{"id":222883,"date":"2026-09-02T22:17:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T22:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/us-urges-nato-allies-to-prepare-in-case-russia-attacks-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T22:17:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T22:17:57","slug":"us-urges-nato-allies-to-prepare-in-case-russia-attacks-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/us-urges-nato-allies-to-prepare-in-case-russia-attacks-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"US urges NATO allies to prepare in case Russia attacks – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

BRUSSELS \u2013 Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a> may not be planning an imminent assault on NATO nations, but the United States says its military allies need to train and invest like he is, so they\u2019re ready to fend off a sudden attack.
After leaked U.S. intelligence reportedly revealed that Russia could launch a limited assault, such as a land incursion or cyberattack, on a member country within the next few years, America\u2019s allies have been on high alert.
The warning contradicted assessments that<\/a> Putin would not attempt to draw NATO into a fight while he\u2019s battling Ukraine \u2013 and came amid concerns about a U.S. weapons shortage, as the Trump administration wages war on Iran.
In an exclusive interview with USA TODAY at the military alliance\u2019s headquarters in Brussels, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker declined to comment directly on the leaked intelligence, while stressing a need for allies to be vigilant in their defense spending and weapons production.
\u201cYou 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,\u201d Whitaker said. \u201cAnd I think we are preparing every single day to prevent that from happening, and if it does happen, to be ready for it.
\u201cWe should know that our adversary invaded Ukraine, and so we should all be pretty clear-eyed,\u201d Whitaker added.
Without commenting directly on the classified information, which first appeared in The Wall Street Journal,<\/a> people with knowledge of the assessments<\/a> described allies as having been startled to learn that Putin could have the ability to attack NATO nations sooner than they thought.
It\u2019s much quicker than the 10-15 years the alliance anticipated, one European official said, which is what the alliance had in mind when it set its most recent spending targets.\u00a0
Last year, NATO allies agreed to allocate 5% of their annual GDP toward defense by 2035. At least 3.5% has to go directly to military spending. The rest can go toward constructing roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure projects.
Russia is now battle-weary and isn\u2019t operating on the same timeline to ramp up its defense spending, the official said.
This was why some in the NATO alliance, including the United States, have been pushing allies to significantly speed up defense spending and production capacity.
\u201cWe need to exercise like it matters. We need to prepare, we need to invest in capabilities,\u201d Whitaker said in the USA TODAY interview.
Russia has had a rapid expansion of its defense production capabilities, while America and its allies have largely operated in a peacetime economy, experts and officials from allied nations said.
Putin has transformed Russia\u2019s economy to support the country\u2019s war against Ukraine. Nearly 40% of Russia’s federal spending<\/a> is allocated to defense and security, supporting the production of bombs and tanks that are sent directly to the frontlines.
\u201cWhere there\u2019s an asymmetry between Russia and NATO is that they are on a war footing and we\u2019re not,\u201d said Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. \u201cThey can produce a thousand cruise missiles. Our ability to provide air defense interceptors or produce them is just inept.\u201d
An unannounced visit late last week to Moscow by CIA Director John Ratcliffe stoked concern that Putin could move from taunting to testing the mutual defense pact of the NATO alliance sooner rather than later.
The spy chief reportedly warned<\/a> Russia against an attack on NATO territory. He\u2019s also said to have told Russia<\/a> it was losing the war against Ukraine and warned Moscow it should cut ties with Iran.
Russia denied Aug. 27 that it was planning<\/a> to attack NATO. “These reports have no basis in reality and do not reflect Russia\u2019s intentions,\u201d Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Russian state media publication TASS.
President Donald Trump<\/a> declined to say whether Ratcliffe delivered a message<\/a> about an attack on NATO when pressed on the visit. \u201cHe’s not going to be attacking a NATO territory,\u201d Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Aug. 27<\/a>.
The denials did not persuade everyone in the alliance.
Invoking former CIA Director William Burns\u2019 visit to Moscow before Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish minister of foreign affairs wrote in an Aug. 27 social\u00a0media post<\/a>: \u201cApparently, Putin\u2019s spooks told @CIA Director he would not provoke @NATO. Putin had told president Biden\u2019s CIA Director that he would not invade Ukraine. We should accelerate defence preparations.\u201d
A European official with knowledge of the conversations around Putin\u2019s capabilities told USA TODAY said that Ratcliffe\u2019s visit appeared on its face to be intended to send a strong, public signal to Putin. Ratcliffe arrived on a C-17 military jet, the official pointed out, that was able to be tracked.\u00a0
That doesn\u2019t mean a military attack is imminent, the person said, discouraging comparisons to Putin\u2019s reassurances before he amassed troops on Ukraine\u2019s border in 2021, saying they were different circumstances.
European officials believe Russia has already been testing NATO and is responsible for a series of hybrid attacks on member nations, including the discovery of explosive drones near a Ukrainian cargo plane at an airport in Germany and the presence of a naval drone near an offshore gas facility off the Romania’s Black Sea coast.
German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt publicly said on Sept. 1 that the attempted drone attack at the Leipzig airport last month follows a pattern of \u201cRussian hybrid operations.\u201d
Romanian President Nicus\u0326or Dan explicitly blamed Russia for the naval drone in a statement posted on social media, condemning \u201cthese types of irresponsible incidents on the part of the Russian Federation.\u201d
Air raids in Estonia were activated overnight on Sept. 1 after drones entered the country\u2019s air space, according to Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna, who attributed the incident to Russia.
\u201cThese acts of sabotage are pretty significant, and they are acts of war,\u201d said Fiona Hill, the senior director for Russian and European affairs on the National Security Council during the first Trump administration.\u00a0
\u201cPeople are constantly saying, \u2018Well, we\u2019re not at war. War is kinetic. They\u2019re not lobbing missiles on us,\u2019\u201d she added. \u201cBut that is exactly what Putin wants because it leaves everybody else defenseless and vulnerable.\u201d
While Putin is certainly testing the NATO alliance with what European officials view<\/a> as increasingly reckless attacks on countries close to Ukraine, they do not believe he is baiting NATO into a fight. They view Putin as trying to scare NATO nations into ending support for Ukraine, because they fear being pulled into the war.
Citing intelligence, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in a weekend interview<\/a> that Russia is suffering too many losses to open up a second front in the war.\u00a0
In reality, Putin is too bogged down to make good on that kind of threat, said Kurt Volker, special representative to Ukraine in Trump\u2019s first term and U.S. ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush.
\u201cTake an end to fighting in Ukraine and add three to five years. That’s your timeline,\u201d Volker said.
Bergmann said he doesn\u2019t believe Putin would attack a NATO country while Russian forces are \u201cbattered and bruised and bleeding\u201d from the war in Ukraine. But if the fighting starts to slow down and the Russian military is able to regroup, Bergmann said Russia could theoretically develop the capabilities to attack one of the Baltic states by 2028.
Russia\u2019s willingness to accept a large number of casualties would be another advantage in a potential large-scale attack against a NATO ally, according to Bergmann.\u00a0
\u201cIt would be, I think, a bad war for Russia, but their tolerance level for death and for casualties is just really both sickening and worrying,\u201d he said.\u00a0
In its war against Ukraine, Russia has also demonstrated a high tolerance for military casualties. More than 1.4 million Russian troops have been killed or wounded since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to a recent study by CSIS.
Pointing to the losses, Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said that currently, \u201cRussia is pretty occupied with the situation in Ukraine.\u201d
\u201cIt’s not going well. And it would take, even if an immediate pivot, it would still take years to reconstitute, to return to the pre\u20132022, pre-Ukraine invasion Russian army,\u201d Whitaker added.
The growing concern is that Russian forces now incorporate drone formations, large numbers of precision strike capabilities and millions of tactical drones, allowing it to conduct strikes or small, but painful, operations more effectively, said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow who specializes in Russian warfare at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.\u00a0
Russian military reconstitution \u201cis not a matter of if but of when,\u201d said Kofman.
(This story has been updated).<\/em><\/p>\n

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