Interview: EU Panic Russia’s Burevestnik Shadow

EU’s Strategic Vacuum & Russia’s Burevestnik Missile: Col. Baud Insights

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In the grand halls of the Eurasia Security Conference in Minsk, where diplomats from rising powers like China, India, and Indonesia gather to chart paths toward economic diversification and political autonomy, one question lingers like an uninvited guest: What on earth is Europe doing? It’s a query that Professor Glenn Diesen, host of a probing interview with retired Swiss intelligence colonel Jacques Baud, poses with the precision of a scalpel. Baud, a veteran of NATO’s inner workings and author of several incisive books on global conflicts, doesn’t mince words. Europe, he argues, is adrift in a sea of its own making—a strategic vacuum where immature leaders chase shadows, old alliances fray, and new threats like Russia’s Burevestnik missile cast long, ominous silhouettes.

The conversation, captured in a YouTube discussion that has since rippled through geopolitical circles, unfolds against the backdrop of a world inexorably tilting multipolar. Diesen, ever the Norwegian realist, highlights how non-Western giants are hedging bets, forging ties that prioritize sovereignty over subservience. Yet Europe? It’s piling its eggs into the American basket just as Washington deprioritizes the continent, siphoning wealth from allies while eyeing pivots to Asia. “It seems to be acting against its own interest,” Diesen observes, and Baud’s response is a masterclass in unflinching diagnosis.

At the heart of Europe’s malaise, Baud contends, lies an identity crisis born from the Maastricht Treaty. What began as a pragmatic economic club—facilitating trade, smoothing borders—has morphed into an aspiring geopolitical heavyweight, woefully unprepared for the ring. “Europe never managed to define its identity,” Baud says, his voice carrying the weight of decades in strategic intelligence. The EU’s foray into political theater has exposed institutional frailties: a bureaucracy ill-suited for high-stakes diplomacy, layered with leaders who, in Baud’s estimation, embody a troubling generational shift.

These aren’t the grizzled statesmen of yore, forged in the fires of Cold War realpolitik. Today’s European elite—Macron in France, Starmer in the UK, von der Leyen at the EU helm—are “very young, much younger than 40 years ago,” with scant life or professional scars to guide them. Baud paints them as apparatchiks, products of party machines rather than the private sector’s meritocracy. “People who could not be absorbed by the economy,” he muses, politicians by default in an era where competent minds flock to tech hubs and boardrooms, leaving governance to the ideologically fervent. In Switzerland, Baud notes, this trend took root in the 1990s; across Europe, it’s metastasized into a leadership devoid of expertise, tethered more to Brussels echo chambers than to the factory floors or farmlands they purport to serve.

This immaturity manifests in a single-issue obsession: Russia. As Slovak Prime Minister Ľudovít Ódor quipped, EU summits fixate on Moscow to the exclusion of all else—China’s semiconductor stranglehold, Iran’s nuclear brinkmanship, Palestine’s festering wounds. “It’s all the time and exclusively about Russia,” Ódor lamented, a pathology Baud likens to a strategic blind spot. Energy woes? Blame Putin. Trade disruptions? Kremlin machinations. Even domestic tempests, like France’s brewing social unrest, get sidelined as presidents jet off to Kyiv photo-ops. The result? A chasm between elites and the street, where populations seethe with distrust. Polls show it: approval for EU institutions plummets as bills rise from sanctioned gas and frozen Russian assets.

Baud’s critique sharpens on Ukraine, where Europe’s interventions read like a cautionary tale of hubris. Recall 2014: Zelensky’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, rode a 73% mandate for peace, echoing the Minsk Agreements’ fragile truce. Yet Western funders, including EU backers, propped up ultranationalist NGOs to torpedo reconciliation, steering Kyiv toward confrontation. Fast-forward to 2022: Zelensky himself signaled for talks on February 25, mere hours after Russian forces crossed the border. Istanbul negotiations flickered to life, but Europe—ever the eager escalator—sabotaged them, funneling arms and vetoing compromise. “The Europeans refused that,” Baud laments, even as Ukrainians yearned for diplomacy. Ursula von der Leyen’s infamous 2022 decree—”no appeasement”—cemented the bellicose turn, inverting Europe’s postwar mediation tradition.

This isn’t mere incompetence; it’s a willful blindness, Baud argues, rooted in a “mafia-like relationship” with the U.S. Sanctions on Iran? Europe had legal tools since 1996 to defy extraterritorial edicts, yet cowered when Trump yanked out of the JCPOA. Seizing Russian sovereign funds now? It reeks of desperation, eroding Europe’s credibility abroad. The Global South watches, unimpressed: Why align with a bloc that steals assets, threatens secondary sanctions on Indian buyers, and snapbacks Iranian penalties without cause? BRICS swells not as an anti-Western cabal but as a haven from such caprice, where Shanghai Cooperation members prioritize trust over tantrums.

Enter the panic phase, as Diesen terms it. With Ukrainian lines buckling—predictably, given Russia’s attritional edge—Brussels flails. France floats troop deployments; von der Leyen eyes asset grabs to fund Kyiv. It’s escalation theater, Baud says, born of void: no objectives, no strategies, just the primal urge to deny Moscow victory. “When you don’t have any solution, the obvious option is to escalate,” he explains. Yet this ignores Clausewitz’s wisdom—war as politics by other means. Russia, by contrast, wields both swords: Diplomacy via Minsk, force via the SMO, alternating to pressure talks. Europe’s retort? A defense pillar sans foreign policy, militarizing without mediation, echoing Syria’s migrant deluge or Afghanistan’s quagmire.

Baud’s tenure at NATO (2012-2017) exposed the alliance’s own fossilization. Built for nuclear Armageddon, not hybrid skirmishes, NATO flounders in Ukraine—individual states arm, but the pact stays sidelined, lest Article 5 ignite apocalypse. Bilateral pacts with Kyiv fill the gap, underscoring the bloc’s impotence. “NATO is powerless… too powerful,” Baud paradoxes, designed for superpower clashes, not Donbas stalemates. Post-Cold War, it never adapted; Afghanistan devolved to U.S. command, a harbinger ignored.

This brings us to the Burevestnik, Russia’s nuclear-powered storm petrel, unveiled amid the escalatory din. Diesen probes: As EU saber-rattling peaks, why now? Baud, drawing on intel tradecraft, likens it to the Oreshnik missile’s 2024 debut—a riposte to Ukrainian deep strikes on Bryansk, greenlit despite Biden’s hesitations. Trump’s Tomahawk musings? Same script. The Burevestnik isn’t sci-fi novelty; it’s Soviet echoes refined. Nuclear propulsion grants “unlimited range,” cruising at 25-100 meters altitude, evading radars like a ghost. “You can attack from behind,” Baud simplifies—circle the globe, strike unpredictably, a Tomahawk on steroids.

Development traces to 2001, post-U.S. ABM exit, but publicity is deterrence signaling: “Whatever you decide, we have a better response.” Flying 14,000 km in 15 hours per recent tests, it’s no paper tiger—though Western skeptics decry radiological risks, dubbing it a “flying Chernobyl.” For NATO, it’s a game-changer: Unlimited loiter time, low signature, global reach. Yet Baud tempers: It’s part of Russia’s arsenal refresh, not doomsday trigger. The real peril? Europe’s provocation erodes deterrence’s old bargain—status quo defense. Now, NATO’s “revisionist” expansions compel Russian counters, from Kaliningrad probes to nuclear drills. Strike Russian soil with ATACMS? Moscow’s restraint holds, but at what cost to credibility?

Baud’s prescription? Rationality reborn. Ditch the colonial mindset—France and UK’s Iraq-Libya follies—and reclaim mediation’s mantle. Rebuild forces, yes, but wed to foreign policy: Good neighbors trump iron domes. Europe must confront its “easternization”—Baltic hawks dictating to Berlin’s caution—lest it isolate itself. Asia leads in green tech; the West risks obsolescence without openness. As Hungarian FM Péter Szijjártó warned, rationality’s crisis imperils all: Swapping cheap Russian gas for pricier LNG? Self-sabotage.

In Minsk’s corridors, Eastern envoys whisper of autonomy; in Brussels, panic drowns dialogue. Baud’s verdict: Without strategy—objectives first, tactics second—Europe courts not security, but irrelevance. The Burevestnik isn’t just a missile; it’s a mirror, reflecting a continent’s unheeded warnings. As multipolarity dawns, will the EU awaken, or sleepwalk into the storm?

References

1. Baud, Jacques. Operation Z. Max Milo Éditions, 2022. Available on Amazon – Detailed analysis of Ukraine conflict origins and Western misinformation.
2. Diesen, Glenn. “Col. Jacques Baud: The Origin and Solution to the Ukraine War.” Substack, March 14, 2025. Link – Companion interview on Minsk Agreements and European immaturity.
3. “9M730 Burevestnik.” Wikipedia. Link – Technical overview of the missile’s development and capabilities.
4. Roth, Andrew. “What is Russia’s Burevestnik missile?” Reuters, October 26, 2025. Link – Factual reporting on recent tests and strategic implications.
5. “Ukraine crisis exposes Europe’s policy vacuum.” The Guardian, January 23, 2014. Link – Early analysis of EU’s post-Soviet policy failures.
6. “Ukraine: Conflict at the Crossroads of Europe and Russia.” Council on Foreign Relations, February 14, 2023 (updated). Link – Comprehensive background on the war’s European security impacts.
7. Original Interview: Diesen, Glenn, and Jacques Baud. “The EU in Panic & Russia’s Nuclear-Powered Burevestnik Missile.” YouTube, October 2025. Link – Full transcription source.

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