Rebecca PATTERSON (Canada)
12 October 2025
This report was adopted by the Defence and Security Committee at the 71st Annual Session held in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
NATO and Russia have seen a precipitous decline in relations since the days of advancing cooperation in the wake of the Cold War. Post-2022, NATO-Russia relations fell off the proverbial cliff, as the two now maintain only the most essential levels of military-to-military communications. Due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Allies have made their most abrupt deterrence and defence policy changes in decades – this involves significant eastern flank reinforcement and new regional defence plans in Europe calling for significant new investments and contributions by Allies to deter further potential Russian aggression. At the 2025 The Hague Summit, Allied Heads of State and Government agreed on their most ambitious defence spending targets yet – pushing requirements up to 5% of GDP, with 3.5% dedicated to core defence requirements, and 1.5% for security-related investments. Allies also worked to turbocharge and scale the transatlantic defence industrial base to significantly increase output to meet the requirements of NATO’s new defence plans.
In their 2022 Strategic Concept, Allies stated bluntly that the Russian Federation poses the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security. As relations have worsened, Russia is engaging in a dangerous new form of shadow war with NATO Allies as it is employing an expanding range of hybrid warfare tactics across the Alliance in its efforts to sow discord among Allies with a goal of splintering Allied cohesion and, eventually, to break NATO apart.
Despite this significant evolving security dilemma with Moscow, NATO lacks a broader Russia strategy.
At the 2024 Washington Summit, Allied leaders tasked themselves with “develop[ing] recommendations on NATO’s strategic approach to Russia” (NATO, 2024d). Given the challenges of the current security and political environments, this is a sizeable task. As this report makes clear, there will be no return to the antebellum status quo: Russia has shattered the post-Cold War European security landscape, and the Alliance must forge a new and necessarily more confrontational relationship with Moscow. The report does argue, however, that, while stronger deterrence and defence is the only viable option toward Russia today as Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to rage, some form of limited engagement, such as arms control, may have a place on a post-war NATO agenda to undergird Allied security.
