Tag: European Security Policy
Sweden Supports Ukraine with a Record Aid Pledge
Sweden supports Ukraine with €10.7 billion in aid, marking the largest pledge to another country in modern Swedish history. Four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Swedish political, military, and economic leaders met at Kulturhuset in Stockholm on February 16, 2026. Their message was clear: backing Ukraine strengthens Sweden’s own security and Europe’s stability.
Torbjörn Becker, Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), joined senior officials to discuss how military innovation and economic endurance shape the war and might impact its outcome. As Sweden’s support for Ukraine continues, attention is shifting to both battlefield technology and financial resilience.
Technology Transforming Ukraine’s Front Lines
The war has evolved at a remarkable speed. Sweden’s Minister for Defence, Pål Jonson, described a battlefield defined by drones, satellites, and electronic warfare. As a result, troops can no longer hide easily. Innovation cycles that once took years now unfold within months.
Vice Admiral Eva Skoog Haslum warned that the front lines remain extremely dangerous. She described parts of the battlefield as “kill zones,” where constant surveillance and precision strikes limit movement. Meanwhile, Ukraine has weakened Russia’s naval presence in the Black Sea by using smaller, flexible systems instead of traditional large warships.
Swedish military equipment has played a significant role. The CV90 combat vehicle and Archer artillery system have performed effectively in combat. Designed for harsh northern conditions and to counter Russian systems, they have proven highly relevant in Ukraine.
Economic Pressure and Long-Term Advantage
Although military developments matter, economic endurance may decide the war. Becker emphasized that while Russia’s economy is much larger than Ukraine’s, the combined economic power of the EU and the United States far outweighs Russia.
“Russia’s economy is roughly ten times the size of Ukraine’s. But compared to the EU and the United States together, it is closer to 1 to 20. If political support holds, the resources are there to sustain Ukraine over time,” Becker explained.
Russia depends heavily on oil revenues. Therefore, when oil prices fall or sanctions tighten, state income drops. At the same time, Russia relies increasingly on China for advanced technology components. According to Becker, this dependence creates long-term vulnerability.
Interest rates in Russia have climbed to around 20–25 percent. Such high rates strain banks and businesses. Over time, financial instability could weaken Russia’s ability to finance the war.
Planning for Ukraine’s Economic Recovery
Ukraine also faces serious fiscal challenges. The country spends more than half of its state budget on defense. Public debt now exceeds 100 percent of GDP. As a result, debt restructuring will likely be necessary.
Becker pointed to roughly USD 300 billion in frozen Russian central bank reserves held abroad. Using these funds could provide a stronger financial foundation for rebuilding Ukraine. “The main obstacle is not technical or legal,” Becker said. “It is about political coordination and will.”
As Sweden’s support for Ukraine continues, European leaders are rethinking both defense strategy and economic resilience. The lessons learned from this war will likely shape European security policy for years to come.
Key Conclusions on Sweden’s Support for Ukraine
- Russia’s war economy faces mounting pressure from high interest rates and shrinking reserves.
- Western economic strength gives Ukraine a structural long-term advantage.
- Oil revenues remain central to Russia’s fiscal stability.
- Frozen Russian central bank assets could help fund Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Further Reading on Sanctions Against Russia and Economic Pressure
Energy exports remain the backbone of Russia’s economy and a tool of geopolitical leverage. Sanctions targeting this sector aim to reduce state revenue and limit Moscow’s influence abroad.
Visit the Sanctions Portal Evidence Base to explore research on energy sanctions against Russia. You can also review the Timeline of Western Sanctions and Russian Countermeasures to see how both sides have adapted since the full-scale invasion.
Explore SITE’s research articles, policy briefs, datasets, reports, and additional publications on the SITE website, and subscribe to the newsletter to stay informed about important updates.
What Europe Can Learn From Ukraine’s Battle Against Information Aggression
On 12 February 2026, the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), the Center for Statecraft and Strategic Communication (CSSC) at SSE, and the Swedish Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce in Scandinavia (SUCC) hosted a high-level seminar on how democracies should respond to information aggression and hybrid threats. The event brought together Ukrainian officials, researchers, and business experts to share lessons from more than a decade of confronting Russia’s information warfare. As a result, the discussion offered guidance for European policymakers, regulators, and civil society leaders.
Ukraine’s Experience with Information Aggression
For Ukraine, information aggression is a daily reality rather than a theoretical risk. Since 2014, hostile disinformation, manipulation, and psychological pressure have preceded and accompanied every major escalation of Russia’s war. Consequently, Ukraine has learned that shifts in the information space often signal impending military, economic, or cyber shocks.
Experts from SITE, CSSC, and SUCC emphasized that information aggression is not merely a media issue, but also a matter of security, economic stability, and governance. They further stressed that universities and policy institutes play a critical role in transforming frontline experience into practical guidance.
In their opening remarks, SITE Director Torbjörn Becker and CSSC Director Rikard Westerberg argued that information operations must be treated as a core component of modern conflict. Ukrainian diplomats noted that information warfare often shapes alliances and delays international responses long before tanks move. Ignoring information aggression, therefore, leaves democracies divided, unprepared, and economically vulnerable.
Analysis and Key Insights
Narratives, Trust, and the Cognitive Battlefield
Keynote speaker Liubov Tsybulska, Director of the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security in Ukraine, described the information space as a central battlefield. She showed how narrative flooding, dehumanisation, and strategic ambiguity can erode trust and break alliances over time. In this context, perception becomes as important as territory.
Therefore, trust in institutions, media, and expert communities is both the main target and the main defence. Long-term investment in institutional credibility and transparent decision-making is crucial. In addition, Ukraine’s experience shows that early detection of hostile narratives, rapid factual responses, and careful avoidance of amplifying false content are vital tools.
Institutions and Digital Resilience
Advisor Natalia Mishyna from Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection focused on institutional adaptation. Ukraine has strengthened digital infrastructure protection, electoral security, and crisis communication across government and civil society. As a result, the country has built faster incident response and clearer lines of responsibility.
For Europe, the key lesson is that cybersecurity, strategic communication, and public outreach must be integrated rather than separated into silos. Many EU states have hybrid threat or cyber units. However, coordination often remains fragmented and reactive. Therefore, more unified structures that link technical security with clear public messaging are needed.
Markets, Media, and Incentives
Associate Professor Carlos Diaz Ruiz from Hanken School of Economics added a market-based view. He underlined that information aggression exploits weaknesses in media and platform business models. Sensational and polarising content can be rewarded by advertising systems even when it harms democratic resilience.
Consequently, regulatory frameworks, competition policy, and platform governance all influence how hostile narratives spread. Responses cannot treat media and technology firms as passive channels. Instead, they must align private-sector incentives with the broader goal of information resilience.
Key Lessons from Ukraine for Europe
Across the seminar, several concise lessons for Europe emerged:
- Information aggression is a systemic risk that affects security, markets, and social cohesion.
- Trust and credibility are core defence assets, not soft add-ons.
- Civil society and state coordination are essential for response and recovery.
- International cooperation is necessary, as information threats ignore borders.
Taken together, these insights show that information aggression is a persistent strategic challenge embedded in wider hybrid warfare, not a temporary disturbance.
Why It Matters
Implications for European Democracies
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, hybrid operations against European societies have become more frequent and complex. These include cyber attacks, targeted narrative campaigns, and energy-related disinformation. Ukraine’s experience illustrates the cost of underestimating such activities.
When information aggression goes unchecked, it can reduce support for sanctions and military assistance. It can also deepen social polarisation and weaken trust in elections, public health measures, and climate policy. Therefore, national security strategies, risk assessments, and crisis exercises must include the information dimension as a central pillar.
Policy and Governance Priorities
The EU has already launched frameworks to counter hybrid threats, yet implementation often lags behind the pace of attacks. Ukraine’s experience suggests three priorities for Europe.
- First, countries should embed information resilience into total defence and security planning, not just media policy.
- Second, rules for online platforms, political advertising, and data use should explicitly consider how they can be misused by information aggression.
- Third, cross-border strategic communication must improve, as hostile narratives are rarely limited to one country.
At the same time, responses must stay grounded in democratic values. Heavy-handed censorship can damage the trust that democracies seek to protect. Consequently, transparency, accountability, and open engagement with citizens are essential elements of any credible strategy.
Conclusion: Building Information Resilience
The SSE seminar delivered a clear message: Europe cannot afford to ignore information aggression. Ukraine’s experience shows that early recognition, coordinated action, and sustained investment in trust-building can limit long-term damage from hybrid campaigns.
Going forward, European governments, businesses, and civil society organisations will need to treat information resilience as a continuous task. Moreover, deeper cooperation with Ukrainian institutions and experts can help Europe avoid repeating costly mistakes. By convening diplomacy, security, research, and business communities, SSE and its partners contribute to a growing community of practice on countering information aggression. In this way, they highlight that defending the information space is now central to protecting open and resilient European societies.
Suggested Additional Resources
- EUvsDisinfo: East Stratcom Task Force, a team of experts with a background mainly in communications, journalism, social sciences, and Russian studies. Part of the EU’s diplomatic service, which is led by the EU’s High Representative.
- NATO StratCom COE: Contributes to improved strategic communications capabilities within NATO and Allied nations. Strategic communication is an integral part of the efforts to achieve the Alliance’s political and military objectives, thus it is increasingly important that the Alliance communicates in an appropriate, timely, accurate and responsive manner on its evolving roles, objectives, and missions.
- Hybrid CoE: The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats is an autonomous, network-based international expert organization dedicated to addressing hybrid threats.
Suggested Policy Briefs
- Ukraine and NATO – Evidence from Public Opinion Surveys. This policy brief analyzes how public opinion in Ukraine has shifted over time toward unprecedented support for NATO membership—especially in response to repeated Russian aggression—and examines regional differences and the broader societal implications of this change.
- Russia’s Data Warfare. This policy brief discusses how, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin has systematically withheld and obscured key economic statistics to hinder transparency and analysis of its economy and the effects of sanctions as part of a broader disinformation strategy, and explores alternative ways to assess Russia’s economic performance despite the lack of reliable official data.
- Trending? Social Media Attention on Russia’s War in Ukraine. This policy brief examines how social media attention to Russia’s war in Ukraine, especially trending hashtags on platforms like X/Twitter across 62 countries, has fluctuated over time, revealing patterns of global public engagement and interest in the conflict beyond traditional news coverage.
Development Day 2025: Ukraine’s and Moldova’s Path Towards EU Membership
The European Union’s enlargement policy has re-emerged as a central geopolitical instrument in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine and sustained destabilization efforts in its neighbourhood. For Ukraine and Moldova, EU accession is no longer a distant aspiration, but an existential strategic choice tied to security, economic development, and democratic survival. At this year’s SITE Development Day, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners gathered to take stock of where the two countries stand on their accession paths, which challenges risk undermining progress, and what role the EU and international partners can play in sustaining momentum. This policy brief synthesizes key insights from the conference discussions, focusing on three interlinked dimensions of accession: economic preconditions and foreign financing, democratic resilience under hybrid threats, and human capital development.
Introduction
The EU accession process continues to enjoy strong political and societal support in both Ukraine and Moldova, despite the profound challenges each country faces. Opening the conference, Dag Hartelius, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs of Sweden, emphasized that both countries have demonstrated sustained commitment to European integration, while underlining the need for stable, reliable, and predictable engagement from European partners. In Ukraine, Russia’s full-scale invasion has consolidated a broad societal consensus around a European future, with support for EU accession remaining high despite the immense economic and human costs of war. Moldova, meanwhile, has reaffirmed its European course through the election of a strong pro-EU parliamentary majority, even as it remains exposed to significant geopolitical pressure, as highlighted by Carolina Perebinos, State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Moldova.
Yet, speakers stressed that political support should not be taken for granted. As noted by Vadym Halaichuk, First Deputy Chair of the Committee on Ukraine’s Integration into the EU of the Verkhovna Rada, prolonged delays, blocked negotiations, or unclear signals from the EU risk creating space for Eurosceptic narratives, particularly as wartime economic hardship persists in Ukraine.
Participants mentioned the risk of a “Balkan trap,” where candidate countries remain in prolonged negotiations despite credible reform progress. For Ukraine and Moldova, time is a critical factor.
Economic Outlook and Foreign Aid
Economic resilience is a central pillar of sustained support for EU accession. Ukraine’s economy has been recovering since the initial collapse in 2022, but the recovery remains slow and uneven across sectors. Wartime destruction, disrupted supply chains, labor shortages due to large-scale displacement, and rising defense needs continue to constrain growth. As discussed at the conference, Ukraine requires predictable external support to maintain macroeconomic stability and finance reconstruction.
In Moldova, decades of low growth, repeated external shocks, and adverse demographic trends, including population decline and ageing, have left the economy vulnerable. While macroeconomic stability has improved and inflation has fallen to historically low levels, productivity remains low and the economy insufficiently diversified, underscoring the need for greater access to capital and investment opportunities. At the same time, business sentiment has improved, with recent survey evidence (Partnerships for New Economy, 2025) suggesting that most firms believe the country is moving in the right direction and that the business community places significant importance on EU integration.
The economies of Ukraine and Moldova remain critically dependent on foreign support, but there is a need to adapt to a changing landscape for development cooperation. Potential reductions in traditional official development assistance, particularly from major bilateral donors, increase the importance of mobilising private capital, diaspora resources, and blended finance instruments. However, private investors continue to perceive Ukraine and Moldova as high-risk environments, often overestimating political and sovereign risk relative to actual default rates and recovery outcomes. Expanding guarantees and de-risking instruments in the form of EU grants for public sector projects and providing technical assistance to develop bankable projects are critical to narrowing this perception gap. Across both cases, conference participants stressed that EU accession is perceived not only as a political anchor but also as a central mechanism for addressing long-standing economic constraints.
Democratic Resilience and Hybrid Threats
A defining feature of both accession processes is the persistent pressure from Russian hybrid warfare. Moldova’s recent elections illustrated the breadth of these tactics, ranging from vote-buying schemes and disinformation to energy manipulation and attempts to overwhelm law enforcement institutions. Ukraine faces similar challenges under more extreme conditions, as democratic governance continues under martial law and constant security threats.
While corruption remains a serious concern, participants emphasized that institutions have been strengthened rather than collapsed despite the challenging circumstances. In Ukraine, anti-corruption agencies continue to function, and political scandals have not displaced the broader reform agenda or public support for European integration. Moldova’s experience demonstrates that coordinated institutional cooperation with European partners can significantly enhance the state’s ability to counter hybrid interference.
Crucially, supporting democratic resilience in Ukraine and Moldova is a core European interest, with direct implications for EU security, democratic stability, and the integrity of the enlargement process itself.
Human Capital Development
Investments in human capital are critical for long-term growth and development, yet brain drain is a major concern in both Ukraine and Moldova. Survey evidence indicates that many students are choosing to study abroad, driven by a combination of security concerns, education quality, and economic factors (see Vaskovska, 2025). At the same time, many students express willingness to return, with EU accession perceived as a key condition for long-term stability and opportunity.
Strengthening demand for skills—through private-sector involvement and public-sector capacity building—was seen as essential to raising returns to local education. Moreover, speakers stressed the importance of treating the diaspora as an asset rather than a loss, and supporting targeted mobility schemes, professional networks, and research and teaching initiatives that facilitate knowledge transfer. Comparative reflections on Poland’s accession underscored that human capital and public infrastructure investments can start a path to sustained convergence even before formal membership.
Conclusion
Discussions at the conference underscored that Ukraine and Moldova have demonstrated a high degree of political commitment and societal support for EU accession under exceptionally challenging conditions. At the same time, the sustainability of this support depends on the credibility, pace, and predictability of the accession process. Prolonged uncertainty, blocked negotiations, or reduced predictability of foreign assistance risk creating space for Eurosceptic narratives.
Both countries face significant structural economic constraints and heightened financing needs, while private investment remains constrained by elevated risk perceptions. Addressing these challenges requires not only continued macroeconomic and financial support but also targeted assistance to develop bankable investment opportunities and reduce perceived risks. Effective implementation of reforms—particularly at the local level—and efforts to retain and mobilise human capital depend on sustained institutional cooperation, strengthened local capacity, and a visible European presence on the ground.
For the EU, supporting Ukraine and Moldova is of strategic self-interest. As emphasized throughout the conference, integration is not merely an enlargement decision — it is a long-term investment in Europe’s economic stability, democratic resilience, and security.
References
- Partnerships for New Economy (2025). “Barometrul antreprenorilor” (“Entrepreneurs’ Barometer”), retrieved Dec 18, 2025.
- Vaskovska Anhelina (2025). “Strengthening Human Capital: How Ukraine and Moldova Can Retain and Reconnect Their Students“, FREE Policy Brief Series, December 2025.
List of Participants
- Torbjörn Becker, Director of SITE
- Raj M. Desai, Professor of International Development at Georgetown University
- Stefan Falk, Director, Swedfund Project Accelerator
- Kata Fredheim, Executive Vice President of Partnerships and Strategy, SSE Riga
- Vadym Halaichuk, First Deputy Chair of the Committee on Ukraine’s Integration into the EU of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine
- Dag Hartelius, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Anders Olofsgård, Deputy Director of SITE
- Klara Lindström, Analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS)
- Michal Myck, Director at CenEA, Szczecin
- Anders Olofsgård, Deputy Director of SITE
- Carolina Perebinos, State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Moldova
- Dumitru Pintea, Expert at Partnerships for New Economy, Chisinau
- Rustam Romaniuc, Associate Professor at Montpellier Business School
- Nataliia Shapoval, Chairman of KSE Institute
- Tobias Thyberg, Deputy Director General, Ministry for Foreign Affairs
- Viorel Ursu, Moldovan Ambassador to Sweden
- Anhelina Vaskovska, International Relations Specialist
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.