This article applies Buzan and Wæver’s Regional Security Complex (RSC) Theory to the post-2022 transformation of European security. It argues that Russia’s aggression and full-scale invasion sought to eliminate Ukraine’s role as an “insulator state”, fusing the formerly distinct EU-centred and post-Soviet RSCs into a single interdependent super-complex. Its future remains an open securitisation contest: so that averting Russian hegemony depends on sustained Ukraine-EU balancing, expedited Ukrainian EU integration and active transatlantic engagement.
Examining power dynamics on the wider European continent through the prism of the RSC theory reveals that the European regional security complex is currently undergoing a generational shift.
