The furnace of crisis: assessing the European Union’s trajectory toward strategic independence and global actor in the shadow of the Russo-Ukrainian war

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has removed the assumptions on which the post-Cold War European security order rested and has increased pressure on the European Union to act as a provider of hard security rather than primarily as a regulatory and geo-economic power. This article examines whether that pressure is producing meaningful strategic autonomy and a more consequential global role. It applies a neoclassical realist framework in which systemic pressure is filtered through European Union decision-making rules and through member-state intervening variables: threat perception, strategic culture, fiscal and electoral constraints, defence-industrial capacity, geographic exposure, and preferences concerning the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the United States. The analysis rests on a structured qualitative content analysis of official European Union documents, member-state strategic materials, and specialist literature published from 2021 onward, combined with process tracing and a focused comparison of France, Germany, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia. The findings indicate that the Strategic Compass, the European Peace Facility, defence-industrial instruments, enlargement policy, and the 2025 Strategic Approach to the Black Sea have widened the Union’s strategic repertoire, while divergent national preferences, capability shortfalls, unanimity requirements, dependence on United States enablers, and unresolved coordination with Türkiye continue to limit operational autonomy. The wider Black Sea region operates as the most demanding test of whether institutional innovation can be converted into deployable capacity. The article concludes that a stronger regional security role is probable in the medium term, whereas full strategic autonomy remains conditional rather than assured.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 constitutes the most significant challenge to the European security order since the end of the Cold War. It has accelerated a broader redistribution of power in the international system, in which the relative weight of Western institutions is contested by state and non-state actors seeking to revise existing rules (Naumescu, 2023). Whether the emerging order becomes durably multipolar remains an open analytical question rather than an established outcome. What can be observed is a transition in which the security assumptions that underpinned European integration for three decades no longer hold, and in which the European Union must decide how far it is prepared to act as a security provider in its own right.

The European Union entered this transition as a predominantly regulatory and geo-economic actor whose external influence rested on market power, normative standards, and enlargement conditionality. The war has generated pressure to complement those instruments with military capability, defence-industrial capacity, and operational presence in contested regions. The Union’s declared ambition to act as a global actor alongside the United States, China, and other centres of power therefore depends less on rhetorical commitment than on its ability to convert institutional innovation into sustained capacity (Toje, 2011).

Three instruments frame the Union’s response. The first is enlargement, which has acquired an explicit security function. The opening of accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, together with the prospect of further accessions in the Western Balkans, extends the Union’s institutional reach into a space that Russian foreign policy treats as a priority sphere of influence and that competing Eurasian integration projects were designed to consolidate (European Parliament, Committee on Foreign Affairs, 2026; Kallas, 2026; Podadera Rivera and Garashchuk, 2016).

The second instrument is defence investment. The European Peace Facility allowed the Union to finance military assistance to a state at war, an instrument unavailable before 2021 (Mölling and Schütz, 2022). Defence-industrial initiatives, including common procurement mechanisms and subsequent loan-based programmes, were introduced to address production shortfalls and fragmented national procurement (European Commission, 2022). These instruments have expanded the Union’s financial and industrial role in defence without transferring operational command competences from member states.

The third instrument is strategic planning, including work on an integrated security strategy and increased attention to maritime security in the Mediterranean, Baltic, Adriatic, and Black Seas. The wider Black Sea region is the most demanding of these theatres, and the Strategic Approach to the Black Sea adopted in May 2025 represents the Union’s first comprehensive regional framework for it (European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, 2025; European Economic and Social Committee, 2025).

The central research problem of this article lies in a paradox. The war has produced unprecedented political consensus and rapid institutional innovation in European defence cooperation, while simultaneously reinforcing European operational dependence on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and on United States strategic enablers and extended deterrence (EUISS, 2026). The war thus functions as a systemic catalyst whose effects on European actorness are neither linear nor self-sustaining (Brix, 2023).

The study addresses four research questions:

RQ1. What are the objectives of Russia’s revisionist project, and how do they shape the European Union’s strategic environment?

RQ2. How has the war transformed European Union security institutions, policy instruments, and strategic doctrine?

RQ3. Which European Union-level and member-state variables constrain meaningful strategic autonomy?

RQ4. Under what conditions can the European Union become a more consequential regional and global security actor in the medium term?

The article makes three major contributions. Analytically, it applies neoclassical realism systematically to a supranational actor, treating European Union decision rules and member-state preferences as intervening variables between systemic pressures and policy outputs. Empirically, it integrates the analysis of Russian regional revisionism with the analysis of European institutional adaptation, which are frequently examined separately. Regionally, it uses the wider Black Sea as a critical case where the gap between strategic ambition and deployable capacity is most evident.

The article proceeds as follows. Section 2 presents the analytical framework, the document corpus, the coding procedure, case selection, and the design’s limitations. Section 3 reports the results in relation to each research question. Section 4 discusses, in turn, the Russian regional project, the Union’s institutional adaptation and the future of the Common Security and Defence Policy, and the Black Sea test case. Section 5 returns to the research questions and specifies the conditions under which the Union’s trajectory could be consolidated.

Analytical framework

The study uses a qualitative research design informed by neoclassical realism. The framework is appropriate because it links systemic pressure to foreign-policy outcomes through intervening domestic and institutional variables, rather than deriving policy directly from the distribution of capabilities. Structural realism explains why European states face increased incentives to balance against a revisionist neighbour, but it does not explain the uneven pace and content of European Union responses. Neoclassical realism addresses this gap by treating institutional friction, national strategic cultures, and elite threat perceptions as filters through which systemic pressure is translated into policy (Toje, 2011).

Three systemic pressures are specified for this case: Russian military revisionism in the post-Soviet space; uncertainty about the scale and duration of United States engagement in European security; and intensified great-power competition that reduces the effectiveness of existing multilateral constraints. These pressures are constant across the Union, whereas the responses they generate are not. The intervening variables examined here are threat perception, strategic culture, fiscal and electoral constraints, defence-industrial capacity, geographic exposure, and preferences concerning the Atlantic Alliance and the United States.

The dependent variable is the degree of European Union strategic actorness, understood as the capacity to define, finance, and implement security policy with limited external dependence. It is operationalised through five observable dimensions: doctrinal convergence, common financing, defence-industrial coordination, deployable capabilities, and sustained regional action. The causal sequence examined is therefore systemic pressure, institutional and domestic filtering, policy output, and implementation capacity. Table 1 sets out the analytical elements, their indicators, and the implications expected if the framework holds.

Document corpus and source selection

The corpus comprises official documents and specialist literature published principally from 2021 onward, with earlier material included where it establishes conceptual baselines. Primary sources include the 2022 Strategic Compass for Security and Defence, European Council and Council conclusions, European Peace Facility documentation, defence-industrial legislative proposals, enlargement reports and resolutions, the 2025 Joint Communication on the Strategic Approach to the Black Sea and the associated consultative opinion, and national strategic documents of selected member states and neighbouring countries (Council of the European Union, 2022; European Commission, 2022; European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, 2025; European Economic and Social Committee, 2025; European Parliament, Committee on Foreign Affairs, 2026).

Secondary sources were selected for direct relevance to five themes: European strategic autonomy, the Common Security and Defence Policy, relations between the Union and the Atlantic Alliance, Russian revisionism in the post-Soviet space, and Black Sea regional security (Biscop, 2023; Gotkowska, 2021; Mölling and Schütz, 2022; Nate, 2021; Scutaru et al., 2023). Sources were included when they addressed at least one intervening variable specified in Section 2.1 and when their evidentiary basis could be traced to documents, official statements, or published data. Self-citation is restricted to a single conceptual contribution that the present argument develops directly (Popescu, 2023); all other claims rest on primary documentation and independent scholarship.

Coding procedure and case selection

Documents were analysed using structured qualitative content analysis and deductively coded into five categories derived from the framework: systemic threat assessment; institutional innovation and available instruments; convergence or divergence of member-state preferences; material capabilities and implementation constraints; and regional operational implications, with particular attention to the Black Sea. Each coded passage was recorded with its source type, date, and issuing institution, thereby allowing doctrinal statements to be distinguished from evidence of implementation. Coding was conducted by the author in two rounds, with the second round used to reconcile categories and to remove passages that expressed intention without corresponding institutional or financial commitment.

Seven member states were selected for focused comparison on the basis of variation in the intervening variables rather than representativeness. France and Germany represent the two most consequential yet distinct conceptions of European autonomy: the first emphasising European strategic independence, and the second an incremental strengthening of capabilities within the Atlantic framework (Biscop, 2023; Macron, 2017). Poland and Romania represent perceptions of an eastern-flank threat combined with strong Atlanticist preferences (Gotkowska, 2021). Bulgaria represents a littoral state with lower defence capacity and greater domestic contestation. Hungary and Slovakia illustrate how domestic political competition constrains consensus on assistance to Ukraine and on enlargement. Ukraine, Moldova, and Türkiye are treated as non-member actors whose choices condition the feasibility of Union policy in the region (Constantin-Bercean and Blănaru, 2023).

Process tracing, scope conditions, and limitations

Process tracing is used to connect the security shock of 2022 to observable changes in doctrine, financing, industrial policy, enlargement, and regional engagement. For each instrument examined, the analysis identifies the decision, the financing mechanism, the implementing actor, and evidence of implementation, thereby preventing declaratory commitments from being read as capability. Statements about future developments are formulated as conditional scenarios with specified triggers rather than as forecasts, and the temporal scope of the analysis extends to the medium term, understood here as 3–5 years.

Four limitations follow from this design. First, the policy environment changes rapidly, and conclusions are therefore stated in terms of direction and conditionality rather than fixed outcomes. Second, comparative defence data are unevenly available and inconsistently defined across member states, so the analysis avoids precise numerical claims that cannot be traced to a single verified official source. Third, the effects of Union action are difficult to separate from those of the Atlantic Alliance and national initiatives, thereby limiting attribution. Fourth, the design does not support statistical causal inference; its contribution is analytical rather than predictive. Quantitative references were verified against official sources before submission, and claims that could not be verified were removed rather than reported with qualification.

The analysis yields four sets of results, each corresponding to one research question. In relation to the first question, the evidence indicates that Russia’s war against Ukraine forms one stage of a broader project aimed at restoring coercive influence within the territory of the former Soviet Union and, on that basis, improving Russia’s position in the international system. The project is territorial in its methods and hegemonic in its objectives: it seeks the annexation or neutralisation of contested territories, the constraint of neighbouring states’ external alignment, and the establishment of a regional order in which Moscow holds effective veto power over its neighbours’ security choices (Nate, 2021; Popescu, 2023). The evidence does not indicate that the project is succeeding; it indicates that the attempt itself constitutes the principal systemic pressure acting on the European Union.

Regarding the second question, the war accelerated institutional adaptation across five domains. Doctrinally, the Strategic Compass provided the Union with its first shared threat assessment linked to a capability agenda (Council of the European Union, 2022). Financially, the European Peace Facility enabled military assistance outside the Union’s budget (Mölling and Schütz, 2022). Industrially, common procurement and reinforcement instruments were introduced to address production and fragmentation problems (European Commission, 2022). Politically, enlargement was reframed as a strategic instrument (European Parliament, Committee on Foreign Affairs, 2026; Kallas, 2026). Regionally, the 2025 Strategic Approach extended these instruments to the Black Sea, including maritime security, connectivity, and resilience (European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, 2025).

Regarding the third question, these innovations have not eliminated the intervening constraints predicted by the framework. Threat perceptions remain differentiated between eastern-flank states and less exposed members; conceptions of autonomy diverge between France, Germany, and Atlanticist member states; domestic political competition in Hungary and Slovakia has repeatedly delayed or diluted collective decisions on Ukraine; fiscal and defence-industrial capacity is unevenly distributed; and command structures, strategic lift, intelligence, and precision-strike enablers remain concentrated in the Atlantic Alliance and in United States assets (Biscop, 2023; Gotkowska, 2021; EUISS, 2026). Unanimity requirements in the Common Foreign and Security Policy convert these divergences into procedural veto opportunities.

Regarding the fourth question, the results support a conditional assessment. The Union’s emergence as a more consequential security actor is most likely to be strongest in areas where its comparative advantages lie: financing, sanctions, regulation, defence-industrial coordination, enlargement, resilience, and civilian crisis management. It is improbable in the domain of high-intensity collective defence without sustained national investment, reform of decision procedures, and continued access to external enablers.

Table 2 summarises the correspondence between the research questions, the principal evidence, and the resulting findings.

Taken together, these results qualify the proposition that the Union’s trajectory is irreversible. The direction of change is consistent across instruments, but its durability depends on domestic political support and on implementation capacity, both of which vary across member states and over time. The wider Black Sea region is analytically informative precisely because it combines high strategic demand with legal, military, and institutional constraints that the Union cannot remove unilaterally.

The Russian regional project: from plan to implementation

The war against Ukraine as an instrument of hegemonic recovery

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia’s capacity to determine the external orientation of neighbouring states has declined almost continuously. This decline has been both global and regional, and it has coincided with the expansion of the European Union, the Atlantic Alliance, China, and other actors into territories previously subject to Soviet control. Understood narrowly as the ability to control the policy choices of other actors, Russian influence has contracted across most of its immediate neighbourhood (Nate, 2021).

From this perspective, the war against Ukraine functions as an attempt to reverse that contraction by force. The war began in 2014 in a hybrid form and entered a large-scale conventional phase in February 2022, which is treated here as the second active phase of a single conflict rather than as a separate war. The two phases share the same objective: preventing Ukraine’s consolidation as a sovereign state with an independent external alignment.

The parties describe the conflict in incompatible terms. Russian official discourse presents the war as a defensive response to Western political, military, and cultural expansion, and repeatedly asserts that the collective West is conducting a hybrid war against Russia that generates existential threats. European and Atlantic assessments describe the same events as an attempt to reverse the voluntary reorientation of formerly dependent states. The analytical point is not to adjudicate between these narratives but to note that the second interpretation is consistent with the observable record: the states concerned changed their alignment through domestic political processes, whereas Russia’s response has relied on military coercion.

The two forms of influence are not equivalent and should not be treated as symmetrical cases of hegemony. Soviet and Russian influence in the region was exercised primarily through military presence, political control, and the suppression of autonomous national institutions. Western influence has been exercised primarily through voluntary accession, conditionality, and institutional integration, which member states retain the legal capacity to contest and to leave. The distinction matters analytically because it explains why the reversal of alignment in the region has been durable: it was institutionally embedded rather than externally imposed.

Soviet power operated on two levels: a global level, in which the Soviet Union and the United States divided spheres of competition, and a regional level, in which control over the territory of the Union was close to absolute. The Russian Federation inherited a weakened version of this position. Ideological appeal, energy leverage, military deployments, and the creation of protracted conflicts in neighbouring states have not halted the long-term reduction of Russian regional influence (Nate, 2021).

Two consequences follow. First, Russia’s global standing depends on its regional position: the claim to great-power status is not sustainable without a functioning sphere of regional influence. Second, because the regional position cannot be restored through political or economic instruments alone, coercion becomes the residual option. This is the analytical core of the argument advanced here: the war is best understood as an instrument of attempted hegemonic recovery, and its central object is the reconstruction of Russia’s regional primacy rather than the acquisition of Ukrainian territory as such (Popescu, 2023).

The wider consequence for the international system is that Russia is not only contesting specific rules but acting to change the framework in which those rules operate. The recognition of separatist entities in eastern Ukraine and the launch of large-scale military operations in February 2022 constituted an explicit assertion that the existing order no longer binds Russian conduct. This is why the conflict is treated in this article as a systemic event rather than as a bilateral territorial dispute (Brix, 2023).

The architecture of the regional project

The single instrument of global influence that Russia retains without diminution is its permanent seat and veto in the United Nations Security Council. That instrument preserves formal status but does not generate regional control, and it has not prevented the erosion of Russian influence in the Western Balkans, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Among the former Soviet Union’s external partners, only a small group of states maintains close alignment with Moscow.

The weakening of enforcement in the international legal system has reduced the anticipated cost of unilateral action. Repeated violations of the rules governing the use of force have not resulted in proportionate institutional consequences, thereby lowering the expected penalty for further violations. This assessment, rather than any single ideological motive, explains the timing of large-scale military action: the perceived risk of systemic punishment had declined to a level Moscow judged acceptable.

The Russian Federation, China, and a growing number of states in the Global South contest the current organisation of international relations, frequently in parallel and occasionally in coordination. Their relations are situational rather than hegemonic: none exercises control over the others, and their objectives overlap only partially. The implication is that Russia may contribute to a reduction of Western primacy without achieving its own global expansion. A durable improvement in Russia’s global position would require the prior restoration of its regional position, which is precisely what the war has failed to deliver.

The regional project is therefore best analysed as a sequence of territorial and political objectives. In Ukraine, it involves extensive occupation in the south and east, the legal consolidation of annexations, and the creation of conditions for political control over territories that remain formally Ukrainian. Official Russian discourse describes the targeted areas as historically Russian, a formulation intended to confer retrospective legitimacy on annexation (President of the Russian Federation, n.d.). Variants of this objective discussed in the literature include establishing a dependent buffer state and reducing Ukraine to its western regions; neither has been achieved.

The Republic of Moldova constitutes a second component. A Russian advance beyond Odesa would create the geographic conditions for a junction with the Transnistrian region, and, in an extended scenario, for pressure on the whole territory of the state. Moldova’s principal vulnerability is the absence of external security guarantees. For several decades, Moldovan policy rested on the assumption that neutrality, combined with Russian goodwill, would ensure security. That assumption has been progressively abandoned. Current Moldovan policy maintains formal neutrality while strengthening defence, cyber, and counter-disinformation capacity, and explicitly seeks integration into the emerging European security architecture (Sandu, 2026; Republic of Moldova, Office of the President, 2023).

The debate on neutrality in Moldova remains unresolved in public opinion, but the policy trajectory is clear: neutrality without capability does not deter coercion. From the perspective of this analysis, the relevant question is not whether Moldova formally abandons neutrality, but whether the European Union can provide credible resilience support, including infrastructure protection, energy security, and defence-sector development, in the absence of collective defence guarantees.

Belarus constitutes a third component, addressed through political and military integration rather than annexation. The union framework between Russia and Belarus has advanced unevenly, and the Belarusian leadership has repeatedly deferred its full implementation, while dependence on Russian economic and security support has increased. The Caucasus and Central Asia represent a subsequent stage in which instruments of influence are primarily hybrid: energy dependence, transport corridors, security brokerage, and political interference.

Assembled, these components describe a project whose stated ambition exceeds Russia’s demonstrated capacity. Territorial annexation in Ukraine has been partial and contested; the junction with Transnistria has not occurred; integration with Belarus remains incomplete; and influence in the Caucasus has weakened, including in states that were previously closely aligned with Moscow. The project therefore constitutes a sustained systemic pressure on the European Union rather than an accomplished transformation of the regional order, and this distinction is essential for assessing the adequacy of European responses.

The European Union in the emerging international system and the future of the common security and defence policy

The current transition in the international system

The international system is in a period of transition in which all major actors are seeking improved positions in a prospective new distribution of power. Two scenarios can be specified. In the first, the transition proceeds without a general war, in which case it is likely to be prolonged, extending beyond a decade, and accompanied by multiple overlapping local and regional conflicts. In the second, the transition culminates in a large-scale military confrontation. On present evidence, the second scenario is improbable in the short term, although the conditions that would make it possible cannot be excluded over a longer horizon.

Both scenarios impose continuous adaptation on the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance, and in both the decisive variables are the interests and capabilities of major state actors. The relative weight of states outside the established centres of power is increasing, and their aggregate influence may constitute an additional pole in the medium- to long-term. For this analysis, the important implication is that European actorness will be assessed comparatively, against the capabilities of other centres of power, rather than against the Union’s own previous performance.

A specific risk scenario merits attention: a convergence of understanding among the United States, China, and Russia on managing strategic stability. In such a configuration, European preferences could be treated as secondary by all three, and the Union could be positioned as an obstacle rather than as a participant in order-building. This scenario, rather than direct military threat alone, is the strongest structural argument for accelerating European capability development.

The Union’s role and its relations with the Atlantic Alliance

The Union’s future role depends substantially on its relationship with the Atlantic Alliance. The gradual reduction of United States participation in European security appears durable in the medium term, irrespective of administration, and creates space for the Union and for the European members of the Alliance to assume greater responsibility. Several member states, particularly on the eastern flank, continue to prefer bilateral relations with Washington and Alliance frameworks over Union-led arrangements, which they consider less credible for deterrence purposes (Gotkowska, 2021; Biscop, 2023).

Two partially inverse processes can be observed. As the United States’ presence contracts, the Alliance’s European component becomes proportionally more important within Alliance structures. At the same time, the Union extends its external engagement through enlargement, regional strategies, and global partnerships (Council of the European Union, 2022). The result is a growing overlap of functions in areas such as capability development, military mobility, and crisis response.

Two scenarios follow. In the first, the Union and the European component of the Alliance compete for leadership in European security, duplicating structures and dividing political attention, resulting in Europe continuing to articulate two partially inconsistent positions. In the second, the two frameworks develop complementary roles, with the Alliance retaining primacy in collective defence and the Union concentrating on financing, industrial capacity, resilience, civilian crisis management, and support to partners. The second scenario is analytically preferable and politically more feasible, but it requires an explicit division of labour rather than an implicit one.

A more far-reaching restructuring of the relationship between the two organisations cannot be excluded over a longer horizon. However, it is improbable in the medium term, since it would require member states to accept significant changes to existing command arrangements and to the transatlantic bargain that underpins them.

The future of the common security and defence policy

The Common Security and Defence Policy is the Union’s principal instrument for external security action. Unlike the Atlantic Alliance, it combines civilian and military components, includes an explicit crisis prevention and management dimension, and can be deployed beyond the European continent. Its comparative advantage lies in integrated civil-military action rather than in high-intensity operations.

Three developments are likely over the next 3–5 years. First, the number and geographic range of missions will increase, particularly in the Union’s eastern and southern neighbourhoods. Second, the financial base will expand as defence and security instruments are consolidated within the Union budget and in complementary mechanisms. Third, the policy’s tasks will broaden to include maritime security, infrastructure protection, counter-hybrid activity, and support to partner states’ defence sectors.

The war has already generated instruments and precedents that support this trajectory, including large-scale military assistance, training missions, and coordinated procurement. The Union is the principal non-state contributor to Ukraine’s defence effort, and the institutional arrangements developed for that purpose provide a foundation for a broader security role. Whether that role extends to leadership in European security depends on the division of labour with the Alliance discussed above.

Post-conflict scenarios are particularly relevant for the Common Security and Defence Policy. Any agreement concluded in the coming period is likely to terminate the current phase of high-intensity hostilities without resolving the underlying conflict, since neither party will have achieved its principal objectives. A protracted or intermittent conflict is therefore the most probable outcome, and it would leave the Union as the most consistently engaged external actor in Ukraine, Moldova, and the wider Black Sea region. Union instruments could support monitoring, reconstruction, security-sector reform, and the institutional framework for any deterrence arrangement agreed by the parties.

Comparable opportunities exist in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, where Union missions can contribute to monitoring, resilience, and institutional development. The window for expanding these instruments is not indefinite. As Union capabilities become militarily significant, Russia can be expected to obstruct Union deployments in areas where it retains leverage, particularly within the former Soviet space, which argues for early rather than incremental institutional commitment.

The wider Black Sea region as a test case

Strategic limits of European maritime security provision

The wider Black Sea region concentrates the variables identified in Section 2.1. It links the defence of Ukraine, the security of two member states, energy and transport corridors, the Danube system, and access to the South Caucasus (King, 2015; Scutaru et al., 2023). Exposure to the associated risks is unevenly distributed within the Union: eastern-flank governments treat Russian military capability as an immediate threat, whereas geographically distant member states weigh escalation risks, fiscal costs, and competing regional priorities more heavily. Hungary and Slovakia have demonstrated how domestic political competition can delay collective decisions concerning Ukraine and enlargement.

Sustained support for Ukraine remains the Union’s most consequential instrument in the region. Its effectiveness depends on predictable financing, ammunition and industrial output, political cohesion, and coordination with the Atlantic Alliance and the United States. Divergent national stockpile policies and procurement practices constrain the speed of collective action, and public support is sensitive to conflict duration and to information operations. These constraints illustrate the framework’s central expectation: a common systemic threat does not produce a uniform policy response.

Enlargement is the second instrument. Accession conditionality can consolidate institutional and economic alignment and reduce the space available for external coercion, particularly in Ukraine and Moldova. It simultaneously raises distributional and political questions concerning reconstruction financing, agricultural competition, budgetary transfers, rule-of-law conditionality, and the absorption capacity of Union institutions. These questions are decided in domestic political arenas, which is where systemic pressure is most frequently attenuated.

The third instrument is an integrated regional security framework that includes the proposed maritime security hub. Its potential functions include maritime domain awareness, early warning, protection of critical maritime and energy infrastructure, and support to mine countermeasures. Three constraints define its feasibility. Legally, the Montreux Convention limits the naval presence of non-littoral states, so the Union cannot substitute for littoral capabilities. Militarily, command structures, surveillance assets, and high-end capabilities remain concentrated in the Alliance and in national forces. Politically, Türkiye’s control of the Straits and its regional military weight make Ankara indispensable to any viable arrangement (Constantin-Bercean and Blănaru, 2023).

From strategic approach to operational strategy

The 2025 Strategic Approach provides a framework but not an operational programme. Converting it into a strategy requires four specifications: governance arrangements identifying the responsible institutions; a financing basis within the multiannual financial framework and related instruments; measurable functions with implementation deadlines; and an annual review mechanism linking implementation to verified capability indicators and threat assessments (European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, 2025; European Economic and Social Committee, 2025). The maritime security hub should be designed as a coordinating institution rather than as a substitute for national or Alliance capabilities.

Romania and Bulgaria are central to implementation, and their contributions are complementary rather than competing. Romania’s geographic position, port infrastructure at Constanța, offshore energy development, and proximity to Ukraine support a focus on surveillance, military mobility, infrastructure protection, and host-nation coordination. Bulgaria can contribute through port capacity, maritime research, environmental monitoring, digital shipping solutions, and blue-economy development. Presenting these roles as complementary functions, rather than as competing claims to regional leadership, is a precondition for effective implementation.

Cooperation with Türkiye is a structural requirement rather than a policy preference. Ankara’s authority under the Montreux Convention, its naval and air capabilities, its participation in trilateral mine countermeasures with Romania and Bulgaria, its defence-industrial base, and its diplomatic access to both belligerents provide the Union with leverage that it cannot replicate. A differentiated partnership based on agreed functions, information-sharing arrangements, and respect for the legal regime governing the Straits is therefore the realistic model. Ukraine’s operational experience, particularly in unmanned maritime systems and sea denial, and Moldova’s role in Danube connectivity and resilience should be integrated into a single framework.

Finally, regional planning should be scenario-based rather than anchored to a particular calendar year. Four scenarios warrant preparation: continued high-intensity war; an unstable ceasefire; a protracted frozen conflict; and renewed escalation after a negotiated pause. Each implies different requirements for surveillance, demining, infrastructure protection, and reconstruction support. Scenario-based planning is analytically more defensible than dated predictions and administratively more useful because it identifies the capabilities required across all outcomes.

This article examined whether the pressure generated by the Russo-Ukrainian war is producing genuine European strategic autonomy, and it addressed four research questions. In relation to the first, Russia’s project seeks to restore coercive regional influence by constraining the sovereignty and external alignment of states in the post-Soviet space. Ukraine and the wider Black Sea are central to that project because territory, maritime access, transport corridors, and regional alignments determine Russia’s capacity to project influence beyond its borders. The evidence does not demonstrate that the project will succeed; it establishes that the project is the principal systemic pressure driving European adaptation.

Regarding the second question, the war has produced substantial institutional transformation. The Strategic Compass provided a shared threat assessment and a capability agenda; the European Peace Facility enabled military assistance outside the Union budget; defence-industrial instruments addressed fragmentation in production and procurement; enlargement acquired an explicit security function; and the 2025 Strategic Approach extended these developments to Black Sea maritime security, connectivity, and resilience. These changes are cumulative and institutionally embedded, which makes their partial reversal costly but not impossible.

Regarding the third question, strategic autonomy remains constrained by the intervening variables specified in the framework. Threat perceptions differ systematically between eastern-flank and less exposed member states; France, Germany, and Atlanticist governments attach different meanings to autonomy; domestic political competition in individual member states converts unanimity requirements into veto opportunities; fiscal and industrial capacity is unevenly distributed; and critical enablers remain tied to the Atlantic Alliance and the United States. Neoclassical realism accounts for both the direction of adaptation and the unevenness of its implementation, and this dual explanatory function is the principal analytical contribution of the article.

In relation to the fourth question, the Union has a credible medium-term prospect of becoming a stronger regional security actor. In contrast, its emergence as a consolidated global military actor remains conditional. Three conditions are decisive: sustained national defence investment translated into deployable capability; procedural reform that reduces the cost of individual vetoes in security decisions; and a stable division of labour with the Atlantic Alliance that avoids duplication in collective defence while consolidating the Union’s role in financing, industry, resilience, and civilian crisis management.

The wider Black Sea region is the most demanding test of this trajectory and the principal arena in which Russian regional revisionism and European strategic capacity intersect. A viable Union role there requires an operational action plan for the maritime security hub, predictable support for Ukraine and Moldova, capability development in Romania and Bulgaria, and structured cooperation with Türkiye. The appropriate objective is not separation from the Atlantic Alliance but a more capable European pillar able to act when United States engagement is limited and to complement Alliance deterrence when interests converge.

The article’s central conclusion is therefore qualified rather than declaratory: the Union’s trajectory toward strategic autonomy is significant, cumulative, and consequential, but it is not irreversible, and its outcome depends on resources, political cohesion, and measurable implementation. Three lines of further research follow. First, comparative analysis of national defence-industrial implementation would allow the capability gap to be measured rather than inferred. Second, systematic study of domestic political coalitions in member states would refine the specification of the intervening variables used here. Third, longitudinal analysis of Black Sea maritime security arrangements would test whether the institutional framework established in 2025 produces observable operational effects.