Putin takes unilateral power to deploy troops

When the Soviet Union sent tanks into Czechoslovakia in 1968, it invoked "fraternal assistance" to justify 200,000 uninvited troops. The doctrine needed no legal framework, only raw power and a pliant Warsaw Pact. Putin's Russia operates differently. On May 25, he signed a law amending two federal statutes to grant himself unilateral authority to deploy armed forces abroad whenever Russian citizens face "arrest, detention, or criminal prosecution" by courts Moscow does not recognize. The Duma (lower house of parliament) passed it 381-0. The Federation Council (upper house) approved unanimously (Kyiv Independent, Meduza). The law entered force within days.

This completes a mechanism Russia has tested three times before, in Georgia (2008), Crimea (2014), and eastern Ukraine (2022). Moscow distributes passports first, claims persecution second, intervenes third.

The Passport-to-Intervention Pipeline

The law's operational logic depends on a parallel tool: mass distribution of Russian citizenship to populations Moscow intends to "protect." Nine days before signing the military law, Putin signed a separate decree waiving all standard citizenship requirements for residents of Transnistria, Moldova's Russian-backed separatist territory. No residency, no language exam, no history test (Meduza). The Lansing Institute assessed this as "a coherent hybrid-warfare mechanism" that "directly complements" the deployment law (Lansing Institute).

Under prior Russian law, each overseas deployment required the Federation Council's approval. Putin circumvented this informally in Crimea but still formally observed it. The new law removes that requirement entirely for "citizen protection" operations, making deployment a fully presidential decision (United24 Media).

The law's language targets courts "in which Russia does not participate." That precisely describes both the International Criminal Court and the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression. Thirty-four Council of Europe states signed that tribunal into existence in Chișinău on May 15, ten days before Putin signed the military law (Euronews).

Two Europes, Two Risk Assessments

European capitals are responding with completely different levels of alarm. Estonia summoned Russia's chargé d'affaires on May 21, expelled a military reservist, and restricted diplomat movement (Estonian MFA). It is also legislating a ban on property purchases by Russian nationals (ERR). Finland announced it will reject non-biometric Russian passports from June 1 and committed to NATO's 5% GDP defense spending target (Yle). The European Parliament declared that "threatening the Baltic states means threatening the entire European Union" (European Parliament).

Hungary's new Tisza government under Péter Magyar represents the sharpest break. After expelling SVR officer Artur Szuskov on May 4, a move the Orbán government had blocked, Budapest signalled readiness to support EU sanctions on figures Orbán had personally shielded, including Patriarch Kirill (Euronews Hungary). Russia lost both its EU veto proxy and its intelligence infrastructure in Budapest at the same time.

Slovakia stands alone. Robert Fico's government issued no statement on the law, while restoring Russian diplomatic and military attaché presence that predecessors had expelled (Denník N). The European Parliament responded with a 347-165 vote threatening to activate the conditionality mechanism (the EU's tool for freezing funds to governments that undermine the rule of law), potentially putting billions at risk (Aktuality.sk).

The NATO Gap

Czech President Petr Pavel articulated the structural problem most clearly: Russia has "developed a style of behavior that almost reaches the threshold for Article 5, but always stays slightly below" (Novinky.cz). A "citizen protection" operation, small, deniable, framed as humanitarian, exploits precisely that ambiguity. NATO's 2016 Warsaw Summit doctrine allows hybrid attacks to trigger collective defense (Article 5), but the Alliance has treated even physical airspace violations as consultation events (Article 4) rather than collective defense triggers.

No NATO institution has produced a specific counter to this pipeline. The Commission is preparing a 21st sanctions package. NATO's Eastern Sentry integrates air defenses along the eastern flank. But the question that matters most remains formally unanswered: at what point does distributing passports to a foreign population become preparation for aggression? With roughly 78,000 Russian citizens in Estonia and 40,000 in Latvia (Kyiv Independent), the question is anything but theoretical.

Russia passed these laws in public, over twelve weeks, without a single opposing vote. Europe's response remains under construction.