(KYIV) – NATO is facing its most dangerous security environment in a generation, with European leaders warning that Russia may be preparing attacks to test their commitment to supporting Ukraine.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has warned of a real risk that drones or other projectiles will enter the territory of one or several countries on NATO’s eastern flank, potentially causing destruction. He suggested the official Russian narration would be that any such incident was an accident, with no reason for NATO to respond. Tusk added that the goal, as evidenced by an analysis of Russian actions to date, is to undermine NATO’s integrity and convince member states that Article 5 is more theoretical than practical.
The warnings followed a massive Russian attack on western Ukraine, very close to the Polish border, which forced Poland to repeatedly scramble its aircraft. Air raid sirens sounded in Poland earlier on Thursday.
French President Emmanuel Macron has also sounded the alarm, stating that the hybrid Russian threat to Europeans and to France has intensified in recent weeks. He cited a drone attack on a passenger train from Kyiv, an attempted attack at Leipzig airport which failed, the firing of flares near a Danish frigate, and incursions into the airspace of several European countries as evidence that the nature of Russian aggression is changing.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the use of drones along Poland’s border with Ukraine shows that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is becoming increasingly desperate. Rutte described the behaviour as increasingly reckless, noting that Russia is losing over 40,000 of its own people dead or seriously wounded a month, leading up to 1.2 million casualties since the start of the war. He said the evidence showed Russia was panicking.
The warnings come after a campaign of sabotage across Europe this summer, with military and defence sites as the prime targets. On 4th August, a drone carrying an explosive device was discovered at Leipzig Airport in Germany. Six days later, a major fire broke out at a defence warehouse in Bulgaria, where previous blasts at the company’s facilities had been investigated for links to Russia.
On 13th August, a fire at an ammunition depot outside Rome triggered a large explosion, with the local prosecutor looking into outside interference. Two days later, a robotics factory in Tarland that supplies drones to Ukraine went up in flames. On 25th August, an arson attack on a Ukrainian owned drone manufacturer was narrowly avoided. On 30th August, two more fires were reported in Poland, one of them an attack on a drone producer, with a masked man caught on CCTV throwing incendiary devices. The Polish prime minister called it a continuation of Russia’s escalatory activities.
A month after drones packed with explosives were found at Leipzig airport, Germany declared that Russia was responsible. Putin demanded proof and his officials called the accusation absurd.
Eastern Europe correspondent Sarah Reignsford said it was important to be clear that Russia has been attacking NATO countries for a long time. She said the question was less what Russia intends and more how NATO could respond. Her reporting has focused on a number of plots linked to Russia directly causing very serious damage inside Europe, including a parcel bomb plot with incendiary devices sent all over Europe.
One of those parcels went off just before it was loaded onto a plane to the UK, and the consequences could have been catastrophic. She said sources in that investigation had confirmed a direct link to the discovery of drones with explosives at Leipzig airport this summer, describing the situation as very serious and clearly aimed at NATO countries and allies of Ukraine in particular.
Some reports suggested that the visit by the CIA chief to Moscow in August was in part to warn Russia against a possible attack on a member of the Euroatlantic Military Alliance. The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed warnings about Russian plans to attack NATO as hysteria.
NATO has also been grappling with the fact that US President Donald Trump has not been in lock step with them throughout the Ukrainian war. Russia expert Timothy Ash said one of the problems was that the Trump administration had been pretty soft in signalling about its support for Article 5 defence for Europe.
He said the Russians were taking advantage of that and trying to exploit it and expose divisions. Ash noted that Ukrainian deep strike drone attacks and missile attacks were increasingly successful, hitting oil refineries, and that there were shortages in Russia. He said Russia faced elections at the weekend and that Putin was nervous and vulnerable, wanting to force Europe to pull back in its support for Ukraine and surrender Ukraine to Russia.
Sarah Reignsford said she did not think Vladimir Putin was suicidal and was not about to launch a missile directly into the heart of Warsaw. However, she believed he would continue testing the West and trying to prove that NATO as an alliance is weak and would not stand up to Russia as it says it will. She noted that Putin is now under extreme pressure at home like never before and is clearly escalating the war inside Ukraine.
She said the potential for aggression beyond Ukraine’s borders is at its highest level seen. She expected Russia to go on probing, testing, and pushing the limits, including through sabotage attacks and below threshold aggression. In terms of a military strike, she believed that because of the political context, a possible drone or military missile strike on one of Ukraine’s allies that Russia then calls an accident seemed more likely now than ever before. She said what was once unthinkable had become more and more possible as Russia is under increasing pressure.
Timothy Ash said he was very concerned, describing the situation as probably the most serious in Western Moscow relations or the Kremlin since the 1980s. He recalled the cruise missile crisis back then and said Russia is testing our limit, probing almost every day. He noted that numerous munition dumps in NATO territory have been blown up in recent months and said that every time NATO does not respond, Russia takes strength from that.
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