Numerous clear signs indicate that Russia is intensively preparing for a war with NATO. “It is highly likely that it will be a radically different conflict from the one Russia is currently waging against Ukraine,” writes Piotr Grochmalski in Gazeta Polska.
Plans for aggression against the Alliance are being developed at Russia’s National Defense Management Center (NCUO), located underground within the building of the Russian Ministry of Defense along Frunzenskaya Embankment. The Combat Command Group (GBU), a specialized unit within the NCUO, will likely be assigned a clear objective—not conquering extensive territories through a large-scale conflict, but conducting a specific type of military operation designed to “destroy NATO as a political and military entity capable of opposing the Russian Federation.”
Why not conventional warfare?
According to Russian strategists, achieving this goal does not require defeating NATO forces in an open, large-scale conflict or capturing Warsaw. The Russian General Staff recognizes that in such a conventional conflict, given the significant disparity in potential, Russia would inevitably be defeated. The February 2022 attack on Ukraine was initially planned as a rapid, three-day campaign aimed at seizing Kyiv and quickly overthrowing the Ukrainian government.
The first phase of that operation indicates that Vladimir Putin had a decisive influence over its design, deviating from traditional Russian military doctrine. Only on April 8, 2022, after the primary defeat of Russian invasion forces, did Colonel General Alexander Dvornikov, commander of the Southern Military District, assume overall command of the war.
As Mark Galeotti notes in his extensive biography, “Putin’s Wars”: “(…) something that should have happened before its start was eventually done. Increasingly, [Russian] generals appeared to have gained the freedom to conduct the war according to their own principles. By then, however, Russian forces were already decimated and exhausted.”
Fabian Hoffmann, a research analyst at the Oslo Nuclear Project, pointed out in a May 19, 2025, article in Foreign Policy that three years into the war, the scenario of a spectacular Russian victory “remains a Russian fantasy. Having suffered terrible losses and equipment depletion, Russian forces are bogged down along a static frontline hundreds of kilometers from Kyiv. Despite tactical gains over the past year, there are absolutely no signs of an imminent military breakthrough.”
Michael Kimmage, director of the influential Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, in a Foreign Policy article also dated May 19, 2025, assesses that “Ukraine is a catastrophe for Moscow. The Russian army is stalled in Ukraine, with casualties continuously rising. Slowly, though not yet suddenly, Russia is beginning to lose the war.”
He emphasizes that for months, Russia has tried and failed to capture the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk. Its defeat has come with immense losses: it is estimated that since the war’s outset, approximately 790,000 personnel have been killed or wounded (plus 48,000 missing), including over 100,000 casualties just this year. By the end of 2025, at this rate, Russia will have more than one million casualties, with no strategic improvement compared to 2022. Putin lacks any straightforward means to alter this trajectory, which—if unchanged—will result in a stalemate. The main war zones, territories controlled by Russia in Ukraine, provide no material advantage to Moscow.
The Strategic Dilemma of Russia’s Weakness
The depiction of Russia’s military weakness appears to starkly contradict NATO’s warnings that the alliance must be prepared to counter a Russian attack on one or more of its members within the next three to seven years. According to Politico, the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) considers a scenario highly probable wherein “within six months after the end or freezing of the conflict in Ukraine, Russia could wage a local war against a bordering country; within two years, it could initiate a regional war in the Baltic Sea region; and within five years, it could launch a large-scale assault on Europe, provided the U.S. does not engage.” These seemingly conflicting images—Russia as militarily bogged down in Ukraine and simultaneously an existential threat to NATO, particularly to Eastern European countries—are seemingly irreconcilable.
Yet, according to Fabian Hoffmann, Moscow will strive to avoid a full-scale war with NATO, instead aiming to undermine the alliance’s resolve. Analysis of Russian strategic documents supports Hoffmann’s assertion that contrary to Russia’s belligerent propaganda, Moscow’s political and military elites understand that Russia would likely lose a full-scale conventional war with NATO, even without U.S. involvement. Thus, avoiding a prolonged, attritional conflict and securing a rapid, advantageous resolution is crucial for Russia.
Within Russian strategic practice, the previously mentioned NCUO serves not only as a strategic command hub, equipped with an extensive primary command center and several smaller ones for potential simultaneous operations, but also as a data collection point integrating intelligence from all government and intelligence agencies, linked to an immense computational unit. For this complex operation targeting NATO, the Combat Command Group (GBU) was established, led by planners from the Main Operational Directorate. Their operations require broad cooperation with various services, as significant activities involve psychological warfare and hybrid strategies.
This strategy is contextualized by the ongoing war in Ukraine and aligns with Russia’s increasing shift toward an isolated dictatorship. Andrei Yakovlev, Vladimir Dubrovskiy, and Yuri Danilov highlight this in their article published on May 16, 2025, in Foreign Affairs:
“The war in Ukraine is central to Putin’s legitimacy, leaving him no rational incentive to end it voluntarily. At least since late 2022, the Kremlin has framed its war in Ukraine as a ‘war with NATO,’ making confrontation with the West a cornerstone of the regime’s ideology. Truly ending the conflict will likely require regime change in Moscow—driven by domestic actors who neither benefit from the war nor align with Putin. Current U.S. efforts to initiate peace talks have largely sidelined the critical question of a long-term strategy toward Russia, both under Putin and after him.”
Russia-NATO Conflict Scenario
Nearly 18 years have passed since August 12, 2008, when the late Polish President Lech Kaczyński articulated in Tbilisi, Georgia, a strategic forecast that accurately anticipated Russia’s military objectives: “We know very well that today it is Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, the day after tomorrow the Baltic states, and perhaps later, time for my country, Poland.” After the 2014 conflict with Ukraine, General Sir Richard Shirreff, then Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, published a scenario in 2016 predicting a war between Russia and NATO by 2017 involving the former Soviet Baltic republics—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. President Kaczyński’s assessment proved more accurate than the British general’s prediction. Russia is now preparing for its next move—an operation targeting the post-Soviet Baltic states.
Fabian Hoffmann suggests that Russian planners are preparing for an operation in which “the primary efforts would focus on undermining NATO’s determination and its readiness to resist. Russia will likely opt for a short, intense campaign aimed at breaking NATO’s political cohesion. The goal would be to limit the confrontation to a local level, involving at most one or several NATO countries, and swiftly conclude it.” Hoffmann, affiliated with both the University of Oslo and the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), describes a plausible Russian aggression scenario against NATO. According to him, the strike would target one of the weakest NATO territories, focusing on one or several Baltic states that following the initial attack, Russia could declare that any attempt to retake the occupied territory would trigger nuclear escalation—a strategy military analysts term ‘aggressive sanctuary.’ To reinforce this threat, Russia might arm and disperse several missiles equipped with tactical nuclear warheads, declaring readiness to launch at any moment. If NATO prepared a counterattack, Russia could escalate further by attacking civilian infrastructure deep in Europe with conventionally armed missiles, signaling that continued resistance only raises the costs. If Russia decided further escalation served its interests, a nuclear warning strike against European rear areas could not be ruled out.
Such a scenario could likely include a tactical nuclear strike on selected targets in Poland, echoing General Shirreff’s previous NATO strategic war-game scenario. Shirreff predicted Russia would use nuclear blackmail to deter Western countries, including Poland, from intervening, with NATO hesitating too long and acting only when facing disaster.
Instead of Suwałki Corridor, an attack on Latvia
Following Russia’s 2014 aggression in Ukraine, NATO’s strategic planning for the Baltic region focused on the Suwałki Corridor, between Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast and Belarus, and a potential strike on Narva, an Estonian town dominated by ethnic Russians. Meanwhile, Russia shifted its military planning from linear operations to deceptive, flanking maneuvers aimed at tactical unpredictability. A turning point was the revelation, reported by Time on February 29, 2025, that Europe “would struggle to assemble” even a 25,000-strong military force as peacekeepers if the Ukraine conflict froze.
Western analysts now suggest Russia might strike from Belarus through Daugavpils, Rezekne, and Jelgava towards the coastal town of Tukums in western Latvia. NATO has only recently started reinforcing this direction. As Łukasz Milewski noted in Military Review:
“If Russia executes an offensive along this route, it might not only result in a tactical surprise but also cause a strategic shock capable of fracturing the entire Baltic defensive line and isolating Riga.”
Aggression in the Name of Protecting the Russian Minority
Putin’s security services have for years attempted to destabilize Latvia by exploiting the country’s half-million-strong Russian minority, which makes up a quarter of the population. As Hlib Parfonov, an analyst at The Jamestown Foundation, notes that a key element of the current transformation in the Baltic region is the gradual erosion of Latvian sovereignty at the municipal level. In the eastern districts, especially in Daugavpils and Rezekne, the central government is increasingly facing sabotage of its decisions. Local authorities refuse to comply with orders to dismantle Soviet symbols, avoid publicly supporting national and allied initiatives, and sometimes directly confront Riga. This essentially creates autonomous zones… within Latvia.
Bartosz Chmielewski, an analyst at the Centre for Eastern Studies, highlights the rapid pace of demographic and identity erosion in Latvia, which is leading to the emergence of ethnically and politically isolated communities in the main cities of the Latgale region, which no longer see Riga or Brussels as centers of authority.
This region—one of five in Latvia—is of strategic importance to national security, as it borders both Russia and Belarus. Kiryl Kascian, an analyst at the Prague-based International Centre for Ethnic and Linguistic Diversity Studies, points out that frequent incidents of resistance to mandatory conscription into the Latvian army, schools rejecting the shift to the Latvian language, and local media favoring Russian narratives—all strengthen the effectiveness of Russian Federation influence over the local community.
Aggression in the Name of the Defense of Russian Minority
Henrik Praks, an analyst at the Helsinki-based European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, one of the world’s leading institutions on hybrid threats, warns that these processes driving Latvia’s disintegration create a high potential for legitimizing a Russian external intervention under the guise of internal state instability. As he emphasizes, a destructive scenario might not begin with tanks but with the appearance of so-called “representatives of society,” protests against central decisions, splits in local administrations, and—once a crisis is declared—the introduction of a military “protective shield,” allegedly to “restore order.”
This blurs the line between internal and external conflict—a line that gives the adversary room to maneuver while leaving the defending side with only difficult dilemmas on how to respond.
Hybrid War and the Calculus of Aggression
As previously mentioned, Hlib Parfonov notes that as a result, a situation emerges in which external intervention can be portrayed not as an invasion, but as a response to internal disintegration. This is an extremely dangerous mechanism. It does not require immediate territorial occupation—it merely exploits the existing erosion of vertical authority and identity. Thus, at the onset of open conflict, the adversary may already control the information domain, administrative structures, and public narrative—and will therefore act not as an aggressor, but as a ‘restorer of order’.
Eitvydas Bajarūnas, an analyst at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), stresses that Russia is waging an intensive hybrid war against the three Baltic states. Bajarūnas—a former Lithuanian ambassador to the United Kingdom, Russia, and Sweden, and an advisor to the Lithuanian Seimas NATO Committee—notes that hybrid threats are specifically designed to operate below the threshold of open aggression, thereby avoiding the activation of NATO’s Article 5 by Lithuania, Latvia, or Estonia.
In this way, the Kremlin avoids the risk of direct confrontation with NATO while freely disrupting the Baltic states without triggering a military response. Hybrid tactics escalate gradually, often appearing as isolated incidents rather than coordinated attacks, which makes a full-scale military reaction difficult to justify or execute.
Only in the NATO Summit Declaration issued in Washington in 2024 were hybrid threats formally recognized as a key security challenge for the Alliance. The declaration from July 10, 2024, emphasized that hybrid operations can reach a threshold that may activate Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. This acknowledgement significantly increased the risk of Russia employing such tactics against the Baltic states.
Nevertheless, the Kremlin is unlikely to abandon its ambitions in this region, which may prove crucial to NATO’s future. Using relatively limited forces, Russia could potentially seize Latvia’s Latgale region and apply pressure on the Alliance.
According to Fabian Hoffmann, such an attack would be a high-stakes gamble. It would be based on the assumption that, as NATO’s resolve weakens under pressure from escalating conventional and nuclear threats, possible missile strikes deep into Europe’s rear, along with accompanying sabotage and other grey-zone operations, the Alliance would effectively capitulate. Russian decision-makers likely don’t anticipate uniform capitulation across NATO. They almost certainly expect strong resistance from some members, especially those in Eastern Europe. Nonetheless, the Kremlin may believe that the United States and key Western European allies—when faced with real consequences on their own territory—will hesitate and refrain from defending their partners. Any reluctance to defend an attacked NATO member would amount to the de facto collapse of the Alliance—Russia’s primary goal and a prerequisite for asserting regional dominance.
This means that the decision to attack one or more NATO member states in the Baltics will depend less on the actual balance of military power and more on how the Kremlin perceives the West’s determination to use force. That is why Putin seeks to demonstrate to NATO members that Russia holds a decisive advantage in this regard—hence, he cannot afford to retreat in the war against Ukraine.