Russia Will Not Attack NATO

Russian and NATO Flags. Courtesy of Wiki Media Commons.

In an address to the Polish Parliament, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk blamed Russian intelligence for a railway line explosion on November 18, 2025. Tusk named the explosion — which damaged a railway line used to route military supplies to Ukraine —   among “the most serious incidents since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.” Warsaw described the blast as an “unprecedented act of sabotage,” and the investigation triggered immediate countermeasures, including the closure of Russian consulates and the deployment of additional troops to bolster infrastructure vulnerabilities.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Western nations have reported a steady escalation in Russian hybrid operations against EU and NATO members. Sabotage, undersea cable damage, cyber-attacks, covert recruitment, and interference have aimed to undermine European support for Kyiv and test the Alliance’s resilience. 

Other incidents indicate a coordinated campaign by Russia. Lithuania has reported renewed interference with undersea communication cables in the Baltic Sea, consistent with the pattern of Russian probing observed since 2023, but more frequent in recent months. Finland suffered from intensified GPS jamming emanating from Russian territory — which disrupted civil aviation and maritime navigation — following its full integration into NATO. Germany, too, faced ongoing sabotage attempts against its rail network, particularly on lines involved in eastbound military movements.

Russia’s hybrid operations in 2025 are not isolated incidents, but an integrated pressure strategy; each attack targets an area critical to the nation’s ability to sustain its respective society. However, while attacks on critical infrastructure have the immediate purpose of disrupting daily life, Moscow’s long-term strategy is to use hybrid warfare against Europe as a means to weaken Ukraine’s defense. 

Logistics, energy and communications infrastructure, and the credibility of NATO’s frontline readiness are the real targets of Russia’s hybrid warfare. These attacks support the assessment by European intelligence services that Russian hybrid operations rose substantially between 2024 and 2025, continuing the sharp year-on-year increase which “nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024.” Additionally, rather than foreshadowing an imminent conventional attack, this pattern suggests a deliberate Russian effort to remain below the threshold of open conflict while maximizing political, economic, and psychological disruption among the Alliance.

In September 2025, Former NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (DSACEUR), General Sir Richard Shirreff, predicted World War 3 would begin on November 3, 2025, with the Russian invasion of NATO member Lithuania. He envisioned power outages in the Baltics, rapid escalation to kinetic conflict, and the fall of NATO within 100 hours. As of November 23, 2025, no Russian conventional invasion of NATO territory has occurred, and there is no realistic scenario in which one will.

NATO has steadily reinforced its eastern flank in response to these hybrid and kinetic pressures through new patrols and vigilance activities (Baltic Sentry, Eastern Sentry), increased air policing and maritime surveillance, and rotational forces and exercises to raise deterrence. Currently, NATO maintains eight multinational battlegroups along its eastern flank, with a rotational force totaling approximately 40,000 troops; each battlegroup is scalable to brigade size, which consists of 5,000 troops. Additionally, beyond this forward presence, the 2025 NATO Force Model provides a high-readiness pool of up to 800,000 troops that could reinforce the eastern flank if required.

Additionally, NATO has long warned that hybrid operations (including significant cyber operations) could be treated as an armed attack under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Allied Declarations since the 2014 Wales Summit explicitly note that hybrid operations could reach the level of an armed attack and could trigger collective defense consultations. However, NATO does not automatically respond militarily because it remains committed to its defensive principles, and because it knows  Russia cannot wage a conventional war against the Alliance. NATO’s preference is to maintain peace through strength, utilizing deterrence, diplomacy, and sanctions as alternatives to direct military action.

On the contrary, Moscow’s preference for below-the-threshold tactics is meant to be disruptive rather than escalatory, and to deter and complicate Western support for Ukraine. Additionally, Moscow’s hybrid strategy provides several advantages by (1) testing NATO’s security and readiness; (2) projecting an image of military strength greater than Russia’s actual capabilities — even while engaged in the war in Ukraine; (3) baiting NATO into direct military action; and (4) manipulating the information domain to make the Alliance appear belligerent, since most observers have little understanding of hybrid warfare; and (4) indirectly testing NATO on behalf of China, as part of Moscow’s subversion to the Chinese, while diverting NATO attention from the Indo-Pacific. These benefits rely on operations staying below the threshold of full-scale conflict, as an all-out war with NATO would eliminate the strategic advantages that hybrid warfare provides.

Since its founding in 1949, NATO’s behavior toward Russia has been consistently defensive. The Alliance has actively sought engagement on security matters, including ICBM and nuclear issues. Russia, by contrast, has been reluctant to cooperate and, since 2014, has been increasingly belligerent and uncooperative. Moscow’s quagmire in Ukraine has driven it to rely on underhanded and increasingly desperate tactics, aimed at maintaining the illusion of Russian strength.