Abstract

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sent seismic shockwaves across Europe. Those who had pointed to the growing threat of a revisionist and neo-imperial Russia governed by a repressive authoritarian regime – chiefly the Baltic states and Poland – are no longer regarded as outliers in their grim threat assessment. As Europe seeks to urgently rearm to deter further Russian aggression and boost its support for the legal and legitimate self-defence of Ukraine, the rest of the world (with a few notable exceptions) increasingly seems indifferent to, or even ignorant of, the ongoing war and its implications across the political, normative, legal, economic, societal, technological, and doctrinal domains. These will have repercussions that will likely shape the future of international security and global governance for decades to come. Failure to recognise such implications, revisit them in a timely manner, and address Russia’s aggression as one of the root causes of the severely deteriorating international security environment and imploding rules-based world order will eventually jeopardise the core national interests of states even if they are far from the current geographical locus of the war.

Key issues that will be discussed include:

(1) why did Russia launch its war against Ukraine in 2014 and full-scale invasion in 2022? What role does this war and war in general play in the Russian regime’s strategy of survival and domination?
(2) how does Russia cultivate its relations with China to advance its agenda and interests, and how might its war against Ukraine inform and shape the strategic calculus and judgement of China?
(3) what opportunities does Moscow see in the policies and politics of the Trump administration?
(4) how is Moscow shaping the perceptions and attitudes of its war and wider confrontation with the West among the audiences in the so-called Global South?
(5) what does the Russian way of war on display thus far say about its attitude towards legally and politically binding commitments, norms, and global institutions? What implications does this have to the security of small states anchored to the rules-based world order?

About the Speaker

Tomas Jermalavičius is the head of studies and research fellow at the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS) in Tallinn, Estonia. Prior to joining ICDS at the end of 2008, he served at the Baltic Defence College (BALTDEFCOL), as the deputy director of the College’s Institute for Defence Studies (2001-04) and then the dean of academics (2005-08). In 1998-2001 and 2005, he was with the Defence Policy and Planning Department at the Lithuanian Ministry of National Defence, including as the department’s deputy director and head of the defence transformation task-force. Since 2017, he has been a visiting professor at the Natolin Campus of the College of Europe in Warsaw, teaching a course on terrorism and hybrid warfare, and, since 2024, has been involved with the EU Diplomatic Academy at the College of Europe main campus in Bruges. He is also an associated fellow of the Latvian Institute of International Affairs (LIIA). At the ICDS, he deals with various aspects of defence policy and strategy, regional security and defence cooperation in the Nordic-Baltic area, impact of emerging disruptive technologies on security and defence, energy security, and societal resilience. Articles written or co-authored by him appeared in Defence Studies, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and RUSI Whitehall Papers as well as in the publications of Johns Hopkins University, US Joint Special Operations University, American Academy in Berlin, Latvian Institute of International Affairs, ARES-Armament Industry European Research Group, and NATO Science and Technology Organisation (STO). He has been quoted in such media outlets as The Economist, The Financial Times, The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, La Monde, La Figaro, El Pais, La Stampa, and others. He holds a BA in political science from Vilnius University, an MA in war studies from King’s College London, and an MBA from the University of Liverpool.