coming from the top. Of course, we do have some exceptions, like defense minister Theo Francken, who is very much aware about the aim of the hybrid attacks, of what's going on in that shadow zone between war and peace, but unfortunately his fellow politicians are still hesitating, being oblivious of what is happening behind the scenes and under the waterline.

We keep pushing but I'm afraid we will keep facing resistance before before something serious happens.

– Belgium is working on a new military defense codex that introduces the concept of a 'militaire crisistijd' (military crisis time)—allowing the state to prioritize military convoys, requisition civil infrastructure, and draft specific civilian personnel before a formal war is declared. From your position within the military trade union discussions, does this codex provide the military with the teeth it needs, or does it risk causing domestic friction?

– It will help, but it won't be enough. I mean with the defense codex there will be all the instruments to, for instance, develop military mobility when something is happening in Eastern Europe, it will create all the conditions for the Belgium armed forces, it's what NATO member states will need in case of a conflict. So it's very important but it won't change very much the mindset of our politicians and the mindset of Belgian population.

The war in Ukraine and everything that’s happening in the Baltic States and Romania or Poland – that’s for an average Belgian still far away. That's not something to be worried about. And once again, the awareness about what is needed and what needs to be done right now is still very limited.

We Belgians, still have the mentality of “wait and see” and “everything will work out in a good way and we'll survive”.

BELGIUM COULD BECOME NATO’S MAJOR TRANSIT HUB IN CASE OF ARTICLE 5 APPLICATION

– You mentioned the eastern flank and we all know we've been hearing a lot about the potential scenarios of Russia conventionally attacking at least one of the Baltic States in order to sow chaos and insecurity, and try to break NATO unity. But if an Article 5 scenario were to trigger the collective response, I believe that one of Belgium's primary roles would be to act as a massive transit hub for British or American arms moving eastwards. Do you think that domestic logistical infrastructure is capable now of handling that kind of intense military surge?

– The primary task for the Belgian Armed Forces and part of the Belgian society will be to serve as a transit hub for the rest of NATO or some NATO member states. That's really great, and in the past two to three years, a lot has been done, but still we are way from everything that's really needed.

We need at least two, three or four more years to be really capable of doing what's really necessary in all different domains, what's needed for being a real transit hub. That's about the infrastructure in the ports, infrastructure needed for being able to transit huge amounts of military equipment and personnel - that's the railroads, trains. Bridges have to be adapted. Even our mobile medical hubs still need to be acquired, so there is still a lot to be done before Belgium will be really ready in case of a big war at Europe's eastern flank. So, in general, people are working on it, the awareness has been increased both within the armed forces and society, and it has become a political issue.

 So politicians are pushing well enough, but we need at least a couple of more years before we will be ready.

 WITHIN FIVE YEARS, EUROPE WILL BE READY TO DEFEND ITSELF

– As a graduate of the U.S. National War College who witnessed 9/11 firsthand, you have unique insight into American strategic thinking. With political shifts in Washington creating constant nervousness in Europe, do you believe NATO can remain a credible deterrent if European nations do not achieve true 'strategic autonomy'

– First of all, I should note that Ukraine is helping us in buying enough time to increase our defense capabilities. Let me explain that. I think, as a result of the war in your country, Russia will need at least five years to be able to start a new major aggression against a European country.

And those five years will be crucial for Europe to develop its own strategic military autonomy. So we have to especially be thankful to Ukrainian people for allowing us to have more time to be able to defend ourselves even without very much help of the United States. When I talk with my European colleagues and we analyze everything what's happening in the field of defense in European countries and all the acquisition programs, how the defense expenditures are increasing, I really believe that within about five years, Europe will be strong enough to defend itself.

 It's a matter of the capacity of our defense industries and even the American defense industry is not capable of producing fast enough everything that's needed. There are a lot of bottlenecks.

 – Data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) indicates that Russia's ongoing spring-summer offensive has hit a wall, capturing over 15 times less territory than it did during the same period last year, while suffering net territorial losses in some sectors due to Ukrainian counterattacks. As we enter the peak summer fighting season, do you see either side retaining the capability to conduct true operational-level maneuvers, or are we looking at a permanent, hyper-transparent 'kill zone' driven by drone saturation?

– The short answer to whether there will be a window for operational-level maneuvers is ‘no’.

Neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians will be able to really push back their adversaries. It's a combination of the lack of manpower and armored capabilities on the Ukrainian side, infantry fighting vehicles and artillery to really push back Russians; and on Russia’s side it's also a matter of being faced with strong defenses in combination with the kill zone that is defended by unmanned systems.

The fact that the battlefield has become completely transparent is a major obstruction to launching huge offensives. Now neither side is capable of really pushing back the other side. 'll come back to one of your first questions – the center of gravity that Ukraine is attacking is the Russian military industrial complex, as well as its oil and gas infrastructure. That's really the way to hurt Russia in a substantial way. That's really the way to force Putin to come to the negotiating table.

Ievgen Matiushenko, Brussels

Photos provided by Roger Housen