German SPD politician and Friedrich Ebert Foundation analyst Alex Yusupov told Novaya-Europe that by 2025 the relations between the EU, the United States, NATO, Ukraine and Russia had been fundamentally reshaped. In his view, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine restored NATO’s original defensive purpose, but at the same time deepened an internal political crisis of confidence within the alliance.
Yusupov recalled that in the late 2010s NATO still had a structure designed for a major conventional war in Europe, even though in practice member states’ armed forces were engaged mainly in operations outside the region. After 2022, he said, the alliance’s “genetic memory” was reactivated because war once again gave meaning to its existence as a defensive bloc.
At the same time, he argued that the main push behind Europe’s surge in military spending came not only from Russia’s attack on Ukraine, but also from Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Europeans are concerned less by the external threat alone than by whether NATO still functions politically from within when the US president treats allied commitments as dependent on American interests, partners’ spending levels and trade concessions.
“The erosion of Article Five is happening not because of real changes on the continent. It is happening because of political changes within the West,” Yusupov said.
He noted that the wording of Article Five never guaranteed an automatic military response, yet the alliance had long still been seen as reliable. Now, in his view, the deterrence mechanism itself has been weakened: if allied loyalty has to be tested by a real attack, then the system of deterrence has already failed. In that context, he referred to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said in early December that the idea of the political West as a community based on shared values appeared to be dead.
Explaining Europe’s military dependence on the United States, Yusupov traced it back to postwar history. In his account, Europeans were unable in the first years after World War II to build an autonomous defense architecture, and NATO emerged as a de facto “plan B,” with the United States becoming its central pillar. For that reason, today’s asymmetry did not grow out of equality, but from a historically constrained design with few alternatives.
Asked about the future of economic ties with Russia after a possible end to the war, Yusupov said a broad return of European business is unlikely. For many major corporations, the Russian market is small, offers little value as a re-export base and remains too risky because there is no guarantee that any end to the war would hold. Some companies, including in chemicals, agriculture and energy, may still seek a return, but he does not expect any general economic “renaissance.”
“That Russia also seems to be gone. That pyramid will never come back. It simply no longer exists,” Yusupov said about the model of rapprochement between Russia and Europe that had been developing since the 1970s.
His conclusion was that Vladimir Putin has brought to an end a long period of rapprochement between Russia and Europe that began well before his rule, in the era of Willy Brandt and expanding energy trade. Even if the fighting stops, the analyst believes the former system of political and economic relations cannot be restored.