Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that new US intelligence assessments say Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test NATO’s resolve with a limited attack on a member state sometime between this fall and 2029, a reversal from Washington’s earlier assumption that Russia would avoid provoking the alliance while at war in Ukraine.
The scenarios range from cyberattacks and deniable operations using unmarked fighters to, at the extreme end, a small land incursion along NATO’s eastern flank, ranked as the least likely option for now though officials expect the odds to climb over time. Even a limited incursion could trigger Article 5, NATO’s mutual-defense clause committing every member to defend one that’s attacked.
Why now
The shift reflects mounting strain on Putin rather than any specific attack plan, officials told the Journal. Russian troops have made little progress and taken steep losses, while Ukrainian drones increasingly strike Russian military bases and oil facilities. That pressure could push Putin toward a new front to project strength at home.
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Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Journal that testing a NATO member has long been a Russian goal aimed at undercutting the alliance’s credibility and splitting the US from its allies.
“The question mark is how the United States would respond in that case,” she said. NATO, she added, has struggled to define a response to attacks that stay just below the Article 5 threshold, and member states have so far held back from escalating.
A readiness fight
The warning coincides with claims about American military readiness. Supplies of long-range precision missiles, Army Tactical Missile Systems, and Stinger air-defense systems have thinned after years of arming Ukraine and the war with Iran.
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Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell rejected these claims in comments to Fox News, saying the department can strike wherever and whenever the president chooses. President Trump made a similar point on Truth Social, saying the US holds “massive amounts” of munitions and that manufacturers were producing and shipping more as needed.
A pattern of incidents
A Russian missile landed on Polish soil in July, and drones entered Romanian airspace earlier this year. On August 5, an airport employee found an explosive-laden drone near a Ukrainian cargo plane at Leipzig-Halle Airport in Germany, and Kyiv Post reports that US officials assessed it belonged to Russia’s intelligence service. The Russian embassy in Berlin denied any involvement two days later, calling it a setup meant to damage Moscow’s standing.
A few days after the Leipzig discovery, German security forces spotted two more drones over a Bundeswehr base in Mechernich. The German military confirmed the sighting and police opened an investigation, though officials haven’t said who was responsible.
On August 7, Polish security services separately detained a Russian national whom Russian intelligence had recruited and tasked with killing a dual US-Ukrainian citizen in Warsaw. Prime Minister Donald Tusk called it the first confirmed instance of a Russian-ordered attempt on an American life inside another NATO member state.
Separate industrial accidents that same month, including a fire and explosion at an ammunition plant near Rome and a fatal blast at a Rotterdam port refinery, briefly fueled online speculation about foul play.
Italian investigators have ruled out sabotage and are treating the Colleferro blast as an accident. Dutch police said they saw nothing pointing to sabotage at the Rotterdam site and were still investigating every possible cause.
NATO’s response
The alliance hasn’t confirmed a specific plan against any member. Spokesperson Col. Martin O’Donnell told the Journal, “We are always thinking through and preparing for any number of scenarios,” and said the alliance remains ready to deter and defend as necessary.
CNN‘s reporting on the same assessment ranks cyberattacks, sabotage, and unmarked-fighter operations above a ground incursion, and names the Baltic states and Poland as the likeliest targets given their proximity to Russian and Belarusian territory.
In a late-June interview, Poland’s intelligence chief, Col. Pawel Szota, faced the same question, whether Russia might send unmarked fighters, the tactic used to seize Crimea in 2014, into a Baltic state, and answered cautiously rather than offering a firm prediction.
Officials still rate a ground incursion as the least likely of the scenarios, even as they say the odds are rising.
