Senior NATO commander warns Putin is becoming more cavalier and open to risk as Ukraine war drags on

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin is becoming "increasingly cavalier, dangerous and risk accepting," as his war in Ukraine drags on and as he seeks to divide Western allies, NATO's deputy commander in Europe said Tuesday.

Air Chief Marshal Sir John Stringer spoke to The Associated Press at a security conference in Estonia amid warnings from some European leaders that Moscow is planning to test NATO's collective defense pact with bolder attacks that have already included sabotage and espionage.

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Stringer warned that NATO members need to be aware of the "febrile environment" and be careful in their response because Putin would like to provoke the alliance into an "overreaction."

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last week that Russia might target NATO nations with deliberate drone or missile strikes while claiming they were accidental. French President Emmanuel Macron agreed and has asked his government to prepare a plan to protect critical infrastructure against potential drone attacks and cyberattacks.

Other European officials say the threat from Russia is serious but have called for calm.

A British defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters, said the U.K. assessment is that Putin is not seeking direct confrontation with NATO. Officials in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which border Russia, also have been more cautious about the prospect of a serious escalation after years of calling on Western nations to adopt a more hawkish approach to Moscow.

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"Ukraine is fighting. Russia is absorbed in Ukraine. We do not observe any buildup near our borders. And from that part, I think that most would agree that the perspective of direct military attack is not correct," Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics told a small group of reporters late Tuesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, dismissed any concerns that Russia may be testing the transatlantic military alliance, telling the AP following a panel discussion in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday evening that "Putin does not want a conflict with NATO."

He said drone incursions into countries like Romania or Poland were largely the result of electronic warfare and unintentional but noted that hybrid activities like sabotage "are more concerning." Whitaker also warned against "overreacting" because "that's exactly what I think our adversaries would want or hope for."

European countries have already faced multiple incursions of Russian drones — and several missiles — as well as a campaign of covert Russian disruption which began after Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

An AP interactive map tracking that campaign shows the escalation, from 59 incidents in March 2025 to more than 210 incidents ranging from vandalism, propaganda and influence operations to arson, sabotage and cyberattacks.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told the AP in Iowa that Putin "knows that the United States and Europe are totally intertwined."

"We have to make sure that we are prepared, we are strong, and he knows it. And if he does anything silly, he knows our reaction will be tough," Rutte said.

Russia is already testing NATO defenses

In August, German officials accused Moscow of being behind a plot at Leipzig airport where a drone with explosives was found next to a Ukrainian plane laden with jet fuel. Last month, British officials said they disrupted a Russian plot to sabotage a drone factory outside London. In August, an Estonian defense company was set on fire and a weapons storage facility in Bulgaria exploded, though neither has been publicly attributed to Russia.

Many saboteurs have been recruited online by Russia's intelligence services and some have no idea they are working for Moscow. That makes uncovering a plot challenging and attribution often difficult. When asked by the AP in May if Russia was waging a covert campaign against the West, Putin responded: "Name one proven fact."

The line between "accidental and deliberate is quite a fine one," Stringer said, referring to incursions of drones sent off course into NATO airspace by Russian GPS jamming or other electronic countermeasures to defend against Ukrainian drone strikes.

It would be possible for Russia to escalate that activity but it does not mean Moscow has decided to do so, said Stringer, NATO's deputy supreme allied commander for Europe.

While there are "a lot of different opinions as to how acute the threat is ... Russia's attitude towards negligence" and deliberately targeting NATO neighbors "is almost the same," Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal told AP at the security conference.

Both Stringer and Michal suggested the increase in covert attacks by Moscow was not because of a failure by NATO nations to stop them but as a direct consequence of Western support for Ukraine.

Putin is trying to break NATO support for Ukraine, leaders say

Putin, Stringer said, is "looking at a whole number of things" to try to create division between NATO allies because his campaign in Ukraine is going badly.

Michal likened the Russian leader to a "rat in the corner," who is escalating activity in Europe in an attempt to break Western support for Kyiv at a time when Moscow is under pressure.

Russia's gains on the front lines in Ukraine have been slow and at a steep cost of more than half a million dead, even as Kyiv's deep-strike campaign targeting the country's energy industry has caused fuel shortages in 80 of 83 Russian regions, Air Chief Marshall Sir Richard Knighton, chief of the U.K.'s defense staff, said earlier this month. Still, there's no suggestion the Russian leader is backing away from his goals in Ukraine.

Baltic leaders like Rinkevics argue that Moscow will dig even deeper now as winter is approaching, saying that attacks on infrastructure are likely to increase over the next several months and that any possibility of diplomatic progress will likely not be seen until the spring.

Putin is trying to undermine NATO's collective defense pact by testing nations with covert attacks that are hard to attribute, Michal said.

But the Estonian leader said it's currently "improbable," that Putin will launch a conventional military attack on Europe because of the threat of a NATO response and because his forces are tied down in Ukraine.

The high level of malign activity from Russia is "here to stay" until Putin changes his military goals, Michal said, adding that the best way to deter him is to "back Ukraine."

Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri at the United Nations, Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.