As American intelligence agencies warn that Russian President Vladimir Putin is plotting new attacks on European nations, NATO needs to strengthen its front across the continent to halt these dangerous provocations, says a world-leading expert on the Kremlin’s full-scale war against Ukraine and its hybrid war against surrounding countries.
Russia could launch a small-scale assault within the next several weeks, predicts Peter Dickinson, a prominent scholar on the conflict and its major players and war strategies at the Atlantic Council, one of the top defense and diplomacy think tanks in Washington, DC.
High-level intelligence reports have been issued in Washington and other NATO capitals that Putin could dramatically escalate his “shadow war” against NATO Allies aiding Ukraine’s defense, Dickinson told me in an interview.
Although outgunned on paper by the NATO alliance, he says, Russia has chalked up a series of “victories” with repeated incursions into NATO airspace, pelting the organization but without triggering an armed response by any ally so far.
Stepping up this guerrilla-war-like strategy, Russia could be scheming to send small bands of plain-clothes soldiers into Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania, the nearby Baltic nations that were once taken over by the Soviet Union but declared independence a generation ago.
Although now members of NATO, the Baltic states are widely believed to be prime targets in Putin’s quest to forcibly reconstruct the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, with a colossal campaign that started with the drive to reconquer Ukraine.
At this point, Dickinson says, Putin’s troops and tanks are bogged down on the Ukraine front, and the Kremlin Commander-in-Chief has no intention of entering a full-scale war with NATO immediately.
Rather, Putin, who rose through the Soviet hierarchy as a KGB agent, aims to mastermind a series of psychological warfare exercises against NATO, hoping that his sporadic skirmishes will help trigger the splintering of the Western alliance as some members refuse to come to the aid of a Russia-targeted country, Dickinson says.
The latest provocation in Russia’s brinkmanship unfolded just days ago, when security at the Leipzig Airport, in eastern Germany, discovered a drone packed with explosives nearby a Ukrainian military aircraft.
U.S. government agents determined the drone was deployed in a Russian intelligence operation, Dickinson says.
An American defense official in Europe told CNN “the drone was carrying military-grade explosives.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz convened an emergency meeting of his National Security Council to review this latest Russian attack.
The discovery of the bomber drone that infiltrated deep inside Germany “is a significant escalation as it indicates the intent to do serious damage to military targets,” Dickinson says.
“Most of Russia’s previous provocations have been timed to coincide with mass bombardments of Ukraine, thereby creating a degree of plausible deniability.”
“This was not the case regarding the recent incident at the German airport. On the contrary, this was a clear attempt to bomb a military cargo plane and inflict a major blow on NATO territory.”
“The fact that it did not succeed appears to have been simply bad luck on the side of the Russians.”
So far, Dickinson says, Putin’s sending armed drones and even jet fighters into NATO airspace has not triggered a forceful response by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is emboldening the Kremlin to step up its shadow war to stress-test the alliance.
NATO’s leaders, he says, have been shackled by a paralyzing dread of escalation with Russia.
While the Russian armed forces are just a fraction of the size of the Soviet Union’s, Moscow retains one remnant of its 20th century superpower status: the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weaponry.
Putin’s fusillade of threats to use city-killer nuclear warheads against Ukraine, and against its Western backers, likely accounts for NATO’s reticence in formulating stronger countermeasures in the face of Russia’s belligerence.
Yet eleven years ago, one NATO nation, Turkey, adopted a radically different response to a long series of Russian jet fighters invading its airspace.
After repeated warnings to the Russian pilots, the Turkish air force ultimately shot one jet down, after it ignored a cascade of orders to leave Turkey’s airspace.
Putin railed against the air defense action, but also quickly halted the provocative aerial invasions.
“Turkey’s decisive actions in 2015 sent a clear message to Russia that Putin understood perfectly well,” Dickinson told me. “Following this incident, Russian incursions into Turkish airspace declined dramatically.”
But there is little chance that NATO would adopt Turkey’s defense strategy.
“NATO is extremely unlikely to take any direct military action against Russia,” Dickinson says. “This would require unanimous agreement among all 32 member states, which could only be even vaguely possible in the event of a major Russian conventional attack on a NATO member.”
“So the options are limited to punitive measures against Russia such as sanctions and restrictions on Putin’s shadow fleet, and additional military support for Ukraine.”
But to show its resolve not to be intimidated by Russia’s shadow warfare, or by Moscow’s pressure to halt aid to Ukraine, NATO could instead bolster its support for the blitzed democracy.
“One potentially major step that NATO could consider would be to expand air defense coverage into the western border regions of Ukraine.”
“This could potentially allow NATO to play a bigger role in Ukraine’s defense and free up Ukrainian air defenses to bolster security in other parts of the country.”
“Crucially,” Dickinson adds, “it would involve minimum risk of any direct military contact between Russia and NATO as Russian planes do not penetrate deep into Ukrainian air space.”
So far, Dickinson says, the European democracies have provided Ukraine with just enough defense aid to avoid being crushed in the long-running war with Russia, but not enough to defeat the Kremlin invaders, and bring a final halt to the conflict.
“Ukraine has been provided with the bare minimum for national survival.”
“There has been no attempt to help Ukraine win the war, and no effort to fast-track Ukraine’s membership in NATO or the EU.”
Just as the United Kingdom and its risk-averse prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, attempted to negotiate with and appease Adolph Hitler in order to avoid war at all costs in the 1930s, allowing the Nazis to build up their Luftwaffe fighter aircraft and Panzer armored divisions to launch World War II, the Western powers’ prevarications on defense aid to Ukraine now could be setting the stage for a new continental war.
Repeated delays in providing Ukraine with defense aid to end the Russian invasion, Dickinson says, “could create the conditions for a far larger war.”
“Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, Russia has completed its post-Soviet transition from flawed democracy to highly militarized dictatorship.”
“Today, Russia is a country with a wartime economy and a population programmed to view the West in explicitly adversarial terms.”
“Russia will remain an enemy of the West until Putin leaves the Kremlin.”
“Until that moment,” he adds, “Europe will have to deal with the reality of Russian aggression.”
Like Hitler in the run-up to the last great war, Putin is racing to rearm in a crusade to recreate a lost empire.
NATO chief Mark Rutte, while sketching out the escalating dangers posed by Putin and his expansionist campaign last summer, told military experts who gathered in London: “Because of Russia, war has returned to Europe.”
Sounding an alarm aimed at defense planners across all 32 NATO nations, Rutte said: “Russia is reconstituting its forces and producing more weapons faster than we thought.”
During Rutte’s world-watched talk at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Secretary General warned:“Putin’s war machine is speeding up, not slowing down.”
“In terms of ammunition, Russia produces in three months what the whole of NATO produces in a year.”
With Moscow’s exploding war machine, production rates of nuclear-capable missiles and of kamikaze drones and tanks are skyrocketing.
“Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO within five years: FIVE YEARS!” Rutte warned.
NATO’s chief added the Allies need to speedily turn out many more missiles and interceptors, and more tanks, even as they modernize their air forces and air defense systems.
To underscore the urgency of his call to arms, Rutte declared: “History has taught us that to preserve peace, we must prepare for war.”
Atlantic Council defense scholar Peter Dickinson agrees: “Russia only understands the language of strength. NATO must find ways to project strength in a manner that Russia will be unable to ignore.”
