Presidential adviser's warning: Every Russian aggression in recent history has been more violent than the last

Around February 24, four years after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the European Union will launch a new package of sanctions against Moscow, which will be “very tough” and will focus on its ghost fleet, said Valentin Naumescu, European affairs adviser to President Nicușor Dan. He spoke about the real stake of punitive measures.

Contrary to public skepticism, sanctions against Russia are having a strong impact. Trade between the European Union and Russia has collapsed by almost three quarters compared to the level before the invasion, and the Russian economy is feeling the pressure, said Valentin Naumescu, at the CFA Forecast Dinner, an event of the economic and financial community in Romania.

“It was discussed about Russia's ghost fleet, which, according to the latest estimates, would have reached more than 1,200 ships. They transport and sell oil on the seas of the world. They are generally old ships, with a rather damaged technical condition, but, going beyond this aspect, it is certain that they, in fact, violate international sanctions. Well, the rate of their annihilation is 10 vessels per month,” said Naumescu.

He also explained that the effects of the sanctions are diluted by Russia's reorientation towards the Global South and China, but also by the ambiguity of some states that practice a “strategic ambidexterity”: cooperation with the West, but also the continuation of trade with Moscow, as in the case of Turkey.

This is not evidence of the failure of sanctions, the presidential adviser believes, but of the fact that they only work in a coherent geopolitical ecosystem.

Why Russia's War Economy Is Unsustainable

Russia switched to a war economy model focusing resources on military industry. It is a strategy that may produce artificial growth in the short term, but erodes the real economy and living standards. No economy can function indefinitely like this, the presidential adviser explained.

The signs of fatigue are already visible. And the ultimate stake is not just whether the war ends, but how it ends.

“What is the moral of this war?” Naumescu asked himself. “If the moral is that the aggressor has been rewarded and the victim has been punished, then we are only opening rather bleak perspectives for other aggressors to try the same type of exercise,” says Naumescu.

Because this is where the real historical lesson comes into play: if the aggressor is rewarded and the victim penalized, then the rules-based international order ceases to exist.

In this context, sanctions are not only an economic tool, but a moral and political one. They send a message about what is acceptable in a world that claims to abide by international law.

Romania, as a border state of this fragile order, does not have the luxury of ambiguity. Its strategic survival depends on maintaining the world based on rules – even imperfect ones – and avoiding a return to the brute logic of force.

Naumescu also spoke about the new world – which no longer works according to the old rules, but has not yet accepted new rules either. The international order after 1945 is visibly eroding, but its alternative remains unclear, fragmented and dangerous, the expert believes. We are not witnessing a smooth transition, but a historical interstice, an unstable space where old mechanisms still breathe and new powers test the limits of force.

The trap of the world where small states become currency

The international institutions that structured the world after World War II, the UN, NATO, the Bretton Woods architecture, still exist. But their ability to impose rules is increasingly contested. Classical multilateralism is circumvented by ad hoc formats, temporary alliances and forceful solutions.

Paradoxically, this fragmentation, the presidential adviser believes, coexists with an opposite process: the deepening of European integration. The European Union is not retreating, it is adapting. It is slowly building a defense policy, a military industrial capacity and a financial framework dedicated to security. It is not yet ready to guarantee the continent's security on its own—but it is getting ready.

The world is undoubtedly moving towards multipolarity. But the term is dangerously ambiguous. Without clear rules, multipolarism can become a mask for a return to spheres of influence, the very type of order that produced the tragedies of the 20th century.

This is the major risk: that the decline of the rules-based order leads not to a more just balance, but to a world where force decides and small states become bargaining chips.

The price of unresolved conflicts

Important is not only the end of the war, but also the way it will end, emphasizes the presidential adviser, who recalls the failure of the Minsk agreements. Although France and Germany believed that the agreements signed in 2014 and 2015, Minsk I and Minsk II, ended the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, they were wrong. In reality, it was nothing more than a freeze in the conflict, and seven years later Russia resumed the war on an even larger scale.

“We see how virtually every Russian aggression, from one stage to the next in recent history, has been progressively larger and more violent. That's what we want to make sure doesn't happen again. Putin's war against the West didn't start on February 24, 2022, it started in 2008.

In fact, a few months after the NATO summit in Bucharest, the Russo-Georgian war appeared, in August 2008. Then it seemed very small, it was like a kind of test of Western vigilance, the world was not very impressed, the Obama administration was very soft and gave some statements of condemnation, not much happened. 2014 came with the annexation of Crimea, they already increased the level, but again not much happened. And lo and behold, after another 8 years, in February 2022, the full-scale invasion took place. This means unresolved conflicts”, concluded Naumescu.