As Putin Eyes a Divided NATO, Alliance Scrambles To Project Strength in Face of Russian Taunts

Leaders in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, and Baltic countries are on alert amid escalating tensions with Russia following a summer of low-grade aggression in Europe that could turn hot if Vladimir Putin decides to challenge NATO’s recalibrating alliance.Since July, Mr. Putin’s government or its proxies have threatened Great Britain and France, allegedly attacked a German airport with drones, shot a cruise missile 60 miles into Poland, and ordered military mobilization exercises in a Russian enclave that borders the Baltics.Threats from Mr. Putin against NATO — both current and forecasted — are unmistakenly colliding with the Trump administration’s plans to disengage from European security. On Thursday, Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge “Bridge” Colby was at NATO headquarters in Brussels urging European nations to “step up” in an alliance rebalance he dubbed “NATO 3.0.”“Let’s make it adaptive, let’s make it make sense, let’s look at things like access basing and overflight — there is a lot of good but there is some things we need to work out to make sense going forward,” Mr. Colby said during a morning news conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.Yet even as the Trump administration works to achieve a European-led NATO, observers say they believe Mr. Putin may be preparing to test NATO’s commitment to mutual defense — or already has. With no significant Russian military progress on the Ukraine war four years into the conflict, efforts at peace negotiations stalled, and U.S, munition stockpiles low from the war with Iran, fears are mounting that Mr. Putin may be tempted to strike.Also alarming, Bloomberg reports, is the possibility Mr. Putin could attempt to break the stalemate on the Ukraine battlefield by using tactical nuclear weapons, even over the objections of Russia’s close ally, China, and the Indian government.“Judging by the Kremlin’s reaction, it has no intention of reducing or halting this escalation,” former deputy Ukrainian Internal Affairs minister, Anton Gerashchenko, wrote on X on Thursday. “Do the US and its allies have a Plan B?”If Mr. Putin is considering expanding either his target list or NATO resolve, he got a reminder of the brute force that backs the alliance, when the thunder of jet engines greeted Moscow Tuesday when CIA Director John Ratcliffe touched down in a massive U.S. Air Force plane.Both the Wall Street Journal and Politico reported that Mr. Ratcliffe’s trip to Moscow was to deliver an in-person warning against any aggression toward NATO members. The Kremlin confirmed Mr. Ratcliffe met with Russian intelligence officials, but not Mr. Putin directly. Mr. Ratcliffe was back in Washington Wednesday, arriving at the White House at the same time as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Dan Caine.“One of the most important actions we can take for deterrence is for the Pentagon to follow President Trump’s orders to return the 5,000 troops back to Poland and the Baltics,” Congressman Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who is a frequent critic of the administration’s Ukraine approach, said on social media. “This is deterrence. The Pentagon has dragged its feet for three months on this.”Tensions in Europe have burned ever since Mr. Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March 2022. But as the aims of the planned 72-hour “special military operation” he bragged about disintegrated amid Ukrainian resistance and international aid, it seemed taking on the powerful NATO defensive military alliance was out of reach.Intelligence officials believe that calculus may be changing. In June amid the collapse of then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s cabinet, Mr. Starmer’s resigning defense secretary, John Healey, quoted the prime minister as warning of a future Russian attack.“You spelled out the threats last week: ‘It is our intelligence assessment and the assessment of other countries in NATO, that there could be an attack by Russia on NATO as soon as 2030,” Mr. Healey wrote in his resignation letter.This week, Mr. Starmer’s successor, Andy Burnham, visited Ukraine and announced that his nation and France will give the Ukrainian military technology for long-range, air-launched, offensive Scalp missiles.“The clear message to Putin should be that Ukraine will never give up territory that Russia cannot win on the battlefield, and negotiations must start from the line of contact,” Mr. Burnham said.That sparked a furious reaction from Mr. Putin’s government. The two NATO nations are “playing with fire,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.“Inevitable punishment awaits their accomplices and instigators, and we call on all residents of the United Kingdom to consider the inevitable catastrophic consequences of their own government’s hostile actions,” Ms. Zakharova said.“Any British military installations and equipment in Ukraine and beyond could be the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons on Russian territory,” she added.Ukraine has used explosive drones to regularly attack Russian energy infrastructure, industry, its bomber fleet, logistics hubs, and even e-commerce warehouses with increasing effectiveness. Russian forces have responded by bombarding Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones.Deep-strike missiles in Ukrainian hands could dramatically amplify Ukraine’s punching power. Last fall, President Trump publicly flirted with the idea of giving Ukraine highly effective Tomahawk cruise missiles but ultimately decided against it.Testing the AllianceUndeterred, Russia’s military authorities ordered a mobilization drill at Kaliningrad — the lone, small piece of noncontinuous Russian territory sandwiched between NATO allies in the Baltic states to the east and Poland to the west.The Wall Street Journal reported that Russian military officers mobilized the civilian population in July and monitored the speed at preparing housing and a food supply alongside arming activated residents.Then, before dawn on July 30, a Russian air raid targeted Ukraine, forcing Poland to scramble fighter jets to intercept a wayward cruise missile headed into Polish air space. Polish authorities considered shooting the missile down until trajectory estimates showed it would fall in a remote field. The missile made it more than 50 miles over the Ukrainian border before slamming into the ground, exploding and leaving a 30-foot hole.In mid-August, NATO leaders ordered an air combat exercise that kicked off without warning. American and Norwegian fighter jets took to the skies near Kaliningrad, flying overwatch for Polish forces on the ground and in concert with early warning and electronic warfare aircraft and reconnaissance planes. At the end of August, Poland deployed 28 of its new tanks to the border with Kaliningrad.On August 4, a drone slammed into a cargo plane at the Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany — a hub for both NATO’s military and Ukrainian civilian commerce. Authorities found another explosive drone and the makings of a third. The German press has quoted American intelligence sources blaming Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU. German Chancellor Freidrich Merz had previously warned the “ruthless” attackers will “pay a price,” but so far has stopped short of publicly blaming Russia.Additional hits over the summer, including a fire at an Estonian drone factory, an explosion in Bulgaria and another at an ammunition factory in Italy, and numerous incursions into Romanian airspace by drones all point to Russia’s testing of NATO resolve.NATO’s Article 5 — “an attack on one is an attack on all” — has enabled it to function as the most powerful military alliance in history. Other than the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, the article has never been invoked.Despite Russian forces being bogged down in Ukraine, a limited attack from Russia in Europe using conventional or unconventional means would force the alliance — and its most powerful member, the United States — to commit or see NATO disintegrate.During his remarks alongside Mr. Rutte at Brussels Thursday, Mr. Colby revealed that NATO ambassadors had received an American questionnaire to review the state of the alliance. The Trump administration is seeking feedback from its allies in writing, Mr. Colby said. The United States remains committed to NATO, Mr. Colby said, but the alliance’s bulwark should be “European-led conventional defense.” The United States wants to “advance and accelerate” the transition to European leadership, he said, as the United States prioritizes the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific Ocean First Island Chain — deterring Chinese aggression.Whether Mr. Putin is inspired by a NATO realignment to take his chances on another front, “this changes nothing for Europe,” ventured a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, Jessica Berlin. “We must deter Russia now — and arm Ukraine to win.”

As Putin Eyes a Divided NATO, Alliance Scrambles To Project Strength in Face of Russian Taunts

As Putin Eyes a Divided NATO, Alliance Scrambles To Project Strength in Face of Russian Taunts

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