Head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service calls risk of large-scale conflict across Eurasia ‘quite real’
Sergey Naryshkin, head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), said the risk of a large-scale conflict spreading across Eurasia is “quite real.” “This is cause for the most serious concern,” he said. (Quotes here and below are according to the Russian state news agency TASS.)
Naryshkin made the remarks at the 22nd meeting of the Conference of Heads of Security Agencies and Intelligence Services of CIS Countries. “According to our information, European leaders believe in controlled escalation, a brinkmanship strategy developed by Western intelligence services back during the Cold War,” he said.
“The propaganda mechanisms launched by politicians create such a rigid picture of the world that the politicians themselves become its hostages. At some point, the overall tension reaches a level at which any event, even a minor one, can bring down the entire system,” he said. “Diplomacy no longer works in this situation, and the powers literally tumble into total war.”
Naryshkin noted that the European Union’s defense strategy, adopted in 2025, calls for readiness for a large-scale armed conflict by 2030 and names Russia as the main threat.
European society isn’t ready for a war with Russia, but it is “too coddled and depraved,” Naryshkin said. Politicians and corporations, he argued, “are using the myth of a threat from the East to drive a sharp increase in military spending, shift industry onto a military footing, and modernize the army, roads, and port infrastructure.”
Naryshkin said the security agencies and intelligence services of CIS countries must strengthen their collective security system “without waiting for the spiral of escalation in Eurasia to wind to its limit.”
History offers examples of “a successful way out of the escalation spiral,” he said, pointing to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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