European spy chiefs warn Russia planning escalated NATO tests within months

Three European intelligence chiefs sat down with reporters this past week in separate interviews across the continent, and what they had to say painted a picture of a continent bracing for something it cannot quite see coming. The warnings began with Poland's prime minister, Donald Tusk, standing before parliament to lay out what his country's intelligence assessments were telling him: Russia might be preparing to strike NATO territory with drones or missiles in the coming months. The goal, according to those assessments, would be to test whether Article 5—the alliance's collective defense clause—was anything more than words on paper.

Michal Koudelka, who runs the Czech Republic's BIS security service, was the most direct about the timeline. In a rare interview at the agency's Prague headquarters, he said a Russian attack could materialize in "months, not years." He laid out the possibilities: increased drone activity, a small-scale invasion of NATO territory that borders Russia, false-flag provocations, a massive influence campaign. All of it, he suggested, was possible. But he also noted that people across Europe were working hard to prevent exactly that scenario from unfolding.

Emmanuel Macron, France's president, called Tusk's warnings "sound and well-documented." On Friday, he summoned party leaders and 2027 presidential candidates to an emergency meeting in Paris to discuss, among other things, the growing intelligence picture of Russian threat. The timing was pointed: the UN General Assembly was about to convene in New York, and the war in Ukraine was intensifying on both sides, with Kyiv launching one of its biggest air attacks of the war just days before—hundreds of drones and missiles striking Moscow and other Russian regions in the early hours of Sunday.

But the intelligence leaders from the three Baltic countries—Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania—which actually border Russian territory, took a different tone. Normunds Mežviets, director general of Latvia's VDD state security service, said his country did not see indications of an imminent attack. Yes, there were signs that Moscow was preparing for more decisive action in Europe, he acknowledged. But it remained unclear whether those preparations represented concrete plans or simply part of a broader strategy to spread fear and uncertainty across western society. Jonatan Vseviov, Estonia's foreign ministry secretary general, went further, decrying what he called "panic on social media" about a possible attack. "If there is reason to fear an attack, rest assured: we will make that clear," he wrote. "Until then, keep calm, carry on and support Ukraine."

The Balts found themselves in an unusual position. For years they had warned western Europe about the Russian threat and been largely ignored. Now, with the west finally awake to the danger, they were urging restraint in public messaging. They feared that talk of an imminent invasion could damage their own economies and societies—and, more strategically, could play directly into what the Kremlin wanted: panic, uncertainty, fracture. Mežviets acknowledged the shift had been real. "Before 2022, we constantly warned our western European partners about the threat from Russia, but most of the time our voices were not listened to," he said. "In 2022, the approach changed. They said it turns out the Balts and the Poles had been right."

Neither Mežviets nor Koudelka would say what specific intelligence had prompted these warnings, or whether a surprise visit by CIA director John Ratcliffe to Moscow last month—with a stop in Riga—was partly an effort to warn the Kremlin about the costs of attacking NATO. The Kremlin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, dismissed the rumors. "It has nothing to do with reality and nothing to do with the intentions of the Russian Federation," he said. But Europe remembered 2022, when US officials repeatedly warned Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine and the Kremlin repeatedly denied it. The full-scale war that followed was now approaching its fifth winter.

What all three intelligence chiefs agreed on was that Russia's campaign of sabotage across Europe would intensify in the coming months. Thomas Nilsson, head of Sweden's military intelligence and security service, called the recent armed drone incident at Leipzig airport a "gamechanger." German authorities had attributed it to Russian intelligence. "To have an armed UAV drone sent in to a busy airport in the middle of Europe," Nilsson said, "if you have attacks that could result in losses of life or losses of very critical infrastructure that have a huge implication for society, I think that is a gamechanger." Mežviets described a shift in Russian targeting: away from randomized attacks meant simply to sow panic, toward specific targets linked to western support for Ukraine—railway infrastructure, defense industry facilities. "If you do this then the psy-op effect is reached anyway, so you get both things in one," he said. Koudelka added another dimension: the sabotage campaign was stretching the resources of European intelligence services. Every fire, every malfunction now had to be investigated as a potential terror attack. "That is a good result for them," he said. Nilsson saw multiple goals behind the intensification: reducing support for Ukraine, introducing splits within NATO, alarming European populations. "I think Moscow would love NATO to have endless discussion about Article 4 consultations, but coming up with no actions," he said. As for serious negotiations, Nilsson saw little evidence the Kremlin was interested. "My assessment is that they are still thinking that they could achieve their strategic objectives, so they are just playing negotiation theatre," he said.