ABSTRACT Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin has increasingly supported its battlefield operations with covert actions against Kyiv’s European supporters. Executing many such actions are the cheap and plentiful ‘low-level agents’ who provide Russia with considerable geographic reach and plausible deniability. Using a new dataset of 145 low-level agents, this study combines descriptive and inferential statistics with social network analysis to explore their demographics, roles, deployment patterns and organisational structure. Findings indicate that low-level agents are predominantly male, in their mid-thirties, drawn disproportionately from Ukrainian, Russian, Moldovan and Bulgarian populations and quite frequently reused. Networks appear structurally hierarchical and compartmentalised and seem designed with plausible deniability in mind. However, inconsistent operational security by Russian intelligence officers limits Moscow’s ability to claim ignorance. The findings provide empirical insights into an ongoing European security threat, informing policy responses and further scholarship.

ABSTRACT In societal security, cross-sector cooperation is commonly described as a temporary response to extraordinary circumstances, where each organisation acts within its sector to address a shared, sector-spanning problem. However, many critical infrastructures and societal functions are sustained by permanent cooperation under ordinary circumstances, and organisations frequently operate beyond their sector boundaries. Yet, there are no analytic frameworks that address this variety in modes of cooperation. This perpetuates a limited scope, present in both practical coordination of and research on societal security. This article’s main objective is to develop an analytic framework that contributes to a better understanding of the diversity in interorganisational cross-sector cooperation in a societal security context. The framework draws on systems theory and interorganisational relationship studies, applying the “boundary” concept to highlight distinguishing features of various modes of cooperation. The features are explored in relation to the societal security problem, the interorganisational activity and the societal security system-of-systems. The framework’s applicability is tested in two cases of interorganisational cooperation in the geopolitically significant Svalbard archipelago. We identify three dimensions that distinguish between modes of cooperation: the extraordinariness of the problem, the duration of cooperation, and whether the contribution is within or outside the actors’ sector.

ABSTRACT Prominent examples of withdrawal from international organisations (IOs) raise the question of how actors seek to validate their role after exit. IOs may seek legitimation either through the exclusion of the departing state or continued engagement in their activities, while departing states may validate withdrawal through continued engagement or the denial of recognition. This article claims legitimation strategies are shaped by the policy domain, with external differentiation, institutional overlap and contingent actorness making IOs more susceptible to recognition denial and thus more likely to seek continued engagement. The article provides empirical evidence for this claim through the UK–EU security relationship post-Brexit, drawing on interviews with both sides. We show how Britain’s potential contribution to EU security underscored a desire to keep Britain involved, but that politicisation in the UK led the Johnson government to pursue a deliberate strategy of recognition denial. Our findings help explain why actors seek different legitimation strategies after withdrawal.

ABSTRACT The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has significantly worsened the European security outlook. Simultaneously, concerns are growing over the United States’ willingness to commit substantial forces to the defense of Europe. This raises a critical question: How robust would European defense against Russia be in the event of a temporary U.S. absence? The study models the likelihood of a Russian breakthrough in northeastern Poland (Suwalki Gap) under various scenarios defined by the numerical and technological capabilities of Russian and NATO forces. The analysis combines Biddle's formal model of force employment with a robust Monte Carlo simulation. The findings suggest that, depending on Russian willingness to use conscripts, if key European NATO members deploy approximately 10 combat brigades (20 if Russia uses conscripts) to Poland, a Russian breakthrough is unlikely. However, if key European states are slow or unwilling to act, the probability of a successful Russian breakthrough increases significantly. To ensure that partial U.S. retrenchment does not compromise European security, European NATO members must (i) strengthen and modernise their active and reserve forces and (ii) clearly communicate – both domestically and internationally – that any Russian incursion into NATO territory will be met with decisive force.

ABSTRACT In October 2022, the EU established a military assistance mission in support to Ukrainian armed forces (EUMAM Ukraine). The decision to launch the mission runs contrary to what one would intuitively expect from the EU, considering member states’ traditional divisions on Russia, alternative training initiatives, Ukraine’s lacklustre position and the mission’s unconventional design. Despite the growing literature on the EU’s response to Russian aggression, this puzzle has so far been overlooked. While a reformulation of EU member states’ security preferences driven by the heightened threat of an aggressive Russia is certainly necessary to explain the creation of EUMAM Ukraine, we argue that the launch and design of the mission can only be fully understood through a neofunctionalist approach, taking into account the effect of functional pressure and the activism of EU actors. The article shows how the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy and the European External Action Service seized an initiative from member states and set the foundation for the mission of unprecedented scope and complexity. This finding illustrates the importance of Brussels-based actors in driving EU security and defence policy forward in times of existential security crisis in Europe.

ABSTRACT Russia's current war against Ukraine takes place in the wider context of geopolitical competition in the region. The EU and Russia promoted integration projects that have, in fact, become conflicting for the “in-between” countries. Existing scholarship put forward power-based explanations for these countries' behaviour that ignored their agency. This paper brings agency back in by developing a conceptual framework that highlights the relational nature of hegemony and that includes the perceptions of the small state in the analysis of power. To illustrate the applicability of this framework, two neighbourhood countries' (Moldova and Armenia) power relations with the EU and Russia are analysed. The focus is on how the structural aspects were acted out and shaped by the two aspiring regional hegemons to understand how small state actors perceived EU and Russian hegemonic power. The findings show the different expressions the phenomenon of hegemonic power can take in practice and how these were perceived in Moldova and Armenia.

ABSTRACT Zooming in on the European Union’s international identity, this paper argues that maturation, and the achievement of a solid international identity, may result from a process in which different identity traits are integrated, even strategically incorporated. It frames this hybridisation argument in terms of Dragon Power Europe and proceeds in two steps. In a first step, the paper develops an integrated analytical framework for studying the European Union’s international identity by comparing the Normative Power Europe and Market Power Europe conceptualisations along three dimensions, namely drivers, actions and impact. In a second step, the paper demonstrates the framework’s empirical value through an exploration of the European Union’s functioning in relation to health information standardisation, investigating the logics behind the inclusion of a new chapter on diagnoses and syndromes associated with Traditional (Chinese) Medicine in the eleventh revision of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases in 2019. The involvement of the European Union and its member states in this specific case of health (information) standardisation shows initial but compelling evidence of NPE-MPE dynamics shaping the EU’s international functioning, in particular its drivers, actions and impact.

ABSTRACT The relationship between the European Union (EU) and Russia in the past 30 years has been complex, encompassing periods of hope, optimism and cooperation but also elements of competition, conflict and complicated geopolitical tensions. There is an omnipresent pattern of intertwined conflict and cooperation that has run through the core of the relationship, until reaching a stalemate following the 2022 Russian aggression in Ukraine. We identify the current state of EU–Russia relations to resemble a Gordian knot or a deeply entrenched and unsolvable problem. Nevertheless, a site where the EU and Russia meet face to face to pursue interests on a plethora of issues is the Arctic. We examine whether the EU–Russia relations have been qualitatively different there, and whether it might hold lessons for cutting the identified Gordian knot. We employ discourse analysis to the official EU documents on the Arctic from the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union, and examine how Russia has been presented in these documents – as a competitor or a cooperation partner. We discover more cooperation rather than conflict language, indicating the Arctic might hold some lessons about the future EU–Russia relations after a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine.