Now in his 30s, Rasmus is a high-functioning opioid addict. He has a steady income, dresses well, and speaks with authority. There is little about him that suggests he has been using hard drugs for more than half his life. But even as a preteen, Rasmus was never like the other kids his age. Fascinated by the physiological effects and molecular structures of various psychoactive compounds, he soon started experimenting with everything from marijuana to MDMA and amphetamines. By age 16, his exploration had driven him to severe anxiety and depression that left him feeling like a shell of his former self.

To cope, he turned to opioids — first to painkillers like tramadol, but eventually to fentanyl. “Before it’s like you’re naked, you’re in the middle of snow, you’re freezing,” Rasmus tells me in a commercial parking lot a stone’s throw from the deep blue waters of the Baltic Sea, recounting his first experience with the drug when he was around 19. “Then some mysterious stranger appears from the woods and invites you with him, and in about 50 meters a bright wooden cottage appears, you go inside, and he offers you a warm cup of tea. I felt like a human again.”

But those days are now little more than a distant memory. Fentanyl and its analogs have been largely absent from the Estonian market for years, after the country’s police cracked down on the Russia-connected organized criminal networks distributing them in 2017. Since then, the drug has been replaced by something even more sinister. In 2019, traces of a new class of synthetic opioids started showing up in Estonia’s drug supply. These can be tens of times more potent than fentanyl — and much more deadly. But it wasn’t until 2022 that these new designer drugs, called nitazenes, began to truly wreak havoc on Estonian society.

“Fentanyl is bad but nowhere near ’zenes in how addictive it is and how hard it grabs your opioid receptors,” Rasmus tells me, his eyes concealed behind dark glasses despite the shade. “It’s basically the crack of opioids.”

Nitazenes have wreaked havoc elsewhere. Deaths have been reported across the US, the EU, and the UK. In Britain alone, the drugs have been linked to the deaths of over 400 people between June 2023 and January this year, even as thousands more opioid deaths may have been been missed from official figures. Already, nitazenes are being hailed as the harbingers of the next European opioid crisis. In the midst of this gathering storm, Estonia stands out as its unexpected epicenter. Since they arrived on Europe’s doorstep, 96% of nitazene seizures have taken place in the Baltic states, and between 2022 and 2024, Estonia likely had the highest nitazene use rate on the continent. And while the rest of Europe was only just starting to take nitazenes seriously, by 2023, the drugs had already been implicated in 56 drug deaths in Estonia, comprising nearly half of all overdose deaths in the country, pushing it into the EU’s top spot for drug-induced mortalities per million people.

Estonia’s experience offers many lessons for the rest of Europe. But the story of nitazenes and opioids more broadly in Estonia is about far more than just law enforcement crackdowns, and underscores that the epidemic is ultimately not a problem created by the mere existence of a steady drug supply, but rather one borne out of a persistent socially-driven demand for the drugs. Woven into Estonia’s decades-long struggle with opioids, and hidden behind its reputation as a technologically advanced, highly developed Baltic economy, lies a history of unequal post-Soviet economic growth, the impact of social marginalization, and the difficulties that state authorities and harm reduction workers alike have faced in combating a crisis that often dwarfs the resources their small country has at its disposal. Most worryingly, though, Estonia illustrates how once a robust base of addicts establishes itself within a society, not even rapid economic growth can uproot it — and that even if nitazenes can be eliminated, something worse will emerge soon enough to replace them.

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“Somehow despite the fact that we had 17 years of experience with fentanyls, we still struggled with nitazenes,” says Katri Abel-Ollo, a researcher at the Estonian National Institute for Health Development who studies nitazene use patterns and overdose deaths. “So I can imagine that countries that don’t have experience with fentanyls, it could be quite shocking to them if nitazenes appear out of the blue.”

In 2002, Estonia became one of the first European countries to face a fentanyl crisis, after heroin smuggling routes were disrupted following the American invasion of Afghanistan. To compensate, local dealers, in cahoots with Russian gangsters, sourced fentanyls from nearby St Petersburg, exploiting connections between the Estonian criminal underground and the country’s former imperial rulers that had endured after the fall of the USSR. Soon enough, Tallinn became the “fentanyl capital” of Europe, leading to a 15-year battle that finally ended when Estonian police put the main players driving the drug trade behind bars, effectively shutting off the country’s fentanyl spigot.

“For five years we had a very good spell for a while,” Rait Pikaro, the head of the crime bureau of the Estonian Police North Prefecture tells me. “We were a bit naïve thinking that for five years… the market was, so to say, dead, but in that sense we were mistaken.”

Though fentanyl itself became much harder to find, Rasmus explains, fentanyl analogs continued to float around in the Estonian drug world, while harm reduction specialists I speak to suggest that users and dealers also turned to home-brewed opioid varieties to get by. When nitazenes emerged to fill the void, they arrived not from Russia, but from China, entering Estonia through Latvia. And in a sign of the changing drug landscape, this time there was no centralized dealer network, forcing police to play a game of cat-and-mouse with users and dealers across a fragmented market, both in Tallinn and across the eastern Estonian hinterland where opioids are most prevalent.

A far cry from fentanyl they may be, but nitazenes are ruthlessly effective, providing a powerful remedy for the withdrawal symptoms that are many addicts’ worst fear. “Potency does not equate to euphoria,” Rasmus tells me, recounting how nitazenes don’t even give him 1% of the same high he once got from fentanyl, despite how strong they can be. “Metonitazene [one of the earlier nitazenes to hit the Estonian market] for example was really good and pleasurable,” he says, “but some are just like you’re shooting up water.”

According to Abel-Ollo, nitazenes have a sharper come-up, but often a shorter duration — something that can be frustrating for users like Rasmus. “You inject it, it lasts maybe a minute, some last a few seconds, some last an hour, at best,” he says, describing some of the more recent nitazenes on the market. That was clear enough just looking at him: he was visibly more anxious during the latter part of our conversation as he felt his withdrawal symptoms set in, glancing around, breathing more shallowly, and becoming less focused in his answers.

To make matters worse for addicts, nitazenes are often so potent that they don’t respond like other opioids to naloxone, a medication that counteracts an opioid overdose, requiring several doses to work — something that contributes greatly to nitazenes’ lethality. For these and other reasons, Artur Kamnerov, a former investigator who heads the drug and organized crime bureau of the North Prefecture police department, predicts that if nitazenes become as prevalent elsewhere as they have in Estonia, countries can expect horrifyingly similar consequences. “If nitazene starts taking over the market,” he says with a resigned look in his eye and a heaviness in his voice, “there’s no stopping the overdose death rates.”

To explain what he means, on an unseasonably dreary and rainy summer morning, Kamnerov takes out his phone and opens up a Russian-language group on Telegram. Boasting 4,000 members, users can order Xanax, tramadol, and other painkillers. Another group has user-friendly menus where people could buy MDMA or amphetamines using cryptocurrencies. “This is the reason why no one really needs to go to the dark web anymore,” Kamnerov says. “It’s a hassle.”

Such ease of access is hardly limited to Estonia, of course. Narcotics, including nitazene class opioids, are sold this way to users and dealers alike in the UK and beyond. But what this means is that, at least in Estonia, easily accessible nitazenes shipped directly from overseas have bifurcated the opioid user base in the country, with two distinct cultures emerging. The older, more conservative community continues to rely on the more traditional street-based distribution networks, where a more hardcore culture of injection composed mainly of Russian-speakers reigns supreme. For their part, younger users source their drugs from online vendors and are predisposed to the less intimidating, more accessible pill forms of the drug.

For the moment, it is the former, Russian-speaking group that still dominates Estonia’s opioid landscape, and which has long formed the backbone of the country’s sky-high demand for these drugs. This community has its roots in the country’s decades-long occupation by the USSR, when Russian immigrants to the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic moved to Tallinn, Narva, and towns in Estonia’s northeast. These new settlers initially came to work in reconstruction after the Second World War, but additional waves later arrived when new housing projects like the Lasnamäe district were erected by Soviet authorities in Tallinn in the Seventies and Eighties. Russians were often given preferential treatment in housing allocation, crowding Estonians out of these much-coveted new apartments: once seen as beacons of Estonia’s bright socialist future.

Today, Russian speakers make up about 21% of Estonia’s population, but in stark contrast to their place at the top of the social hierarchy during the Soviet years, they emerged from the USSR’s collapse as an economically disadvantaged underclass. Great strides have been made to integrate Russian speakers into mainstream Estonian society, and Russian speakers now have access to the same social benefits as ethnic Estonians — but the baggage of years of socioeconomic hardship weighs the community down, and in many respects, their marginalization persists. Russian speakers continue to make up 60% of prison inmates in the country, as well as nearly two thirds of homeless people in Tallinn. And with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has pummelled Russian speakers in Estonia with political disinformation: resonating with many, but further widening the gap with the Estonian majority.

That’s clear enough in Lasnamäe today. A world away from that long-dead communist ideal — let alone the charming and cosmopolitan center of Tallinn — these suburbs are filled with monotone housing blocks, stretching out toward the horizon. The wide, sparse, avenues that separate them from each other give the area a liminal feel, a place that is neither in the past nor fully in the present. Their walls are adorned with Cyrillic graffiti: while many parts of Estonia have bilingual Estonian and Russian signs, here Russian predominates.

Fundamentally, Lasnamäe’s plight can be understood as a function of the end of communism. The collapse of the Soviet system brought with it major economic shocks, leading to a sharp decrease in Estonia’s GDP that affected everyone. In 1994, the country’s life expectancy dipped below that of Ukraine and Moldova.

By the following year, however, the economy started growing again, albeit unevenly, leaving many Russian speakers, most of whom voted against Estonia’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, stuck in the post-collapse era, reeling from their loss of status — not forever, but long enough for patterns of social stratification and self-sabotaging nihilism to burrow deep.

“That time, in the Nineties, was a time of gangsterism, very anxious times,” says Nikolai, a former addict and current harm reduction worker at MTÜ Convictus, an NGO working with drug users. Arms covered in tattoos and with a tired look in his eyes, he asks me not to use his last name: he has a long history with drugs and has spent time in prison. “When these drugs appeared, it was a coping strategy,” Nikolai explains. “It was better than drinking alcohol, and many Russian-speaking people followed this and started to use drugs. It was fashionable.”

Back in the fentanyl days, places like Lasnamäe, and Estonia’s Russian-speaking society in general, held the keys to the country’s opioid market. Rasmus, who is ethnically Estonian, learned Russian explicitly to purchase opioids from local dealers. “In the poorer regions of Tallinn, like Lasnamäe, Kopli, and so on, you could say that in every [housing project] there was a dealer,” he explains, adding that fentanyl was easy to get, but only if you spoke Russian.

Soon enough, even though he once told himself he would never shoot up, Rasmus was injected by a dealer not long after he got hooked on the drug. His first such experience was overwhelming, and he overdosed as soon as the fentanyl entered his body — but in doing so, he finalized his initiation into the hardcore, Russian-led Estonian drug culture that has driven the country’s opioid epidemic for so long.

Indeed, at MTÜ Convictus’s base in downtown Tallinn, while most of the clientele are still Russian speakers, more and more ethnic Estonians are showing up as well, pointing to the expanding reach of the crisis’s long tentacles. Regardless of linguistic or ethnic background, Convictus provides users with a place to exchange used needles for clean ones, get food, obtain naloxone, meet with social workers, or even just drink some warm tea. Yulia Rõbalko, another harm reduction worker at the center, exchanges biscuits for used needles.

Harm reduction, she says, has two sides: one for the person, and one for the rest of society. “It works like a cycle,” Yulia Rõbalko. “You help him, he doesn’t spread disease with used needles, and so on. Normal people don’t see that.”

This blindness is part of the reason why harm reduction NGOs like MTÜ Convictus, which receive public funds from the Estonian state, are increasingly at risk of budget cuts, as peer-led services are being outsourced to organizations that don’t have as strong a connection to the community. If you ask Mart Kalvet, an activist with LUNEST, a drug policy group, building robust, grassroots support networks for drug users is only the first step in creating a long-term solution to the cycle of alienation, addiction, and suffering that has perpetuated the opioid crisis in Estonia for over a quarter century.

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To secure real change within a context where a user base has already become entrenched, the state must implement a regulated, safe supply of drugs all while giving users access to the resources they need to live their lives as healthily as possible. That means not only providing sustainably funded rehab services, but also getting to the root of the problem and investing in places like Lasnamäe as real, evolving parts of country, rather than mere relics of its Soviet past. It also means treating the opioid epidemic like the public health problem it surely is, rather than an exclusively criminal one. “The harder you come down on the people who use drugs and sell drugs, the more problematic drugs appear on the street,” Kalvet says. “It’s an iron law.”

Already, Kalvet’s prophecy appears to be coming true. According to Abel-Ollo, there have been no new drug death cases in the country since May, indicating to her that there may be fewer nitazenes on the market. But if you ask Rasmus, who keeps a close eye on reports about drug arrests and court cases, even newer synthetic opioids, called brorphines, are already coming from China to replace them. Estonia’s game of whack-a-mole with opioids, it seems, will continue.

“This is where the somewhat dark-natured Scandinavian culture collides with the dark-natured, but in another way, Eastern Europe and Slavic culture,” Kalvet suggests, musing about the reasons for Estonia’s long dance with opioids. “We are affected by both, and not in a good way. It may be a cultural yearning for some warmth that our history has not provided us with.” From roaming Swedish armies in the 17th century, to Nazi and Soviet occupation in the 20th century, it’s easy to see what he means.

Yet whatever impact Estonia’s cultural proclivities may have on its drug appetite, the implications of its battle with nitazenes for larger and even more socially divided countries across the West are enormous. As markets in the UK, the US, Europe, and beyond continue to experiment with nitazenes as a more lucrative replacement for fentanyl and heroin, all signs suggest that long-time users will embrace these new drugs, creating a festering social wound that will persist so long as it has lives left to destroy. More ominously still, as Estonia’s case vividly illustrates, alienated segments of society — of which the West has plenty — can act as a fertile crucible for an opioid epidemic to not only take hold, but also spread. And in a world where thoughtful, nuanced drug policy reform is hardly on any government’s radar, the outlook is truly bleak.

After years of living at the mercy of his addiction, Rasmus tried to get help. On two occasions, he checked into the only long-term detox clinic in Tallinn that uses substitute therapy. But now, government funding cuts have quadrupled the cost of treatment there, leaving users like him with nowhere to turn. When I asked him how he sees his future in a follow-up conversation on Signal, his response was stark: “Most likely dead.”

The original intel estimate of 127,000 troops was grossly inadequate, and when it was raised to 150,000 including forces already within the Russian-held parts of eastern Ukraine, it was still much too low for a coup de main that would start and end the war in one go — the only kind of war that Russia can fight without quickly incurring dangerous levels of economic damage.

Of course, reckless gamblers are undeterred by risks, but Putin’s record until a week ago was that of a very patient hunter, who waits until the target walks into his sights, only then pressing the trigger for a sure hit. That is how he gained Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia in 2008 after inter-ethnic fighting, and broken cease-fires since 1994. Both are small but significant territories — Abkhazia because it is the southernmost, most “Mediterranean” of all Russian-controlled territories, with oranges and lemons as well as a nominally independent government, and South Ossetia because it is an Orthodox enclave in the mostly Muslim Caucasus.

And that is also how Putin won his biggest prize so far, Crimea, detaching its several pieces from Ukraine in the turmoil following the Maidan uprising that sent President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing from Kyiv on 21 February 2014: a few thousand Russian operatives with some locals took over the territory of  Ukraine’s Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the autonomous city of Sevastopol, and a coastal strip in the Kherson mainland and all without firing a shot: a quickly concocted Republic of Crimea then “voted” to join the Russian Federation along with the city of Sevastopol.

To do the same thing across the 1500 kilometre width of Ukraine, it would take not less than half a million well-trained soldiers. They would need to move quickly overland to seize the cities nearest to the border such as Kharkov less than twenty miles away, or by large-airlift to reach distant Lviv, or helicoptered to simultaneously seize the regional capitals, from Lviv in the west to Kharkiv in the north-east, to Odessa in the south west, and Zaporizhia in the center-east, in addition to Kyiv, itself a metropolis of almost three million inhabitants. And yes, it all presumed only token resistance by such Ukrainian soldiers as would fight at all.

The once patient hunter turned reckless gambler persuaded himself of that, and of much more: that Ukraine’s Jewish ex-comedian turned President Zelensky would promptly flee, that his government would then collapse as ministers rushed off to escape arrest, that the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Air Defence, long starved of funds in any case would dissolve, so that Russian forces would advance unopposed to quickly seize every city, with Kyiv’s population obediently awaiting Russian rule. Then former president Yanukovych could be brought back to form a new government for the TV cameras, whose task would be to vote immediately to re-join the Russian Federation, thus ending the fighting in glorious victory for Putin and his empire.

None of the above was wildly improbable — but it hardly takes much in the way of prudence to eschew war planning that consists of stringing together best-case scenarios, which is exactly what Putin chose to do, ignoring his own Intelligence chief and veteran Kremlin official Sergey Naryshkin. That much is proven by a truly extraordinary document: the video of Putin’s eve-of-war meeting with his ministers and advisors, ostensibly on the annexation of the self-proclaimed independent Donbas republics, but actually on the imminent invasion.

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We see a carefully staged display of imperial authority that has Putin sitting high up at his desk while the advisers sit in chairs below him, till each one in turn goes to stand in front of a microphone to endorse what Putin has just said. But the script fell apart when it was Naryshkin’s turn to speak. He clearly said that there should be “talks” to give the Western side a “chance”, pronouncing that French word in the French way, as Russians do. Visibly surprised, visibly angered, Putin demands an answer “yes or no” on the annexation itself, sidestepping Naryshkin’s real point: to rely on talks, not tanks in dealing with Ukraine.

The build-up to the war went well for Putin. He had the German government firmly in his camp — to the improbable extent that it went far out of its way to prevent Estonia from donating old Soviet 122mm howitzers to Ukraine, on the flimsy ground that they had briefly been in German possession when the West German army inherited East Germany’s military equipment. Nor would the German government agree to suspend the certification of the giant new Nordstream 2 gas pipeline that would have increased German dependence on Russian gas, uncaring of the vehement objections of the United States, Britain, the European Council and Poland.

Given that, Germany was bound to rule out effective sanctions in the lead-up to the fighting, with the most effective — the exclusion from the Swift payment system — not even considered, because it would block payments for Russian gas, stopping its supply. A request for weapons from the immense German surplus stocks yielded an offer of old helmets, on the grounds that German parliamentarians would prohibit the supply of lethal weapons. Providing cover for the Germans, the Italian government also ruled out a Swift cut off, and it was only Italy’s embattled Defence Minister Lorenzo Guerini’s personal determination that kept the door half-open for Italian military supplies.

Nor was the US Government much of an obstacle: instead of emulating the British airlift of anti-tank missiles on a much larger scale, the US focused on evacuating its diplomats in hysterical haste — as if to support Putin’s intimidation campaign — and then failed to airlift any of the tens of thousands of highly suitable “point and shoot” anti-tank rockets in Army depots that any civilian can use with one minute of training.

But war is the greatest contingency. As all veterans know — and that includes the present writer — until the fighting starts, no soldier knows how he will react to combat, and still less which of his comrades will fight bravely and which will keep his head down, waiting for the noise to end. And that goes for war leaders too: in 1939 the mediocre dictator Ioannis Metaxas replied to Mussolini’s verbose ultimatum with a monosyllabic ohi — “no” — inspiring victorious fighting by the hugely outgunned Greeks. And now in 2022 Zelensky’s comedic turn as a TV President, followed by a respectable showing as an actual President, set the stage for his current act as an indomitable war leader, totally uncaring of the risk to his own life as the number one target of Russian under-cover killer teams.

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After refusing Biden’s ill-judged offer to evacuate him (he asked for weapons instead) Zelensky declared that he would remain in Kyiv with his entire Cabinet to lead the fight for the city. That played its own undefinable role in inspiring Ukraine’s soldiers to resist no matter what: to hold the city of Kharkiv, close enough to the Russian border to have been within artillery range from the start, to defend Zmiinyi (snake) island in front of coastal Odessa, whose 13-man garrison came under overwhelming naval bombardment after impolitely refusing to surrender, to defend Mariupol the country’s eastern harbour, whose half a million inhabitants live less than 30 miles from the Russian border (but are holding out with the Russians still 15 miles away as of this writing), and on the Kyiv approaches through which the Russian army was supposed to swiftly advance on the city and finish the war in two days if not one.

The Ukrainian army did not run away, it did not surrender, it did not abandon its weapons to walk home, and neither was it quickly outmanoeuvred by the much better-funded Russian army, which has had the fuel, ammo, and replacement parts for much more intensive training than the badly underfunded Ukrainians. It turns out that motivation beats even training: Russian armoured columns that were supposed to advance at motor speed on the highways to Kharkov and Kyiv brushing aside token resistance to quickly seize both cities, were instead forced off the road by sustained Ukrainian anti-armour fire, and then blocked again by hard fighting when they gave up on highway momentum to advance cross-country at 3mph. Day after day, Kharkov and Kyiv not only held out but were not even attacked, except by a few missiles, more terrifying than destructive.

That is when Putin’s timetable and entire war plan fell apart.

The world could close its eyes for a day and a night to allow the Russians to finish the job, so as to continue business as usual for everyone: the trucks delivering French and Italian luxury goods to the Moscow bourgeoisie along with Audi and Mercedes cars, Dutch hydroponic vegetables and much more from Frankfurt an Oder via Warsaw and Minsk; the aircraft bringing Russian skiers to Courchevel and Megève, and shoppers to London and Paris.

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But when the Russian attempt failed, and the dramatic news was made by Ukraine’s heroic resistance rather than by the expected Putin victory, Western Europeans had to open their eyes, they had to look at the Russian aggression that had brought large-war to Europe for the first time since 1945.

After Italy’s Draghi spoke with Zelensky, Italy’s objection to the Swift ban suddenly gave way to approval, forcing the Germans to switch also to avoid opprobrium as the only hold-out. With that the silent opponents like Luxembourg also had to go along, and soon enough Japan also agreed to exclude the most regime-connected banks. With that the destruction of the Russian bourgeoisie’s way of life was underway in earnest: no skiing trips to France, or foreign trips anywhere outside the Russian sphere, no sending of children to expensive boarding schools in Britain or Switzerland, no new German cars, nor fresh tomatoes.

Concurrently, the spectacle of civilians, ladies of advanced years included, preparing Molotov cocktails out of beer bottles as a last resort to defend their streets, broke down the dam of Pacifist hypocrisy (“weapons only make war worse”) releasing an expanding torrent of weapons, with Germany, last seen stopping others from helping, itself offering 5,000 Stingers, aspirational anti-aircraft weapons against jets, but deadly against helicopters. Italy is sending badly needed anti-tank weapons, and others such as the British who did not wait for the fighting to begin in order to send anti-tank missiles, are sending more weapons as the US, Canada, Sweden and others are also doing, but adding a so far unique official encouragement of volunteers willing to fight for Ukraine.

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Suddenly the hitherto untouchable Putin is in trouble. He promised a quick, almost effortless victory, to instead plunge into a war increasingly costly of lives (hundreds of Russians are dead by all accounts), increasingly costly for the entire Russian economy, and disastrous for its bourgeoisie. And this for a war that Russia is not winning. That Putin has invited the Ukrainian President to send envoys to cease-fire talks is itself a tremendous defeat for him: he had insisted that he could not negotiate at all with the“drug addicts and Neo-Nazis” of Zelensky’s government, but now he must negotiate, to extricate himself from the war he deliberately started, whose costs have risen phenomenally.

If talks do start, the Ukrainians can have only one demand: an immediate and total withdrawal of Russian forces to their starting positions. And if the Russians accept that inevitable demand, it seems unlikely that Putin can remain in power, not after having overruled his Intelligence chief, to deliberately start a costly war, only to lose it.

If the Russians refuse, they must revert to a very hard fight, a slow-motion drive into Kyiv that will be marked by rising casualties, as Ukrainian resistance is strengthened by the influx of better weapons and rising military competence. Then the Russians must conquer the whole of Ukraine out to Lviv and the Carpathian mountains — where the population is mostly anti-Russian, promising ever more grinding combat.

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It is hard to imagine how Putin could emerge from this scenario victorious. Yes Zelensky might be reached and murdered at any time, but it seems entirely unlikely that the morale generated by the ferocious resistance he inspired would simply disappear — if anything it might well increase.

Another possibility is nuclear escalation, and Putin’s latest is indeed to talk up in his most ominous tones Russia’s forward-deployed nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately for Putin, the action is now in the hands of old ladies with Molotov cocktails, shoe salesmen with bazookas, and increasingly experienced street fighters. None of them are likely to pause this fight for fear of Russian nuclear escalation.

That leaves Putin with no way of redeeming his promise of a swiftly victorious war, no defence against the accusation of having grievously damaged Russia and humiliated its army. The spy chief Naryshkin in the Kremlin might be the one to remove Putin with the least disruption, but of course there are other Putin appointees also ready to save mother Russia.

1. Germany

Germany’s state elections will be a test of the strength of blue-collar populists on the one hand, and the centrist anti-populist reaction on the other. State elections held last year showed that the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) has support even in parts of Western Germany. AfD entered the regional parliaments in Bavaria and Hesse, taking votes from both the centre-Right CDU/CSU and the centre-left SPD. But other voters abandoned the mainstream parties for the opposite reason – they thought the grand coalition too restrictive of migration, with the Greens being the greatest beneficiary.

Bremen’s election this year, scheduled on May 26, the day of the EU elections, will test the SPD’s resilience – the party has received the most votes there in every state election since 1946. No polls have been taken since the recent Green spurt, but in August the SPD were level with the CSU and only 6% ahead of the Greens. If the national poll trends since then – which show the SPD falling and the Greens rising – are occurring in Bremen too, the SPD is currently running behind the CDU in Bremen and running neck and neck with the Greens.

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Such a result would be a disaster for the SPD and would likely pile the pressure on them to abandon their grand coalition with Chancellor Merkel’s CDU/CSU. Should that occur, it is unlikely that Merkel or CDU party president, and presumed heir apparent, Annegret Kramp-Krannenbauer, could form a government since the only alternative to a grand coalition is a CDU/CSU-Green-FDP coalition. A governmental collapse would then send Germans to the polls in a snap federal election.

The other state elections occur in three former East German states, and the key question there is whether the AfD will take first place in any – or even all – contests. The most recent polls in Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia all show the AfD in second place, but only a few points behind the front runner. Moreover, each state’s poll shows the combined vote share for the AfD and the descendants of the former East German Communist party, Die Linke (“The Left”), at between 39% and 44%.

That would make for extremely fraught coalition talks, as the only possible outcome that excludes both parties involves four party administrations involving the CDU, SPD, the liberal FDP and the Greens. In Thuringia and Saxony, polls indicate that the only alternative to such a rainbow coalition would require the CDU to partner with the AfD or Die Linke, neither of which the party has ever been willing to do.

2. Spain

In conjunction with the EU vote on May 26^th, 13 of Spain’s regions will go to the polls. All three types of populists have parties contesting these elections, and two of them look to be rising. The Right-wing populist party, Vox, is poised to enter most regions’ parliaments. The centrist populist Ciudadanos are also poised for significant gains, giving them near equal status with Spain’s two traditional parties in many regions. But the Leftist populist Podemos, or Unidos Podemos in some regions where they have combined with the former United Left, are likely to slip in most states.

All three trends are apparent in the Madrid region. Vox’s staunch opposition to Catalonian separatism and migration has seen it skyrocket in the polls, where it currently receives 12-18%. Much of this support, seemingly, comes from the traditional party of the centre-Right, Partido Popular (PP). But support also seems to be coming from former Podemos voters too. Podemos and the United Left had received over 23% in 2015, but the new grouping Unidos Podemos was polling at only 18% in early January. Just as is the case with support for similar parties around the world, like the Sweden Democrats and Germany’s AfD, Vox’s support thus seems to come from both the Left and Right.

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Spain’s government is likely to become even less stable over the coming years. The current parliament is roughly split between a Left-populist bloc and a Right-centre bloc, with Vox currently unrepresented. The balance of power is held by a grab bag of regional parties and Catalonian separatists. If the government were to fall this year, unable to paper over the differences between these groups, Vox seem likely to gain enough seats to hold the balance of power.

This would present Spain with the same dilemma as other Europeans countries: either they create a grand coalition that weakens over time or they invite the populists into government in a centre-Right led coalition. Either course is likely to increase political instability in the EU’s fourth largest economy.

3. Estonia

Estonia’s election on March 1 is likely to see a new, Eurosceptic and ethno-nationalist party hold the balance of power. The Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE) has recently been polling around 20%, making it the third largest party in the country. With the market-liberal Reform Party and the centre-Left, Centre Party running roughly even, the EKRE could decide which party takes the Prime Minister’s chair.

EKRE emphasises Estonian nationality above all else – arguing that Estonia has become a “vassal state” of the EU. It strongly opposes immigration and Russian involvement in the Ukraine and Georgia, and challenges the market forces it says have made Estonia a home of cheap labour for foreign capital. Inclusion of the EKRE in government would undoubtedly sound alarm bells among the European establishment, but their participation may be unavoidable if there is to be stable government.

4. Denmark

The Danish election, which must be held on or before 17 June, seems likely to further demonstrate populism’s impact. The Danish People’s Party (DF) is one of Europe’s more successful blue-collar populist parties and has been a mainstay of the current centre-Right governing coalition. Even the Social Democrats have backed some of the government’s anti-immigration proposals (at the expense of their link with longtime partners the Social Liberals). While the Social Democrats look set to finish in first place, Denmark’s fragmented party system requires at least three parties to coalesce to form a government. The Social Democrats’ shift on migration issues opens up the possibility of a European first: a centre-left-led government that includes a blue-collar populist party.

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DF has been so successful that it has now spawned a competitor, the New Right (Nye Boergerlige in Danish). Formed by former members of the Conservative People’s Party, the New Right argues that DF is too supportive of migrants. It is also well to DF’s right on economic matters, with its leader supporting the total elimination of corporate taxation. Polls show it is consistently above the 2% threshold for parliamentary representation.

5. Canada

Canada’s general election, scheduled for October 19^th, will be another test of populism’s appeal. Despite having one of the largest shares of immigrants in the Western world, Canada – thanks in part to a skills-based immigration policy – has largely avoided anti-migrant populism. But that will be put to the test by former Conservative MP Maxime Bernier’s new People’s Party of Canada.

Bernier left the Conservatives after narrowly losing his bid to become their leader. His new party will campaign on pro-market economics and lower levels of overall immigration. It is currently polling below 2% in the polls, and, like the UK, Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system prevents small parties from winning many, if any, seats. Its influence could nevertheless force the Conservatives to the Right in order to increase their chance of beating Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party. Even raising the issue threatens to break Canada’s pro-immigration consensus.

Bernier’s home province of Quebec is particularly interesting. Quebec is the only province allowed to admit its own economic immigrants, and the province’s desire to maintain its predominantly Francophone status has meant it is increasingly admitting migrants from North Africa. Quebec is also where anti-Muslim feelings are strongest, and a centre-Right party pledging to reduce immigration by 20% won a majority of seats in last year’s provincial election.

Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer recently said he wants to work with the Quebec government to give it more authority over non-economic migration in the province, a position widely believed to be crafted to court the Quebec centre-Right vote.

Much can happen in a year, but it’s hard to see the elites’ dream of a return to normalcy becoming a reality. Too many voters are dreaming of something quite different to the status quo, and the populist parties look most likely to deliver it for them.

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After the country became independent from the USSR, in 1991, it decided to pursue technological innovation as a way of carving out a distinct identity. The results have been remarkable. e-Estonia, the government’s tech arm, boasts today that 99% of public services are available to citizens in digital form, with only marriages, divorces and real-estate transactions requiring you to leave the house. Online voting for parliamentary elections arrived in 2007. The country’s tax returns are done online, with most of the data pre-completed thanks to links between the tax office and local banks.

Around 97 per cent of patients have a digital health record, to which doctors have quick and easy access: in emergencies, they can use a person’s ID code to find out potentially life-saving information such as blood type, allergies, recent treatments, and on-going medication. Patients can browse through their own health records and those of their children, and see who else has looked at them. More than 95 per cent of prescriptions are issued digitally.

Cabinet meetings are paperless, with non-contentious matters agreed online in advance, and as a result have been cut from five hours to as little as half an hour. Absent ministers can take part remotely. Most parliamentary activity is also done digitally. In total, e-Estonia reckons the country’s embrace of cyber saves it 800 years of working time every year. Little wonder Wired magazine describes it as “the most advanced digital society in the world’.

There is a commercial as well as a democratic point to all this. Estonia has been able to flog its smarts to other countries, including Finland, Azerbaijan, Namibia and the Faroe Islands.

And of course, where Estonia has blazed a trail, a stampede of fellow nations has quickly followed. Govtech is proving a majorly disruptive force to the way services have traditionally been delivered across the world. In the new era there is, simply, no longer any need to do things the old, slow, frustrating way.

The Phillipines

The government’s Department of Science and Technology has worked with IBM to create an AI-driven operations centre for dealing with disaster management. This provides emergency managers with a raft of information including advance warning of extreme weather events, feedback from first responders on the number of casualties and affected families, and the condition of buildings, roads and infrastructure.

Singapore

Never far from the frontline when it comes to innovation, Singapore has created a Government Technology Agency, where more than 1,800 tech whizzes, including software developers, data scientists, user-experience experts and geospatial engineers operate like a Silicon Valley start-up, experimenting, tweaking and tackling problems brought to them by various government agencies. The Hive focused initially on establishing the Business Grants Portal, which brings the government’s various grants together in one destination so companies can more easily apply for them. It has also done work on healthcare, an app for reporting non-emergency issues to agencies, and created chatbots that answer citizens’ questions and help them to complete forms. Its leaders are now installing crack teams of around 50 people into each government department.

Denmark

The Scandinavian state is a frontrunner in the use of telehealth, which enables remote contact between patients and doctors, plus digital advice, reminders, education, intervention and monitoring. This has been adopted in areas such as home rehabilitation and physiotherapy in Copenhagen, aiming to reduce hospital readmissions; in connecting diabetes patients and those with heart conditions with healthcare staff; and in home monitoring of older Danes, including video consultations and blood pressure monitoring.

Rwanda

Previously, reliance on the road network could mean the delivery of blood supplies to hospitals took five hours by ambulance. Now hospitals simply text a request, and drones parachute the blood in within around 15 mins. This avoids the need for refrigeration and dramatically cuts emergency response times.

Holland

Amsterdam is one of the world’s leading Smart Cities. It has cut living costs for homeowners by using a smart grid to reduce their CO2 emissions, brought in smart lampposts that save €10 billion per year, and automated bridge opening and closing to reduce waiting times for cars and ships, which has dramatically cut costs. It also uses an intelligent traffic management system, which has slashed the number of hours spent in vehicles.

These advances are important. Citizens around the world see the explosion in digital capability and potential and want governments to deploy technology for the public good. As the rest of their lives become more streamlined and convenient, they expect the same from the state. Slo-mo policians and civil servants look increasingly undynamic and out-of-touch with the modern world. A firm grasp of tech is vital – with alarming forecasts being made about the impact AI and robots will have on the workplace, the public is looking for reassurance that the state is alert to and managing this shift.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes in the British government. The DWP is using natural language processing, machine learning and intelligent automation to read and categorise incoming correspondence, which is then sent to relevant staff. This liberates workers from the more mundane aspects of the job and, in theory at least, allows them to make a difference in more essential areas. Local authorities are going down the same path: Enfield Council, in North London, uses Amelia, robot technology that deals with frontline issues such as resident queries or authenticating licenses.

There is also a conversation to be had about the vast increase in storage and use of personal data and how this threat to individual privacy is best managed. It was public unease over state snooping that saw Tony Blair’s plans to introduce ID cards in the UK come to nothing in the 2000s. However, as we live more of our lives online, and willingly share more of our data with private companies, as biometrics and other identity analytics become commonplace, it seems likely we will return to the debate, and under different terms.

For example, future generations, raised in a different, more open and connected world, are likely to be less instinctively protective of their privacy. Arguments about convenience and inevitability will hold more sway, too. Estonia’s enthusiastic embrace of the new has seen the country introduce an overarching ID card, which, because all the government’s tech innovations speak to each other, has massively simplified the interface between citizen and the state.

As Siret Schutting of e-Estonia told Wired: “When you introduce an ID card, you get a lot of people asking, ‘Why do I need that?’ But then you add all of these services, and you can purchase a car from your living room, or vote from your living room or, when it’s like minus 40 outside and you have a newborn baby, you probably don’t want to go to the family office to name her: you do that online. Very small, pragmatic things.”

When you put it like that…