Russia and NATO have long held sharply divergent perceptions of each other’s intentions. While Russia consistently overstates the threat posed by NATO, the alliance has, until recently, tended to underestimate Russia’s ambitions and the associated risks. Russia’s threat perception is deeply rooted in a strategic culture that views international relations as inherently adversarial and defined by power dynamics.
Russia presents its posture in the Black Sea as a defensive response to an expanding and threatening Western presence, justifying its actions in reference to perceived hostile external stimuli. This stance is rooted in the belief that the Black Sea falls within Russia’s rightful sphere of influence and that the growing Western military and institutional presence in this region threatens Russia’s national security and great power status. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union dominated the Black Sea; Turkey was the only non-Warsaw Pact littoral state, and the Black Sea was characterized frequently as a ‘Russian lake’. The post-Cold War expansion of NATO and the EU into the region forcefully reminded Moscow of its geopolitical weakness in the early 1990s. This development has also fuelled the perception that the West exploited that period of vulnerability to establish a balance of power unfavourable to Russia.
While NATO expansion remains Moscow’s most frequently cited concern, the country’s perception of threats goes beyond the expansion of the military alliance. It is deeply rooted in Russia’s strategic culture, its sense of historical continuity, and a specific interpretation of international relations – one that views the international order as inherently adversarial and shaped by spheres of influence. During the Cold War, NATO’s primary purpose was to deter and defend against the Soviet threat. Russia has argued that with the Cold War’s end, NATO should have been dissolved, and the security of the broader Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian space should have been managed instead through a joint multilateral framework such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). As the Soviet Union’s successor, Russia views NATO as a hostile alliance composed of former adversaries. Russia objects not just to NATO’s expansion but to the organization’s very existence.
Perceptions of Russia and NATO regarding each other’s intentions and levels of risk have been sharply divergent. While NATO progressively shifted its emphasis from deterrence and defence to cooperation and dialogue, Russia continued to view the alliance as a primary threat to its national security. Following the end of the Cold War, NATO operated under the assumption that the systemic threat posed by Russia had effectively disappeared. Member states significantly reduced defence spending, shifting their focus towards collective security, peacebuilding and conflict prevention as part of a broader, comprehensive approach to security. In contrast, Russia increased its defence expenditure, professionalized its military and invested heavily in advanced weapons systems. As Neil MacFarlane observed, the sharp rise in Russian military spending stood in stark contrast to the declining defence budgets of NATO member states. This growing asymmetry made it increasingly evident that Putin’s Russia was dissatisfied with the post-Cold War status quo. Moscow repeatedly accused NATO of pursuing expansionist and aggressive policies, particularly in the Black Sea region. Meanwhile, NATO continued to treat the Black Sea as peripheral to European security, failing to develop a coherent strategic approach to the region. The alliance consistently underestimated the Russian threat, while Russia persistently exaggerated the threat posed by NATO.
While NATO progressively shifted its emphasis from deterrence and defence to cooperation and dialogue, Russia continued to view the alliance as a primary threat to its national security.
Russia’s interpretation of Western intentions reflects its ‘realist’ worldview and strategic culture, exhibiting at least three defining characteristics. First, there is a persistent disregard for the agency of smaller states, particularly in the neighbourhood that Russia considers part of its legitimate sphere of influence. The security concerns and Western aspirations of these states are routinely dismissed as inconsequential, with their actions interpreted not as autonomous choices but as manipulations orchestrated by external powers to weaken or harm Russia. In this vein, Moscow consistently frames democratic movements and so-called ‘colour revolutions’ in its neighbourhood not as indigenous expressions of political agency, but as Western-engineered, regime-change operations – developments that Moscow views as illegitimate and actively seeks to reverse.
Second, Russia frequently engages in projection – attributing to its adversaries the same intentions it harbours itself. For example, Russian foreign policy analyses often portray Romania as seeking to manipulate cross-border minorities and pursue an expansionist agenda – accusations that closely mirror Russia’s own strategies in its neighbourhood. Similarly, Turkey is regularly depicted as a destabilizing actor, allegedly involved – either directly or indirectly – in nearly every regional conflict and accused of leveraging instability to consolidate its influence, a pattern that reflects Russia’s own behaviour. When the EU launched the Eastern Partnership initiative, encompassing Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the three South Caucasus states, Moscow accused Brussels of establishing a sphere of influence in the shared neighbourhood, while simultaneously asserting that this very region was Russia’s own legitimate zone of privileged interests.
Third, Russia views the international system as defined by competition rather than cooperation, adopting a fundamentally zero-sum logic when it comes to strategic and security interests. In this worldview, no foreign action is considered benign if it alters the perceived balance of power in regions Russia claims as its own. Through this lens, the Black Sea can only belong to either Russia or NATO – there is no credible middle ground or cooperative arrangement that preserves mutual influence.
Misperceptions about each other’s intentions and differing understandings of threats contributed significantly to the failure of signalling and the deterioration of relations between Russia and the Euro-Atlantic community. Western efforts to engage Russia – including invitations to dialogue and offers of institutional cooperation, such as the Russia–NATO Council, Russia’s inclusion in the G7, and even the ‘reset’ policy following the 2008 war in Georgia – ultimately failed to reassure Moscow and did little to deter its aggressive behaviour. As one former senior British official remarked, in hindsight, it seems that no amount of reassurance was sufficient to alter Russia’s perception.
Despite gradually increasing anti-Westernism, until the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia preferred not to fully disrupt its relations with the West, engaging instead in compartmentalized cooperation on matters of common interest. Moscow also pursued a policy of division and differentiation between NATO and the EU. This was evident in 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia. Citing NATO’s Bucharest Summit declaration – promising eventual membership to Georgia and Ukraine – as a clear red line, Russia claimed to have fewer objections to EU enlargement. A similar message was conveyed more recently regarding Ukraine; Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that while Ukraine had the sovereign right to decide on economic integration, that right did not extend to military alliances.
Yet Russia’s actions tend to contradict this rhetoric. Moscow strongly opposed the EU’s Eastern Partnership initiative, arguing that it was an instrument of geopolitical competition to diminish Russia’s influence. In 2014, Moscow successfully pressured Armenia into abandoning its Association Agreement with the EU and joining a competing Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. In a similar fashion, it coerced Ukraine under President Yanukovych to not sign its EU Association Agreement, triggering the Euromaidan protests and leading to the annexation of Crimea. If the 2008 war in Georgia was Russia’s response to a vague membership promise by NATO, the annexation of Crimea was a response to a trade agreement with no prospect of membership in the EU. Viewing regional integration in zero-sum terms, Moscow believed that increased trade with the EU would come at the cost of trade with Russia, that closer alignment with European standards would lead to a gradual detachment from Russian regulatory frameworks, and that economic agreements were a tool for the EU to project political influence.
Today, three Black Sea countries – Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – are EU candidate states. From Moscow’s perspective, this new reality represents a worsening of the previous status quo.
There is little reason to believe that Russia’s current approach is any different despite changing circumstances. Today, three Black Sea countries – Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – are EU candidate states. From Moscow’s perspective, this new reality represents a worsening of the previous status quo. Although, since November 2024, Georgia has suspended its European integration process and pivoted sharply away from the West with Moscow’s full blessing. Large-scale protests that followed and entrenched anti-Russian and pro-Western sentiments in Georgia, however, could cause Moscow to doubt the long-term sustainability of this shift. Ironically, it was Russia’s aggression against Ukraine that spurred EU enlargement. By attempting to separate the EU from NATO, Russia has also worked to decouple Europe from the US, portraying the EU as a purely economic actor rather than a geopolitical one. Nevertheless, Moscow remains highly suspicious of Europe’s ambitions in a common neighbourhood and especially of Ukraine’s EU membership, which may increase the EU’s geopolitical weight and boost its defence and military capacity.
Russia views the EU as an aspiring power centre in the emerging multipolar world, but believes it lacks the necessary capabilities to fulfil that role. In the context of a potential decoupling of the US and the EU, Ukraine’s integration into the latter takes on heightened significance, particularly given Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea and its large, battle-hardened military. Ukraine’s accession would also provide the EU with greater control over Black Sea trade and transport routes. One Russian analyst has suggested that by securing influence over the Black Sea, the EU aims to expand its trade with Africa and the Middle East, thereby enhancing its position as a global actor. Such thinking reinforces Moscow’s concern that EU membership for Ukraine would bolster Europe’s geoeconomic and geopolitical standing at Russia’s expense. Sergei Karaganov, a former foreign policy adviser to Putin, suggested that Europeans should be pushed aside as much as possible in Ukraine negotiations, signalling Russia’s interest to work with the US against Europe. The outcome of the war in Ukraine, therefore, will shape not only Russia’s relations with its neighbours but also the outcome of a multilateral struggle for dominance of the Black Sea.
