FROM CRIMEA TO NATO: WAR WITHOUT A REAR, Cristina Di Silvio

Theoretical Framework: Contemporary Warfare and Unstable Deterrence

The literature on the transformation of contemporary warfare has progressively highlighted how conflicts emerging after the end of the bipolar international order increasingly combine conventional and unconventional dimensions, military and civilian instruments, state and non-state actors, as well as kinetic and cognitive operations. Warfare is no longer confined to the linear confrontation of regular armies along a clearly defined frontline; instead, it unfolds across distributed, interconnected, and constantly evolving spaces in which critical infrastructure, energy networks, information systems, logistical chains, industrial capabilities, and collective perceptions become integral components of the battlespace.

Within this framework, deterrence no longer functions exclusively as a static equilibrium between symmetrical threats but rather as a dynamic system of signals, thresholds of tolerance, calculated ambiguity, and perceptions of risk. Thomas Schelling had already identified the management of uncertainty and the credibility of threats as the rational core of deterrence, demonstrating that coercive power lies not merely in the ability to destroy but in the ability to shape an adversary’s strategic calculations.[1] Mary Kaldor, through the concept of “new wars,” interpreted contemporary conflicts as processes in which organized violence, political fragmentation, identity, and transnational networks intertwine in forms that cannot be reduced to classical interstate warfare.[2] Lawrence Freedman further emphasized the narrative, cognitive, and adaptive dimensions of strategy, arguing that strategic conduct consists not only in the application of force but also in constructing a framework of meanings capable of influencing decisions, perceptions, and expectations.[3]

From this perspective, the Russia–Ukraine conflict represents one of the most advanced laboratories for understanding the transformation of warfare in the twenty-first century. The integration of conventional artillery, low-cost drones, missile systems, satellite intelligence, electronic warfare, sabotage, cyber operations, and information campaigns has generated a form of conflict in which superiority depends less on military mass than on the capacity to integrate multiple operational domains into increasingly rapid decision-making cycles. Warfare thus becomes a complex operational environment in which the distinction between frontline, rear area, critical infrastructure, and political space progressively dissolves.

Crimea as a Systemic Node of the War

Recent military operations in Crimea, particularly those targeting airbases, logistics hubs, energy infrastructure, and command facilities, should not be interpreted as isolated episodes but rather as elements of a broader strategy of systemic interdiction. The occupied peninsula represents an essential logistical hub for Russia’s military projection into the Black Sea, for sustaining operations on Ukraine’s southern front, and for preserving both the territorial and symbolic continuity of Russian control across the contested space connecting Donbas, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and the Black Sea.

Ukraine’s growing ability to strike deep targets through unmanned systems, missiles, intelligence operations, and precision attacks against critical infrastructure reflects a qualitative transformation of the battlefield. The logic of attack is no longer limited to the immediate destruction of enemy forces but increasingly seeks to erode the adversary’s capacity for operational regeneration, saturate supporting infrastructure, disrupt supply lines, and exert psychological pressure on areas previously regarded as secure. Recent analyses indicate that Ukraine’s expanding use of medium-range drones has assumed an increasingly significant role in exerting pressure on Russian logistical networks, including those connected to Crimea and the southern land corridor.

Crimea consequently emerges as a space where military, political, and symbolic value converge. Striking the peninsula does not merely degrade Russian infrastructure; it also challenges the presumed irreversibility of its annexation, undermines Russia’s perception of internal security, and projects the conflict into one of the Kremlin’s most sensitive strategic assets. Ukraine’s deep-strike capabilities, in this sense, are not necessarily intended to produce an immediate operational breakthrough but rather to increase the costs of Russian control and make the military occupation of the peninsula progressively more burdensome.

Multidomain Warfare and the Disappearance of the Rear Area

The Russia–Ukraine conflict vividly illustrates the progressive disappearance of the distinction between frontline and rear area that characterized much of twentieth-century industrial warfare. The integration of drones, electronic warfare, intelligence, missile capabilities, satellite reconnaissance, and communication systems creates an operational continuity that extends the battlefield across an entire regional theatre. Within this environment, energy, logistics, and information infrastructures become targets as strategically significant as conventional military objectives.

Multidomain warfare is not simply warfare conducted across multiple domains; rather, it is warfare in which each domain continuously influences the others. The destruction of a fuel depot directly affects troop mobility; disabling a radar station alters the vulnerability of national airspace; attacks against energy networks affect civilian morale and industrial resilience; electronic warfare neutralizes drones, disrupts communications, and degrades the effectiveness of precision-guided weapons. Consequently, the battlefield is no longer a geographically bounded space but a network of interdependent systems.

The growing centrality of drones constitutes one of the clearest manifestations of this transformation. The Ukrainian experience demonstrates how relatively inexpensive, adaptable, and mass-produced unmanned systems can significantly alter tactical and operational balances when integrated with sensors, communication networks, data analysis, and targeting capabilities. The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) has argued that Ukraine’s success with drones offers a broader lesson for NATO: future technological superiority will depend not only on advanced platforms but also on industrial sovereignty, component availability, and the capacity to rapidly adapt production and doctrine to the evolving requirements of the battlefield.

Russia, for its part, has intensified the use of missiles and drones against Ukrainian infrastructure, including civilian and energy facilities, in an effort to saturate air defenses and generate political pressure. Large-scale missile and drone strikes confirm the emergence of a technologically driven war of attrition, in which the relationship between the cost of attack and the cost of defense becomes strategically decisive. Advanced air defense systems, particularly those capable of intercepting ballistic and hypersonic missiles, therefore acquire a strategic value extending beyond territorial protection to become essential components of Ukraine’s overall national resilience.

The result is a form of conflict characterized by intermittent high-intensity operations and low strategic stability. Operational intensity unfolds in waves—localized offensives, missile campaigns, infrastructure attacks, sabotage operations, drone incursions, and information warfare—while strategic stability remains inherently fragile, since every extension of operational reach, every technological innovation, and every incident near NATO’s borders has the potential to alter perceptions of escalation thresholds.

Unstable Deterrence and NATO’s Eastern Flank

Reports concerning possible Russian pressure against NATO’s eastern flank—including hybrid operations, sabotage, drone incursions, limited provocations, and sub-threshold activities—should be interpreted within the framework of unstable deterrence. Such dynamics are not necessarily intended to trigger open warfare but rather to generate strategic ambiguity and shape adversaries’ perceptions of acceptable risk.

NATO has defined Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine as the most serious threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades and has responded with the most significant reinforcement of collective deterrence and defense in a generation, strengthening forces along the eastern flank while enhancing the Alliance’s capacity for rapid reinforcement. In particular, NATO presents the reinforcement of its eastern flank as a multidomain effort encompassing land forces, surveillance, air defense, resilience, cyber capabilities, space assets, and the protection of critical infrastructure.

The hybrid nature of these threats, however, creates a distinctive challenge: the distinction between accident, provocation, and deliberate hostile action becomes increasingly blurred. Drones violating sovereign airspace, sabotage against critical infrastructure, cyber interference, disinformation campaigns, paramilitary activities, and operations whose attribution may be delayed all contribute to a grey zone in which political and military responses must be calibrated with exceptional caution. Within this context, Moscow’s objective may not necessarily be to provoke direct confrontation with NATO but rather to test Alliance cohesion, decision-making speed, thresholds of tolerance, and long-term willingness to support Ukraine.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has emphasized that NATO’s eastern flank is increasingly exposed to grey-zone threats, including UAV incursions and sabotage, prompting frontline states to develop layered defensive strategies based on fortifications, surveillance systems, and short-range air defense. This evolution confirms that European security can no longer be conceived solely in terms of conventional or nuclear deterrence but must instead be understood as a comprehensive architecture integrating territorial defense, civilian resilience, network protection, and rapid threat attribution.

Within this framework, unstable deterrence does not signify the failure of deterrence but rather its transformation. It operates in an environment where no actor appears willing to cross openly the threshold of direct NATO–Russia war, yet all operate close to that threshold in pursuit of political, military, or psychological advantages. Escalation is no longer necessarily linear; it may be lateral, temporary, reversible, or symbolic. Precisely for this reason, it becomes considerably more difficult to manage.

European Security and the New Geography of Risk

The war in Ukraine has fundamentally redefined European security beyond what appeared during the conflict’s initial stages. The challenge extends beyond military assistance to Kyiv or the containment of Russian expansion; it requires a comprehensive rethinking of the relationship between territorial defense, defense industry, technological autonomy, energy resilience, and European political cohesion. Ukraine is no longer merely the recipient of Western assistance but has become an operational laboratory generating innovations, doctrines, and lessons that are already reshaping Europe’s future defense posture.

The evolution of drone warfare clearly illustrates this transformation. Kyiv has developed an exceptional capacity for rapid adaptation that many Western military institutions—often slower and more bureaucratic—now study with growing attention. Distributed production, the large-scale employment of unmanned systems, the integration of operators, intelligence, and technological industries, together with the ability to rapidly convert battlefield experience into operational innovation, constitute a body of knowledge that is already influencing how Europe conceives its future defense capabilities. It is therefore unsurprising that Ukraine seeks drone-sector cooperation with several NATO member states, positioning itself not merely as a recipient of military assistance but also as a provider of operational expertise acquired through combat experience.

A new geography of risk consequently emerges, in which Europe’s eastern frontier is no longer a strategic periphery but rather the continent’s forward security zone. The Baltic region, the Black Sea, logistical corridors, underwater infrastructure, airspace, energy networks, and digital systems together form an integrated space of vulnerability. European security therefore depends not solely on traditional military deterrence but increasingly on the ability to protect networks, societies, and institutions from multiple, simultaneous forms of pressure.

Overview

The Russia–Ukraine conflict constitutes one of the principal laboratories for understanding the transformation of contemporary warfare. The convergence of multidomain warfare, unstable deterrence, and the growing interdependence between a regional theatre of operations and the broader European security architecture points toward a structural transition to more diffuse, interconnected, and pervasive forms of conflict. Crimea has emerged as a systemic node of both military and symbolic competition, while NATO’s eastern flank has become the space where deterrence, resilience, and the management of operational ambiguity increasingly overlap.

Within this environment, stability is no longer defined simply by the absence of war but by the capacity to manage its intensity, thresholds, and spillover effects. The distinction between peace and war becomes progressively blurred, while Europe faces a strategic condition in which conflict may remain geographically localized yet simultaneously generate systemic consequences across the entire continental security architecture.

The central challenge therefore lies in constructing a credible deterrence posture without creating automatic pathways to escalation; supporting Ukraine without transforming the conflict into a direct NATO–Russia war; and reinforcing the Alliance’s eastern flank without reducing European security to the mere militarization of its borders. It is precisely within this delicate balance—between strategic resolve and escalation management—that the new grammar of European security will ultimately be defined.

Notes

[1] Schelling, T. C. (1960). The Strategy of Conflict. Harvard University Press.

[2] Kaldor, M. (2012). New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (3rd ed.). Stanford University Press.

[3] Freedman, L. (2013). Strategy: A History. Oxford University Press.

[4] NATO. (2026). Deterrence and Defence. NATO.

[5] NATO. (2026). Strengthening NATO’s Eastern Flank. NATO.

[6] International Institute for Strategic Studies. (2026). The Military Balance 2026: Fortifying NATO’s Eastern Flank. IISS.

[7] Royal United Services Institute. (2025). Drones Win Battles, Components Win Wars. RUSI.

[8] Institute for the Study of War. (2026). Russian Offensive Campaign Assessments. ISW.

Selected Bibliography

Freedman, L. (2013). Strategy: A History. Oxford University Press.

International Institute for Strategic Studies. (2026). The Military Balance 2026: Fortifying NATO’s Eastern Flank. IISS.

Kaldor, M. (2012). New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (3rd ed.). Stanford University Press.

NATO. (2022). NATO 2022 Strategic Concept. NATO.

NATO. (2026). Deterrence and Defence. NATO.

NATO. (2026). Strengthening NATO’s Eastern Flank. NATO.

Niederkofler, M. (2025). Drones Win Battles, Components Win Wars. Royal United Services Institute.

Schelling, T. C. (1960). The Strategy of Conflict. Harvard University Press.

Institute for the Study of War. (2026). Russian Offensive Campaign Assessments. Institute for the Study of War.

Royal United Services Institute. (2024–2026). Ukraine War and Defence Technology Reports. RUSI.