Kjell Engelbrekt’s research while affiliated with Swedish Defence University and other places

This chapter asks if the European security order will crumble, definitively, as a result of the full-scale war of aggression that the Russian Federation unleashed against Ukraine in late February 2022. The analysis begins with the historical emergence of a European security order in the aftermath of the Second World War, with NATO and a nascent EU at its core. It proceeds with an account of how the Kremlin directly challenged European security arrangements in recent years, as well as of how the EU, NATO, and like-minded countries around the world responded to Russia’s aggression, first by introducing sweeping sanctions and subsequently by offering humanitarian, economic and military assistance to Ukraine. The chapter ends by predicting that the issue regarding the continent’s security order will be resolved on the battlefield and that future security arrangements may have to exclude Russia altogether.