After the war in Ukraine ends, the Kremlin might seek revenge against the United States and Europe.

PARIS — Flags are talismans of national pride, but their absence can also reflect a venomous divorce.

The flags that have gone missing lately, at the Paris Olympics and a central square in downtown Moscow, symbolize the embittered estrangement between the West and Russia — and what top military and strategic experts are warning will be a dangerous postwar struggle when the shooting in Ukraine subsides.

The Kremlin has not disguised its rage at having been all but excluded from the 2024 Summer Games — just 15 Russians are competing as designated neutral athletes, and Russian teams, the Russian anthem and the Russian flag have been banned, including during the parade of nations at last week’s Opening Ceremonies.

Days before the Olympics began, Russian authorities renamed downtown Moscow’s Square of Europe, having earlier removed the 48 European flags — alongside Russia’s own standard — that had flown there since 2002. The square, once an aspirational symbol of Russia’s turn to the West, will now be known as the Square of Eurasia.

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That reflects the extent to which the Kremlin is convinced, and has persuaded Russians, that the war in Ukraine is a proxy for a long-term struggle with the West.

When top U.S. and European generals assess Russia’s postwar intentions, they see a country consumed by fury and bent on revenge.

In three to five years — the time Moscow will need to reconstitute its battered forces — strategists believe the Kremlin will gear up to intensify a payback campaign that has already begun with sabotage attacks in Europe, and might also target the United States.

“At the end of a conflict in Ukraine — however, it concludes — we are going to have a very big Russia problem,” U.S. Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the supreme allied commander in Europe, told the Aspen Security Forum this month. “We are going to have a situation where Russia is reconstituting its force, is located on the borders of NATO, is led by largely the same people as it is right now, is convinced that we’re the adversary, and is very, very angry.”

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Similarly, the new British armed forces chief, Gen. Sir Roland Walker, warns that Russia is unlikely to settle........

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