Russia accused Britain last week of “opting for escalation” over its continuing support for Ukraine, threatening “inevitable consequences.” In an apparent bid to underline the threat, Moscow withdrew its ambassador from the UK. The Kremlin may be notorious for diplomatic bluster, but this latest ratcheting up of bilateral tensions can’t be easily dismissed, especially when Russia appears to be intensifying its hybrid war against Kyiv’s European partners.
Amid the mounting alarm over Moscow’s increasingly bold actions, US officials now believe Russian President Vladimir Putin could launch an attack on a NATO member within a matter of months. According to new intelligence assessments quoted by The Wall Street Journal and other media, they estimate the time frame for a potential Russian move against the Western military alliance to be between this fall and 2029.
Some skeptics dismiss the threat. As the Russian military has been unable to defeat Ukraine since launching its full-scale invasion more than four years ago, they argue, Moscow is in no position to start a new war against the far more powerful NATO alliance. But that analysis misreads the nature of the Russian threat, failing to account for the likely goals of a potential Kremlin operation against a NATO member. If Putin does choose to attack, his aim would almost certainly be to discredit NATO rather than achieve a military victory.
The kind of attack scenario the latest US intelligence assessments envisage involves a limited Russian cross-border incursion into NATO territory, possibly by thinly disguised proxies. Once a symbolic Russian presence is established, alliance members would have to decide whether they’d be ready to risk a potentially devastating if ultimately victorious war with Moscow.
If NATO members were unable to agree on a robust response, the alliance’s core commitment to collective security would be undermined, prompting a major security crisis that would leave the whole of Europe feeling dangerously exposed. In such a deteriorating security environment of geopolitical uncertainty, public support for Ukraine would likely plummet. Russia would then aim to convince politically vulnerable European leaders to abandon Kyiv.
Would Putin really dare to take such a huge risk? With the Russian army struggling to advance on Ukrainian battlefields and economic pressure mounting inside Russia, there’s good reason to believe he would consider radical new approaches to reviving his faltering invasion. He may also feel the current climate of Western disunity is creating uniquely favorable circumstances for action.
Russian territorial gains in Ukraine have dropped to multi-year lows over the past six months. In parallel, Ukraine’s long-range bombing campaign inside Russia has dramatically expanded, causing fuel shortages across the country and extensive damage to its leading e-commerce retailer Wildberries.
At sea, Ukrainian airstrikes have significantly reduced Russia’s exports of oil and other key commodities. While Ukraine is currently suffering far worse hardship from Moscow’s daily bombardments, that’s surely of little comfort to the Russian population, accustomed to the idea it will be shielded from the war’s negative consequences.
To finally break Ukrainian resistance, Putin must cut off the European aid lifeline funding the country’s economy and war effort. If he had hoped the 2024 re-election of US President Donald Trump would lead to the collapse of international support for Ukraine, that has not happened. Instead, a number of European countries have stepped in to help fill the gap. Exploiting divisions within the NATO alliance in order to intimidate them and isolate Ukraine may now be seen as Russia’s best option.
Moscow has already been intensifying its campaign of “gray zone” aggression against NATO members across Europe. Russian drones have penetrated NATO airspace on multiple occasions in recent months, and a cruise missile struck deep inside Poland. The latest escalation came in early August, when a suspected Russian drone armed with explosives was discovered at a German airbase used by NATO and the Ukrainian military. Each incident has tested alliance members’ reactions. So far, they have been remarkably reluctant to impose any additional costs on the Kremlin.
If Putin does decide on a more direct confrontation, he would be counting on another weak response. Based on his own experience, that would be a reasonable expectation. Western leaders have loudly and consistently condemned Russian aggression throughout Putin’s quarter century in power, but have often done little to oppose him, while also facilitating lucrative business deals with Russian entities.
Crucially, the West’s collective reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been shaped by a crippling fear of escalation that has consistently left the Ukrainians short of weapons and faced with restrictions on their ability to defend themselves. Ukraine is not a NATO member, of course, but it would be easy to believe that many in Moscow might anticipate a similarly indecisive response from the alliance if confronted by the prospect of imminent war with Russia.
Putin may feel the transatlantic rift between Trump and his European counterparts represents an unprecedented window of opportunity. The US leader has never made a secret of his unwillingness to take the lead on European security, and has been left deeply frustrated by the continent’s response to America’s military campaign against Iran. NATO has never looked less united or more susceptible to outside pressure.
None of that makes a Russian attack on an alliance member inevitable, of course. Putin may well prefer to continue exploring other avenues of escalation that stop short of direct military confrontation. He has a range of options, including attacks on infrastructure that would disrupt daily life while remaining below the threshold for a collective NATO response. But given the current trajectory, it would be reckless to dismiss the possibility of a more serious Russian attack.
The stakes could hardly be higher for Putin. Any negotiated settlement based on current battlefield realities would likely be viewed in Russia as a historic defeat that would raise questions about the future stability of his regime. Putin’s immediate priority, therefore, may be to maintain the current climate of geopolitical confrontation in order to safeguard his authoritarian rule. Ultimately, however, he wants to win.
At present, Putin has no obvious pathway to victory in Ukraine and is unlikely to prevail in a prolonged conflict while Kyiv retains strong European backing. Although even a limited attack on NATO would represent an enormous gamble, he could decide it’s the best way to secure victory in a war he’s sold as existential for Russia itself.
Peter Dickinson is publisher of Business Ukraine magazine.