At a security conference in Tallinn, NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander sounded a measured alarm: Vladimir Putin, worn by the grinding weight of an unresolved war, is growing more willing to gamble — and that recklessness may be the point. The Alliance now faces not the clarity of open conflict, but the deliberate fog of covert provocations, drone incursions, and deniable sabotage designed to test whether collective defense can hold when the enemy refuses to show its face.