US presses NATO allies to accelerate defense readiness amid Russian hybrid attacks

The United States is pressing NATO allies to accelerate defense spending and military readiness amid leaked intelligence suggesting Russia could launch a limited assault on a member nation within the next few years, even as Moscow wages a widening campaign of hybrid attacks across Europe.

In an exclusive interview with USA Today at NATO headquarters in Brussels, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker said allies must treat the threat as urgent. "You can't predict what Vladimir Putin's going to do or any adversary. All you can do is be prepared for it and deter and make it not worth their time to make that move," Whitaker said. He added that Russia remains "pretty occupied with the situation in Ukraine" and would need years to reconstitute the forces it had before its 2022 invasion, but stressed: "We should know that our adversary invaded Ukraine, and so we should all be pretty clear-eyed."usatoday

Hybrid Attacks Escalate Across Europe

The warnings come as a string of incidents has put NATO members on edge. On Monday, Germany publicly attributed a drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport to Russia, where up to three drones loaded with explosives were discovered near Ukrainian cargo planes in early August. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the incident followed "a well-established pattern of Russian hybrid operations in Europe." Germany responded by closing the Russian consulate in Bonn and shutting down a Russian cultural center in Berlin.thenightly+1

Air raid alerts were activated overnight on Monday in Estonia after drones entered the country's airspace, an incident Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna attributed to Russia. Romania's president blamed Moscow for a naval drone found near an offshore gas facility in the Black Sea. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte backed Germany's findings, saying "the evidence is clear," and announced plans to meet with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday to coordinate a European response.usatoday+1

A Growing but Contested Threat

The classified intelligence, first reported by The Wall Street Journal News Corp ↘ 2.36%, indicated that Russia could have the capability to mount a limited attack on NATO territory sooner than the 10-to-15-year timeline the alliance had previously assumed. CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow last week to deliver what officials described as a direct warning to the Kremlin. Russia denied any plans to attack NATO, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling the reports baseless.theweek+1

President Trump dismissed the prospect, telling reporters, "He's not going to be attacking a NATO territory." But Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski was unconvinced, noting that Putin had similarly assured the U.S. he would not invade Ukraine.usatoday

Germany's Chief of Defence Force, General Carsten Breuer, acknowledged that NATO is failing to deter Russia's sub-threshold attacks. "We are deterring on the conventional side," he said at the Bled Strategic Forum in Slovenia. "We are not deterring — not deterring enough — in this sphere of hybrid attacks."thenightly

Fiona Hill, former senior director for Russian affairs on the National Security Council, framed the stakes plainly: "These acts of sabotage are pretty significant, and they are acts of war."usatoday