The war between Russia and Ukraine has dramatically reconfigured the security environment of Eastern Europe, creating anxieties not seen since the Cold War. States bordering Ukraine, particularly Poland and Estonia, increasingly interpret the conflict as an existential threat indicative of a broader, aggressive Russian revisionist strategy due to their historical experiences and geographical proximity. Against the backdrop of this evolving regional security environment, this study analyses how the war has redefined perceptions of threat and insecurity among the political elites of these two states by examining their parliamentary discourse. Legislative speeches serve as a key indicator where national security perceptions are not only articulated but also constructed and legitimised. Theoretically, the paper engages with the national security literature on threat perception and the politicisation of security, arguing that state insecurity refers to both material conditions as well as discursive outcomes shaped by elite narratives. Regarding the methodological approach, it applies supervised machine learning (SML) techniques to a corpus of parliamentary debates from the Polish Sejm and the Estonian Riigikogu (2022-2025). A labelled dataset of speech segments will be created, coding for explicit and implicit markers of expressions of insecurity, threat perception, sovereignty, securitization rhetoric directed at Russia, and escalation anxiety in legislative speeches. This training data will then be used to develop classification models to accurately detect and score the ‘insecurity quotient’ of individual speeches, based on already generated markers. The computational analysis moves beyond individual statements by identifying longitudinal trends and comparative differences between the two parliaments, explaining how insecurity is discursively constructed and politically mobilised. Ultimately, the choice of machine learning-based analysis of political speech contributes to enriching the computational methodological approaches by providing empirical insight into how war reshapes political imaginaries beyond its immediate geographical boundaries.

The escalation of Russia’s revisionist policies towards the East European “post-Soviet space” in the form of its all-out attack on Ukraine in February 2022 went far beyond that ‘local’ conflict in that it – probably – destroyed any hopes left in European societies for the possible preservation of the “New Europe” order laid down in the 1990 Charter of Paris, at the end of the Cold War. While the International Relations and classical security studies approach to this development tends to be fairly straightforward discussing the foreign and security policy measures to be taken by Europe and the West in general for their self-protection, and potentially military defence, its appears equally important to look at the potential – or already perceptible – ramifications of this strategic upheaval for European societies ‘on the inside’. The “peace dividend”, not only in its financial dimension but as an atmospheric change, had been conducive to the remarkable qualitative and quantitative development of European integration after 1990 and to a general assumption that Kant’s “Eternal Peace” had finally arrived, at least on this continent. This had gone hand in hand with the EU’s civilian power concept fuelling the vision of becoming a benevolent global player ‘exporting’ peace and democracy.

Regarding CSDP, this means not simply higher spending for arms procurement, hybrid warfare and drone wars but a new quality of engaging with physical threat unknown to the pacified, ‘war-weaned’ nations of (Western) Europe. This is even more so for their societies than for their armies. Put differently, civil-military relations are likely to undergo considerable change that might have deep effects on the very notion of polity and democracy.

In this respect, significant differences are visible between the eastern and western members of the European Union. For this mental and behavioural variety, a key factor are historical memories in Central and Eastern Europe of the Communist era, marked by Soviet domination as well as older periods of Russian imperialism whose major legacy today is the denial of sovereignty and independence to nations bordering Russia, such as Finland, the Baltic states and Poland. For these nations, the prospect of possibly resorting to force for defence is less alien than for most West Europeans. Will the latter adapt to the Eastern flank ‘hard’ model, or can they somehow preserve the cherished ‘soft EU’ under a hard shell that they inevitably will need to build?

This article analyses the impact of the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) program on the security architecture of the European Union’s Eastern Flank, with a specific focus on Romania’s strategic role. Adopted in May 2025, SAFE is a €150 billion financial instrument designed to strengthen the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) and reduce fragmentation through joint procurement. The main objective of the paper is to assess how the synergy between the strategic pillars of Romania’s SAFE plan and security partnerships with the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine can neutralize the vulnerabilities of the defence sector in the region. In this regard, the article answers the following research question: to what extent can Romania’s national investment plan serve as a model of integration for partner states, facilitating the overcoming of their vulnerabilities to Russian hybrid threats?

The paper highlights Romania’s allocation of €16.68 billion, structured around three pillars: national defence, dual infrastructure, and civil protection. The study explores Romania’s role as a regional hub facilitating joint projects with Ukraine and Moldova in critical areas such as air defence (SHORAD/VSHORAD) and cybersecurity. It also analyses the ‘all-hazard’ approach of the civil protection pillar, which provides a model of resilience through the dual use of equipment (Black Hawk, CBRN systems).

The conclusions indicate that the success of SAFE depends on transforming allocations into operational capabilities by 2030 and on Romania’s ability to act as a bridge for the integration of partner defence industries into the European ecosystem. The article concludes with a set of strategic recommendations for strengthening deterrence against threats in the Black Sea region.