Intel Warns Putin Could Test NATO With Limited Strikes as Ukraine War Pressures Kremlin
U.S. intelligence has revised its threat assessment on Russia, warning that Vladimir Putin may be willing to test NATO’s cohesion with limited military action along the alliance’s eastern flank, according to The Wall Street Journal.
New U.S. intelligence findings described by American officials say the Russian president could authorize anything from cyberattacks and unmarked armed groups to a small-scale incursion against a NATO member. The window for such a move could open as early as this fall and extend through 2029, the Journal reported Thursday evening.
Although a ground invasion is viewed as the least likely option, officials say the danger could grow the longer the war in Ukraine grinds on. The assessment marks a shift from the previous U.S. view that Putin would avoid directly provoking NATO while Russia remains tied down in Ukraine.
Concern has sharpened around the possibility that a cornered Putin, facing increasingly effective Ukrainian strikes and pressure to show results at home, could become more unpredictable. U.S. officials point to a pattern of Russian aircraft and missiles crossing into NATO airspace, including recent incidents over Poland and Romania, as evidence Moscow is already probing the alliance’s resolve.
NATO has responded by reinforcing its eastern flank, but the repeated airspace violations have also fueled political alarm in allied capitals. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said Thursday’s episode involving a Russian cruise missile in Poland and armed drones in Romania was no accident. “These tactics were a deliberate escalation aimed at coercing NATO to end its support of Ukraine,” Wicker said. He added that “Putin only understands strength and cost imposition” and called for stronger NATO conventional defenses and higher European defense spending.
The warnings come as Ukraine expands its own long-range strikes, including Thursday attacks on oil refineries hundreds of miles from its border, part of Kyiv’s effort to cripple Russia’s wartime economy. Russia claimed its air defenses shot down 605 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Intelligence officials are also weighing the state of U.S. arsenals after years of supplying Ukraine and conducting operations against Iran-linked targets. The Journal said inventories of certain critical missiles and air-defense interceptors have been depleted. The Trump administration disputes the idea that the United States is unprepared. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the military still holds a “deep, ready arsenal,” and warned that adversaries who mistake such reports for American weakness “will discover the truth the hard way.”
Analysts see the intelligence shift as a warning that Moscow is calculating how far it can go without triggering a broader war. A series of small-scale provocations could test NATO’s Article 5 commitments and expose political divisions in Europe and Washington. At a time when U.S. aid to Ukraine remains a political flashpoint, a deliberate Russian probe could force NATO into a difficult choice: absorb the provocation or respond in a way that risks escalation.