Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the world during the United Nations General Assembly last week. He said that Russia “constantly threatens Poland and the Baltic States” and warned that “Russia may go further into Europe, even into NATO territory.” Zelensky then insisted that “leaders have intelligence showing Russian intentions.”
It is not the first time the specter of Russian expansion of the war beyond the borders of Ukraine into a European NATO member nation has been raised without much evidence. Zelensky had previously made the claim himself, as did President Joe Biden and a host of Biden officials. European leaders have also made the claim, as have NATO leaders.
The claim isn’t just often made without evidence, it’s sometimes coupled with countervailing evidence. Two years into the war, America’s then-Ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, said that countries in the alliance must “help Ukraine push Russia out of its territory” or else there is “the concern is that Russia will feel compelled to keep going.” To Smith’s credit, she also conceded that “we do not have indicators or warnings right now that a Russian war is imminent on NATO territory, and I really want to be clear about that.”
A credible claim that Russia is planning a conventional attack on a NATO country would have to overcome two daunting objections.
The first is practical. Russia is bogged down in a seemingly endless war of attrition in Ukraine. Though it has the ability and technology to potentially engage in a hybrid war of sabotage and cyberattacks against Europe, without a significant mobilization, Russia simply lacks the manpower to engage in a conventional war with another country, let alone a country with an Article 5 agreement that could draw in all of NATO including the U.S.
The second is geopolitical. Russia did not go to war with Ukraine as a springboard to a larger war with NATO. In fact, its key goal in going to war with Ukraine was to avoid a war with NATO, as Russian, Ukrainian and NATO officials have acknowledged.
Weeks before the Russian invasion, Putin said,
[BLOCK]It is written into Ukraine’s doctrines that it wants to take Crimea back, by force if necessary…. Suppose Ukraine is a NATO member…. Suppose it starts operations in Crimea, not to mention Donbass for now. This is sovereign Russian territory. We consider this matter settled. Imagine that Ukraine is a NATO country and starts these military operations. What are we supposed to do? Fight against the NATO bloc? Has anyone given at least some thought to this? Apparently not.[/BLOCK]
Just days before Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Putin repeated the point.
More deceptive than Zelensky’s claim that “Russia may go further into Europe, even into NATO territory” is his claim that “leaders have intelligence showing [those] Russian intentions.” They do not.
General Alexus Grynkewich, head of U.S. European Command and NATO Supreme Allied commander Europe, said in June that there is no need for concern about Russia expanding the war by attacking a Baltic country because “Russia is not looking for a conflict” and they wouldn’t “risk” something when they “understand that… they won’t succeed.”
Asked about warnings of Russia attacking a Baltic country, Ulf Kristersson, prime minister of nearby Sweden, agreed: “We don’t see any signs of that.”
In the Baltics, Estonian intelligence assesses that “Russia has no intention of militarily attacking Estonia or any other NATO member state in the coming year” and that “we are likely to reach a similar assessment next year.” Latvia’s President Edgars Rinkevics says his country has no reason to think that Russia is planning a conventional attack on a NATO state. Raivis Melnis, Latvia’s minister of defense, explains that “we currently have no information indicating an imminent military attack against Latvia or NATO… There is no reason to create unnecessary fear.” Normunds Mezviets, head of Latvia’s state security, said simply, “We see no signs of an imminent attack.” And the head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre, which monitors security threats from within the prime minister’s office, assesses that “at present there are no grounds for assessing that large-scale military action against Lithuania or other allies is imminent.”
Two European intelligence sources recently told the Times of London that there was no evidence of a Russian plan for expanding the war circulated within NATO. Senior members of the UK military concurred. European government and intelligence officials similarly told Bloomberg that they had seen no evidence of a pending Russian attack on the alliance.
At the end of September, even the rhetorically uber-hawkish NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte toned down the hysterical warnings: “That threat is not there, and if anything happens, we are ready to counter it.”
As Europe becomes more directly involved in the war in Ukraine, including by offshoring Ukrainian drone production to European countries, possibly making those facilities military targets in Moscow’s eyes, the real risk that Russia might escalate sabotage and cyberattacks is rightly being taken seriously by defense and intelligence officials. Nevertheless, the larger claim, repeated by Zelensky at the General Assembly, that Russia is planning an imminent conventional attack on a NATO country is, for now, recognized by the relevant political and intelligence officials as alarmist and invalid. It is also a dangerous attempt to keep Europe motivated to stay in the war in Ukraine.
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