“We are at war with Russia, but we do not want to admit it to ourselves”

In my opinion, a positive aspect is that Ukrainians have spared us from the scenario of a full-scale military invasion: long-range drone strikes on Russian territory have inflicted such serious damage on Russia that it has - at least for a while - lost the ability to conduct a conventional offensive. But what happened and why has the assessment of the threat increased? Ukraine has gained a strategic advantage, and Putin has found himself in exactly the situation he once described: in the position of a cornered rat. “At that moment,” continues J. Garisons, “when a dictator starts to lose and gets bogged down in a protracted war, he loses touch with reality… the only option left for him is escalation.” “We are already at the third or fourth stage of the war - the stage when sabotage has begun. And yet we continue to pretend that this is merely a hybrid threat; and since it is ‘only’ hybrid, we feel that we cannot take real action or provide a full response. The only way to prevent the worst now is to start responding in kind or act asymmetrically: if a drone comes here, something similar should happen in Russia. Until European politicians change their mindset - and I doubt they are capable of moving from simple defense to deterrence (after all, Russia can only be deterred when it realizes that the opponent can strike back) - we will continue down the path of escalation. Unfortunately, this leads to a scenario where they either get their way by turning public opinion against helping Ukraine, or ultimately provoke the conflict to transition into a ‘hot’ phase. So our choices are limited. “You see, that’s the problem: all European thinking - both political and military - is built on the desire to avoid escalation. That is why we do not respond to the enemy’s actions, but instead justify ourselves, insisting: ‘No, we did not authorize the flights of Ukrainian drones,’ even though the Russians know perfectly well that they did not take off from our territory. And that is why we find ourselves in this situation: the Russians understand that they can act here with impunity, knowing that no response will follow. “We must realize that the situation is moving towards escalation; there is no other way. We need - and here I mean both officials and journalists - to find a common approach to communication with the public. After all, on one hand, everyone talks about this - for example, the President of Poland directly states that we have a window of opportunity of eight months - but then the question arises: what exactly are you doing?