When four governments changed in quick succession between March and May — in Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia, all members of both the European Union and NATO — the reflex in much commentary was to look for great-power intervention.
That reflex is worth testing against reality. As Gunilla Herolf argues in her recent analysis for the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences, the immediate causes were overwhelmingly domestic: entrenched corruption, weak public finances, the emigration of the young and educated, and party systems that sometimes produce short-lived coalitions.
But two things can be true at once. The changes were homegrown, and they created openings that external actors can try to exploit.
This matters because threat perceptions are increasing. Cable sabotage, cyber intrusions, GPS jamming and drone incursions into NATO airspace are real risks. But if one assumes Moscow’s reach is close to unlimited, the response may send the wrong signals.
Russia: amplification, not authorship
Moscow has intervened decisively in Europe before — Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 — each time at long-term strategic cost. The 2022 invasion did not divide Europe; it brought Sweden and Finland into NATO and catalyzed defence spending on a scale not seen since the Cold War. Amplification is not Moscow’s only instrument, but it is the one that has survived the lessons of instruments that failed.
Bulgaria is the clearest current case. Rumen Radev resigned the presidency in January, formed Progressive Bulgaria and, after the party won about 44 percent of the vote on an anti-corruption platform, took office as prime minister in May. He has moved Bulgaria closer to Moscow. He favors talks with Russia over continued military support for Ukraine, stresses Orthodox ties, and in July withdrew Bulgaria from the Coalition of the Willing. In June, his government ended further transfers of weapons from Bulgarian army stocks to Kyiv; the thirteen aid packages had already been delivered since 2022. Commercial exports of Soviet-standard ammunition and other equipment have continued. Earlier, Sofia blocked EU sanctions against Patriarch Kirill and also objected to the listing of Vagit Alekperov, the former Lukoil president.
None of this required Russian authorship. It required an electorate broadly positive towards the EU but carrying a strong historical sense of closeness to Russia — and a leader willing to speak to both sentiments at once. Moscow’s leverage has long run through the church, language and memories of proximity predating the Cold War. Disinformation and energy dependence widen that seam. The Lukoil Neftohim Burgas refinery remains strategically important, although Bulgaria placed Lukoil’s local entities under external administration in late 2025 and the assets are now subject to a contested sale process.
The limitations matter as well. Radev told NATO’s Secretary General in late May that Bulgaria had met the two-percent defence-spending target and was committed to a path towards five percent. He also supports Ukrainian and Moldovan EU membership. A leader balancing a westward strategic orientation against a historical tilt eastward is not thereby an agent of Moscow.
A single member state can slow the Union’s collective decisions, as the Kirill episode showed. Nor should the effect of such choices be dismissed: withdrawal from the Coalition of the Willing and the end of further transfers from army stocks are material shifts. The distinction is that Moscow did not create the domestic political conditions that made them possible.
The United States: influence by subtraction
American leverage runs in the opposite direction. Where Russia amplifies what is already present, the United States increasingly influences the region by what it withdraws.
Consider Romania, the strategic pivot of the picture. NATO reinforced its posture there after 2022: a French-led forward land force, British-led air policing, the Deveselu missile-defence site, and the expansion of Mihail Kogălniceanu air base. The project is designed eventually to accommodate about 10,000 troops and support personnel, although the full build-out extends beyond 2030. Yet Washington has reduced its presence to roughly 900–1,000 personnel, down from about 1,700. The numbers are modest in the wider NATO context, but the signal is not.
It comes as Romania is governed by an interim administration, faces pressure to meet EU reform commitments, and confronts polling in which the nationalist AUR leads with support in the mid-30s. There is a contradiction in the signal. Deveselu is among the most concrete links between Romanian and American security, while Kogălniceanu is being built up, not down. Expanding the infrastructure while thinning the personnel leaves Europeans holding a posture designed around American presence.
Whether by intent or drift, the Black Sea is being Europeanised by default — at precisely the moment the region is least helped by uncertainty. The US drawdown is best read as a structural reprioritization
towards the Indo-Pacific: a planning assumption, not something Europe can talk Washington out of by behaving well.
What remains a genuine lever is the doubt around American commitments. Allies that calibrate their behavior in anticipation of Washington’s mood are influenced not by presence but by uncertainty about it. Slovenia’s Janez Janša, for example, has made a point of linking higher defence spending to Slovenia’s credibility in NATO and with the United States, while also remaining a strong supporter of Ukraine.
The toolkit is not only subtractive. Where Washington finds candidates whose profile suits its purposes, American attention can lift them, much as Russian attention can lift a Radev. Yet the mechanism is confined neither to small states nor to Moscow, and it works only where domestic conditions permit it. External support cannot compensate for a domestic political base that has collapsed, as Orbán’s defeat in Hungary demonstrated.
What voters are actually voting on
In each of the four countries, voters were not primarily thinking about international relations. They were thinking about corruption, weak public finances, the emigration of young and educated citizens, and coalitions too short-lived to deliver on any of it.
Two consequences follow. First, outside powers can work only with the political material voters give them. Take away the corruption grievance and Radev has no wave to ride; an American-friendly candidate in Bucharest can be lifted only if voters are already looking for that profile.
Second, domestic drivers act both as a filter and as an opening. Hungary lifted its veto in early June, allowing the EU to open the first accession cluster with Ukraine and Moldova on 15 June. The move followed an agreement on the rights of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, not a wholesale change of heart about Russia. Domestic political arithmetic made the veto costlier than the concession.
What Moscow has probably learned
From Moscow’s chair, recent years illustrate how difficult it is to keep neighboring countries under control. Belarus required a degree of dependence Russia cannot readily reproduce elsewhere; Moldova has continued moving towards Brussels despite every available instrument.
The most telling signal came from a partner rather than an adversary. On 25 July, meeting Vladimir Putin at the Russia–Kazakhstan Forum in Omsk, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev urged that the war be frozen and that negotiations resume on the basis of an “Istanbul 2.0” framework backed by major-power
guarantees. He noted that young people were dying. The Kremlin’s response, through its spokesman, was that a freeze was impossible because Russia had to achieve its objectives.
The implication cuts two ways. A Kremlin that has understood the risk of strategic backfire has reason to avoid the action that would weld Europe together, as 2022 did. The conclusion for Europe is not to relax, but to make deterrence visible enough that the calculation on the other side is unambiguous even under stress.
What follows for Europe
If the government changes of 2026 were made at home, so too is the resilience that can close the openings they created. That means the unglamorous agenda: rule-of-law reform that removes the grievances Russia can amplify; measures to address emigration; energy and information diversification; and an enlargement process credible enough that candidates — and wavering members — see more to gain inside a rules-based political system.
Two qualifications matter. Deterrence should be built for the case in which Russia miscalculates, not only for the case in which it calibrates well. Europe must plan for American support that is thinner than hoped, while continuing to invest in a transatlantic bargain that can still be shaped.
Both powers have real leverage in Eastern Europe. But it is largely the leverage of exploiting gaps others leave open, not of writing the region’s politics. The surest way to reduce what outside powers can do is to give them less to work with — and to make the cost of forcing the issue plainly higher than the prize.
Lars-Erik Lundin is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. This analysis draws on Gunilla Herolf’s study of the Bulgarian, Romanian and Slovenian government changes and accompanies a podcast conversation between the author and Dr Herolf on www.kkrva.se.
Lars-Erik Lundin