Why Putin Must Now Escalate His Conflict with NATO

By Matthew Parish

Friday 25 September 2026

The proposition that Vladimir Putin must now escalate his conflict with NATO sounds, at first sight, like a prediction of an imminent Russian invasion of NATO territory. That is not the argument. Nor is the word ‘must’ intended to imply that escalation is desirable, rational in any absolute sense or inevitable. Rather Putin has manoeuvred himself into a strategic position in which continued escalation with the West increasingly follows from the political system, military economy and ideological narrative he has constructed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Kremlin may have powerful reasons not to fight NATO directly, but it also has increasingly powerful reasons not to allow the confrontation with NATO to subside.

This distinction is essential because Russia and NATO already inhabit the broad and uncomfortable territory between peace and conventional war. NATO says that Russian airspace violations, cyber-attacks, sabotage and other hostile activities against member states and their infrastructure have increased, while the Alliance has responded by substantially reinforcing its eastern flank. In September 2026 NATO’s senior military leadership publicly referred to Russian airspace violations, drone incidents and hybrid activities as attempts to test Allied resolve. European governments have likewise accused Russia of intensifying sabotage, cyber-attacks and other hybrid operations, although some European officials have simultaneously argued that Moscow does not presently possess the capacity for a direct conventional assault upon NATO.

It is within this space between peace and war that Putin’s strategic predicament is becoming steadily more dangerous.

The war that became larger than Ukraine

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 initially pursued objectives overwhelmingly concerned with Ukraine herself. Moscow sought to overthrow or subordinate the Ukrainian state, reverse its increasingly Western political orientation and impose a settlement that would permanently constrain Kyiv’s sovereignty. The original Russian military operation appears to have been designed to achieve these objectives rapidly. Instead Ukraine survived, Russia’s initial offensive failed and the war became something far larger than the Kremlin apparently anticipated.

The strategic consequences have been remarkable. Finland and Sweden joined NATO, Western military expenditure increased and NATO substantially reinforced its eastern frontier. The Alliance now maintains multinational forces across its eastern flank and has expanded air policing, surveillance and air and missile defence arrangements. NATO launched Eastern Sentry following repeated Russian airspace violations and established a ninth multinational forward land force in Finland in June 2026. The invasion intended to reverse the strategic consequences of NATO enlargement therefore contributed to precisely the opposite outcome.

For an ordinary government this might provide a reason to reconsider the assumptions upon which the original policy was based. Putin’s Russia is not an ordinary government. After years of war, repression, military expenditure and political mobilisation, an admission that the confrontation had produced strategic results contrary to those intended would raise awkward questions about the sacrifices imposed upon Russian society. Putin therefore needs an explanation for why the original objectives remain unfulfilled, and the proposition that Russia is engaged in a much larger historical struggle against the collective West provides one.

NATO has consequently acquired a peculiar role in contemporary Russian political mythology. The Alliance is portrayed simultaneously as decadent yet terrifying, divided yet expansionist, militarily weak yet capable of threatening Russia’s existence. These propositions are logically difficult to reconcile but politically useful because NATO can thereby explain virtually every Russian strategic difficulty. Ukraine becomes not principally the enemy but the battlefield upon which Russia confronts a much larger Western adversary.

The transformation is politically convenient because it changes the criteria by which the war is judged. If Russia were fighting merely Ukraine, then years of inconclusive warfare against a neighbouring country would invite obvious questions about Russian military performance. If Russia is instead fighting the accumulated military and economic power of the Western world, then merely continuing the struggle can itself be presented domestically as evidence of extraordinary Russian resilience.

The problem of strategic exhaustion

Putin nevertheless faces a difficulty familiar to governments that organise political legitimacy around permanent emergency. Emergencies eventually become ordinary. Russian society has now experienced years of wartime rhetoric, military casualties, sanctions, mobilisation, drone attacks, censorship and enormous defence expenditure. Circumstances that would have appeared extraordinary before February 2022 have gradually become features of everyday Russian political life.

Once emergency becomes normal, however, its capacity to mobilise society diminishes. Governments that depend upon external danger to justify internal discipline therefore face a temptation periodically to demonstrate that the danger remains immediate. The enemy must continue to appear dangerous enough to justify sacrifice, repression and military expenditure, while not becoming so dangerous that confrontation threatens the survival of the state itself.

This creates an extraordinarily narrow corridor for Russian strategy. Putin has compelling reasons to avoid a conventional NATO-Russia war because such a conflict would introduce enormous military risks and the possibility of escalation between nuclear powers. Yet he may simultaneously have powerful reasons to intensify confrontation beneath the threshold at which NATO would collectively conclude that Russia had initiated an armed attack upon the Alliance.

The resulting strategic landscape is immense. Cyber operations can become more disruptive, sabotage more ambitious, electronic warfare more intrusive and intelligence operations more aggressive. Aircraft and drones can approach or enter NATO airspace. Critical infrastructure can be threatened or damaged. Political interference and disinformation can become more sophisticated. None of these actions necessarily requires Russia to cross unmistakably into conventional war, yet each can increase the political temperature of the confrontation.

This is not merely theoretical. NATO says Russian drones and aircraft have repeatedly violated Allied airspace and in August 2026 condemned incidents affecting Poland and Romania as dangerous and unacceptable, describing them as evidence of Russia’s increasing tolerance for risk. European officials have meanwhile described a wider pattern of sabotage and cyber activity while distinguishing those operations from preparations for an imminent conventional attack.

The attraction of such operations lies precisely in their ambiguity. Every incident poses the same question to NATO governments: is this enough? Is it enough to justify retaliation, additional sanctions, military deployments, Article 4 consultations or ultimately collective defence? If different NATO governments answer those questions differently, Moscow learns something important about the political architecture of the Alliance.

Testing NATO without fighting NATO

The Kremlin does not need to defeat NATO militarily to damage it strategically. Indeed attempting to defeat NATO in conventional war would represent an undertaking of a wholly different order from Russia’s campaign in Ukraine. A more plausible objective would be to demonstrate that NATO’s collective-defence guarantee becomes politically uncertain when confronted with deliberately ambiguous provocations.

That distinction goes to the heart of deterrence. NATO’s strength consists not merely of soldiers, aircraft, missiles and nuclear weapons. It rests upon an expectation that potential adversaries believe an attack upon one member will provoke an effective collective response from the others. If Moscow could introduce serious doubt into that expectation, it might obtain a strategic result vastly disproportionate to the military resources required.

The most dangerous Russian operation against NATO might therefore be one deliberately designed not to look quite like an attack. A mysterious explosion, an unattributed cyber operation, an unidentified drone, an underwater infrastructure incident or a confrontation involving irregular personnel creates political uncertainty of a kind that an armoured invasion does not. NATO governments must decide not merely how to respond but what exactly has happened, who is responsible and whether the incident crosses the legal and political thresholds around which collective defence is organised.

Russia could learn from every such episode. One government might demand retaliation while another counsels investigation. A third might favour economic measures while a fourth fears that any response could begin an escalation cycle. The Kremlin could observe these differences and adjust subsequent operations accordingly, probing the Alliance in increments rather than confronting it directly.

This is why apparently minor incidents can become disproportionately important. Their strategic significance lies not necessarily in the physical damage they cause but in the political information they reveal.

The escalation ladder

Putin’s most rational form of escalation, viewed from the Kremlin’s perspective, is consequently incremental rather than spectacular. A Russian invasion of Poland or Estonia would remove ambiguity instantly and present NATO with the clearest possible test of collective defence. A drone entering NATO airspace, a damaged telecommunications cable or a cyber-attack whose attribution remains contested for several weeks creates an altogether more complicated problem.

NATO itself increasingly describes Russian activity in these terms. Its eastern-flank strategy refers to growing airspace violations, cyber-attacks and acts of sabotage, while its senior military leadership said in September that Russian behaviour was testing Allied resolve. Yet NATO’s response also demonstrates the fundamental danger for Moscow: repeated pressure can strengthen rather than weaken an alliance. Eastern Sentry has brought additional aircraft, air-defence systems, surveillance capabilities and naval assets to NATO’s eastern members.

This creates a peculiar contest in which both sides are trying to influence the other’s perception of risk. Moscow may seek to persuade NATO that continued support for Ukraine brings increasingly uncomfortable consequences closer to Allied territory. NATO seeks to persuade Moscow that such behaviour merely produces greater Allied military readiness and cohesion. Neither side necessarily desires direct war, but both have incentives to demonstrate that intimidation will not cause them to retreat.

Such circumstances are historically dangerous because signalling is imperfect. Actions intended by one side as warnings may be interpreted by the other as preparations for something larger. Measures intended as defensive may appear offensive. Each side may convince itself that the next incremental step is necessary precisely because failing to take it would encourage further pressure from its opponent.

Ukraine remains the centre of the confrontation

Ukraine nevertheless remains indispensable to understanding why Putin might escalate pressure upon NATO. Russia can improve her position in Ukraine in two fundamentally different ways. She can destroy Ukrainian military capacity directly, or she can attempt to weaken the international coalition that supplies Ukraine with money, weapons, intelligence and political support.

The second approach may sometimes be cheaper than the first.

A Russian drone destroyed over Ukrainian territory is principally a military event. A Russian drone entering NATO airspace becomes a political event simultaneously in Warsaw, Bucharest, Brussels, Washington and other Allied capitals. It provokes debates about air defence, military expenditure, escalation and the risks associated with continuing support for Ukraine. If the incident creates fear or political disagreement without generating a decisive NATO response, then Russia may obtain political advantages without achieving anything substantial on the battlefield.

European officials have explicitly interpreted recent Russian hybrid activity in this way. EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas said this week that Moscow was seeking to frighten European countries into reducing support for Ukraine, while other European ministers described Russian sabotage and cyber operations as part of a broader campaign against Western cohesion. This remains an interpretation of Russian intentions rather than independently verifiable knowledge of Putin’s private calculations, but it accords with the incentives Moscow confronts.

Fear can sometimes accomplish what military force cannot. If European electorates gradually become convinced that supporting Ukraine exposes them to sabotage, cyber-attacks, airspace violations or ultimately war with Russia, domestic pressure for accommodation might increase. Moscow does not necessarily need Europeans to become sympathetic towards Russia; it needs enough of them to become frightened of the consequences of opposing it.

The distinction is important. Russian strategy does not require ideological conversion. Strategic exhaustion may be sufficient.

The American question

Behind the entire confrontation stands the United States. European NATO members have substantially increased their defence commitments since Russia’s full-scale invasion, but American military capabilities remain central to the Alliance. Any Russian strategy intended to weaken NATO must therefore pay particular attention to differences between Washington and European capitals.

Those differences have become increasingly significant. The United States is reviewing aspects of its military engagement in Europe, while European governments are preparing for the possibility that they may eventually have to assume substantially greater responsibility for their own defence. Reuters reported this month that the United States still maintains roughly 80,000 military personnel in Europe, even as Washington reviews deployments and presses European Allies to shoulder more of the burden.

From Moscow’s perspective, the most valuable strategic outcome would not necessarily be territorial conquest. It would be persuading Europeans that American protection had become uncertain while persuading Americans that European security crises were dangerous commitments from which Washington ought to distance itself. Such a development would attack NATO at its conceptual foundation because collective defence ultimately depends upon political confidence as much as military capability.

Yet here Putin encounters the same contradiction repeatedly. Pressure can divide alliances, but excessive pressure can strengthen them. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine helped persuade Finland and Sweden to abandon longstanding military non-alignment and join NATO. Subsequent Russian behaviour has encouraged further military reinforcement along precisely the frontier whose expansion Moscow has spent decades condemning.

The Kremlin therefore confronts an optimisation problem of exceptional difficulty. It must apply enough pressure to expose differences within NATO without applying so much that those differences disappear.

The dictator’s trap

This brings us to the deeper reason why Putin may now feel compelled to continue escalating the confrontation. Over time he has systematically reduced his own political room for retreat. A Russian leader who had maintained a more limited account of the Ukrainian war might eventually declare that Russia had achieved sufficient objectives and seek a negotiated normalisation with Europe. Putin has instead increasingly presented the struggle as part of a much larger confrontation between Russia and a fundamentally hostile Western order.

If that confrontation suddenly disappeared, the ideological structure built around it would become harder to sustain. Russians might reasonably ask why such extraordinary military expenditure remains necessary, why political repression must continue and what exactly the sacrifices of the preceding years achieved. Every additional year of war compounds this problem because every additional sacrifice requires retrospective justification.

This is one of the recurring pathologies of personalised authoritarian government. Foreign policy gradually becomes entangled with the biography of the ruler. Policies cannot easily be abandoned because acknowledging their failure would also undermine the political authority of the person who created them.

Putin cannot effortlessly repudiate the geopolitical worldview around which he has organised the latter years of his rule without repudiating a substantial part of his own political legacy. Escalation postpones that reckoning because every new confrontation explains yesterday’s failures and justifies tomorrow’s sacrifices. Another Western threat demonstrates why military expenditure remains essential, why domestic dissent remains dangerous and why Russia supposedly cannot return to ordinary politics.

The confrontation therefore begins to perpetuate the political system originally constructed to conduct it.

Escalation has its own contradiction

Yet escalation may also defeat its own purpose. Every Russian provocation gives European governments another argument for increasing defence expenditure. Every sabotage operation encourages greater counter-intelligence cooperation. Every airspace violation strengthens the case for additional air defence. Every attempt to frighten European societies about Russia risks convincing those societies that the Russian threat is more serious than they previously believed.

NATO says precisely this process is taking place. The Alliance has strengthened its eastern flank with additional forces, surveillance systems, air policing and air-defence capabilities, while NATO’s leadership says Russian pressure has reinforced rather than broken Allied unity. Whether that unity would survive a prolonged series of more serious incidents is unknowable, but Russian pressure has plainly generated substantial additional military preparation.

Nor should escalation automatically be interpreted as evidence of Russian strength. Grey-zone operations are attractive partly because conventional confrontation is so dangerous. Russia remains deeply committed militarily in Ukraine, and European officials cited by Reuters this week distinguished Moscow’s expanding hybrid campaign from its present ability to undertake direct conventional aggression against NATO.

Escalation below the threshold of war may therefore represent constraint as much as confidence. Russia may probe NATO precisely because fighting NATO conventionally would be vastly more dangerous.

The most dangerous moment

The greatest danger facing Europe is consequently not necessarily that Putin will wake one morning and decide deliberately to begin the Third World War. Governments seldom describe their own decisions in such theatrical terms. The more plausible danger is incrementalism, in which every individual step appears manageable and every subsequent step becomes justified by the response to the previous one.

A drone crosses a border and nothing catastrophic happens. Another follows. A railway is sabotaged. A computer network fails. An aircraft enters disputed airspace. A military patrol encounters another. A telecommunications cable is damaged. Eventually somebody is killed and governments disagree about whether the event was deliberate, accidental or deniable. Each incident is individually containable until one of them is not.

The danger then becomes reciprocal. Moscow may conclude that failure to escalate after a NATO response would demonstrate weakness, while NATO governments may conclude that failure to respond firmly would invite the next Russian provocation. Neither side needs to desire a general war for both sides to begin climbing an escalation ladder from which descending becomes progressively more politically difficult.

This is why the proposition that Putin ‘must’ escalate should be understood as an observation about the strategic architecture he has constructed rather than an assertion that Russia has no alternative. Russia plainly possesses alternatives. Negotiation, military restraint and eventual accommodation with Ukraine and Europe remain political possibilities. The difficulty for Putin is that each may impose increasingly serious costs upon the ideological narrative that has come to legitimise his political system.

He therefore confronts an unpleasant equation. A full war with NATO would expose Russia to catastrophic risks. Genuine reconciliation with NATO might undermine the political mythology upon which years of mobilisation have increasingly depended. Between those two alternatives lies the seductive middle ground of permanent controlled confrontation: sufficiently dangerous to sustain the narrative of an existential Western enemy but supposedly calibrated enough to avoid the consequences of outright war.

The flaw is contained in the word ‘controlled’. International crises are not laboratory experiments. Machines malfunction, commanders misunderstand orders, intelligence assessments are wrong and governments misinterpret one another’s intentions. A strategy based upon repeatedly approaching an adversary’s red lines assumes an extraordinary degree of precision in circumstances inherently characterised by uncertainty.

Putin may therefore have strong political incentives to continue climbing the ladder while believing that he can always stop one rung before catastrophe. NATO’s challenge is correspondingly difficult: it must make the costs of further escalation sufficiently predictable to deter Moscow without creating precisely the uncontrolled confrontation that deterrence is intended to prevent.

The danger confronting Europe in September 2026 is therefore subtler than the proposition that Russia has decided to invade NATO. Current public evidence does not establish that conclusion, and some European governments explicitly assess that Russia presently lacks the capacity for direct conventional aggression against the Alliance. What the evidence does show is an intensifying pattern of airspace violations, sabotage allegations, cyber activity and other forms of pressure that NATO itself describes as testing Allied resolve.

The more disturbing possibility is that Moscow does not need to decide upon a war with NATO at all. Putin need only conclude that Russia benefits from repeatedly approaching the boundary between peace and war, watching how the Alliance responds and then moving the boundary a little further. Such strategies can appear remarkably successful because each individual escalation remains manageable and because every previous crisis eventually subsides.

They work until the occasion upon which one does not.