Decoding: On the War in Ukraine

On the War in Ukraine This piece follows directly from the analysis Admiral Girard has been developing since the very start of the conflict, and which he was already describing in 2023 as the “emancipation of Ukrainian strategy”: the idea that, over time, Kyiv could only seek to loosen the constraints imposed on it by its Western backers. This paper confirms that this movement has indeed continued — the crossing of the initial red lines, the development of a domestic missile industry, deep strikes into Russian territory — without triggering the nuclear escalation that was originally feared. What is changing, however, is the second term of the equation he had already set out in late 2022: the West’s “indirect strategy.” It has not disappeared, but its engine has shifted — from a deficit of political will to a deficit of means, European ones above all, as Washington withdraws from the file. The admiral thus points to a shift rather than a reversal: the Europeans are no longer merely indirect supporters by choice, but increasingly by necessity, for lack of a defence industry equal to the American shortfall in Patriot missiles. The most serious point he raises — and one he frames, with his usual caution, as questions rather than statements — concerns Russia’s hybrid war aimed directly at European countries: electoral interference, funding of parties such as the AfD, attacks already recorded. He does not settle the question of the response required (NATO’s role, European coordination), but poses it as the most urgent and least addressed issue of the moment — a strategic void that echoes, by another path, the institutional voids the international press identifies elsewhere, on other theatres.