Europe's New Security Architecture: Ukraine as a Strategic Pillar
A new policy brief from St James's Foreign Policy Group founder and CEO Aliona Hlivco, published by the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies and presented in Brussels last week, sets out the strategic case for integrating Ukraine into Europe's evolving defence architecture — arguing that doing so is not an act of solidarity, but a strategic necessity.
Since Russia's first invasion in 2014 and its full-scale assault in 2022, Ukraine has undergone a transformation that few foresaw. What began as a country struggling to defend itself has become, by virtually every measurable indicator, the most combat-experienced military power on the European continent. The brief argues that Europe cannot afford to treat this as peripheral to its own security planning.
Our central thesis is straightforward: Ukraine is no longer merely a recipient of European security support. It is already a contributor to it. Through more than a decade of high-intensity conflict, Ukraine has accumulated battlefield expertise across kinetic operations, cyber defence, electronic warfare, unmanned systems, and AI-enabled command and control that no EU member state currently possesses. The question is whether Europe has the strategic clarity to integrate these capabilities into its own architecture before the window narrows.
A Transformed Security Environment
Russia's conduct can be seen not as a bilateral conflict but as a systemic challenge to the European order — one characterised by the deliberate weaponisation of energy, migration, food security, disinformation, and critical infrastructure. This hybrid campaign, amplified through Moscow's alignment with Iran, North Korea, and China, operates largely below the threshold of conventional war, exploiting ambiguity that European institutions were never designed to manage. Meanwhile, the reliability of the American security guarantee can no longer be assumed unconditionally, making European strategic autonomy both more urgent and more achievable than at any previous moment.
What Ukraine Brings
Several domains exist where Ukrainian expertise could directly strengthen European defence. In unmanned systems, Ukraine has pioneered aerial, maritime, subsea, and ground-based autonomous platforms at scale, with joint ventures already established with Germany, Sweden, Romania, Portugal, Greece, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. In defence AI, platforms such as DELTA and VEZHA — providing real-time battlefield situational awareness — represent operational capabilities that, as the brief notes, only Ukraine, the United States, and Israel currently deploy at scale. European militaries lag significantly behind.
Ukraine's cyber-defence record is equally striking. Facing a 70% surge in cyberattacks in 2024 alone, Ukrainian operators contained the damage through hard-won operational expertise that is already being shared with EU and NATO partners. On disinformation, Ukrainian AI-powered detection platforms are actively collaborating with the UK Ministry of Defence and NATO. On societal resilience, Ukraine's experience of decentralised governance, civilian-military cooperation, and crisis management under live wartime conditions offers a blueprint that European governments facing hybrid threats would be wise to study seriously.
The Institutional Pathway
Ukraine clearly demonstrates significant defence capability which it can offer to greatly strengthen European collective defence. But there are concrete steps which can immediately be taken in the form of institutional inclusion and collaboration, including:
Permanent observer status at the EU's Political and Security Committee;
Observer representation at the EU Military Committee;
Structured associate status with the European Defence Agency;
Deeper integration within DG DEFIS;
Inclusion as an associate member of a proposed European Security Council.
Integration should precede formal EU accession, not wait for it.
A Strategic Inflection Point
The EU possesses the scale, resources, and political legitimacy of a global actor — but has long lacked the institutional coherence and strategic ambition to act as one. Embedding Ukraine within its security architecture, and redefining partnerships with like-minded states, offers a rare opportunity to change that. As Hlivco writes, the question is not whether Europe will be affected by the emerging international order — it is whether Europe will help to shape it.
The full paper is available at: