Switzerland's Federal Intelligence Service (NDB) has named Russia the biggest threat to security, stability, and peace in Europe, with ambitions extending well beyond Ukraine, Yevropeiska Pravda reports, citing the agency's annual report and the Swiss government's accompanying assessment.
The report states that Switzerland's security situation has deteriorated significantly in recent years, and again over the past year.
Hybrid campaign against the West
According to the Swiss government, Moscow is waging a broad and long-term confrontation with the West using hybrid means. Russia, Bern says, "seeks to restore its influence in Eastern Europe and as a global player, as well as to establish itself as a great power."
The NDB assesses that this confrontation is intensifying. Sabotage, influence operations, propaganda, and disinformation are listed among the instruments Moscow employs.
The report describes how Switzerland itself is exposed: "Switzerland is directly affected primarily by cyberattacks, prohibited intelligence activity, weapons proliferation efforts, as well as influence and disinformation activity." According to the document, Russia has developed a comprehensive strategy to circumvent the sanctions imposed on it by Western states.
The report also addresses Russia's revisionist intentions, its war economy, mass rearmament, and the threat it poses to Europe.
Doubts about US commitment
The Swiss government notes that since the administration of US President Donald Trump took office last year, it is no longer certain that the United States will continue to defend Europe's security and defense. Many European states are now seeking to strengthen the continent's defense capabilities, the assessment continues, but it remains unclear whether this will be sufficient for deterrence and self-defense.
Beyond Russia, the document points to the threat of terrorism, which the NDB says still emanates primarily from jihadists — particularly individuals or small cells capable of attacking civilians with simple means.
A wider European intelligence consensus
Bern's assessment lines up with a broader picture from European intelligence services. The Netherlands' Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) reports in its 2025 annual report, published on 21 April 2026, that Russia could generate enough combat power to initiate a regional conflict against NATO within a year of the end of hostilities in Ukraine, under circumstances most favorable to Moscow.
While Russia continues to fight in Ukraine, a conventional war against NATO is "virtually ruled out," the Dutch service writes. At the same time, "Russia is already taking concrete preparatory steps for a possible conflict with NATO," according to the MIVD.
The objective of such a conflict, the report says, would not be to defeat NATO militarily. The MIVD states that Moscow would aim to use limited territorial gains to pull NATO apart politically — "if necessary under the threat of nuclear weapons use."
Germany's BND and Bundeswehr have reported that Moscow is preparing for a potential "large-scale conventional war" with NATO by the end of the decade, with Defense Minister Boris Pistorius citing 2028–2029 as a possible timeline. Denmark's FE has warned that Russia could be ready for a regional war against the Baltic states within two years of Ukraine hostilities ending, and a large-scale European war within five. Estonia's Foreign Intelligence Service notes that no attack is intended in 2026 but flags long-term force reconstitution, mass drone integration, and expanded troop deployments along NATO's eastern flank. The commander of the Estonian Armed Forces, Andrus Merilo, has named 2027 as the nearest horizon at which Russia could be ready for new aggression after a potential end to the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Why the Kremlin sees the war as existential
The MIVD frames the war in Ukraine as part of a long-standing Russian effort to fundamentally reshape Europe's security architecture and the international legal order. According to the service, the war has an existential character for the Russian regime: the report states it is not only about territory, but above all about Russia's position in the world and the future of the Russian nation, culture, and what the MIVD calls "appropriated traditional values."
Internal and external security of the Russian state are described by the MIVD as inseparable, with the liberal-democratic value system presented by Moscow as a threat to internal stability and to the leadership's grip on power
