Russia does not have the capacity to fight a war with NATO. Despite Western fears of an attack, and despite what appear to be diplomatic efforts to forestall some kind of action, the Russian military remains overstretched and unable to achieve Putin’s minimum objectives in Ukraine. Even a limited war with NATO while Russia is bogged down in Ukraine would leave the country exposed to attack across its borders with Finland, Poland, and Ukraine, as well as to aerial strikes on strategic targets that Ukraine has failed to destroy. This does not mean Russia lacks real grievances, or a desire to take what it sees as revenge against NATO for acting as a quasi-belligerent in Ukraine. Russia may still act on those beliefs. Its ability to respond in kind, however, is limited by the military balance between NATO and Russia.
The Logic of an Attack on NATO
From the Russian perspective, the logic of an attack on NATO would be to restore deterrence and threaten a larger conflict with the West after years of gradually deepening Western involvement in Ukraine. What began as limited weapons deliveries and intelligence support has evolved into a deeper partnership that now includes regular large-scale attacks on Russian cities. The full extent of Western involvement in that campaign is murky, but Ukraine would not be able to produce these weapons at scale without safe havens in Western countries. Peskov recently went so far as to say that European nations are “directly participating” in attacks on Russia. From Moscow’s point of view, stopping those attacks requires a more violent and decisive response—a classic instance of the security dilemma.
In theory, a Russian attack using its most battle-hardened troops, together with missile strikes deep inside NATO territory, could produce initial victories. After four and a half years of war, Russia has troops with modern battlefield experience and a greater capacity for complex missile and drone strikes against rear areas. Success is not guaranteed, however, and NATO is better prepared to fight Russia than it was in 2021. Gambling on limited early gains in a war with NATO would court disaster for Russia in the short, medium, and long term.
Russian Limitations
Even with full-scale mobilization, the Russian army would struggle badly and risk losing Russian territory in a war with NATO. A little-explored aspect of this problem is Finland’s accession to NATO, which would put key parts of Russia at risk in much the same way that Russia can put large Ukrainian cities at risk. That does not even account for the technological superiority of NATO aircraft and the problems it would create for Russia.
The primary limitation is simply the size of the Russian army. As recently as June 2026, Putin said at a Kremlin event that the fighting contingent in Ukraine numbered only 700,000 men. On paper, he has increased the army’s authorized strength to more than 1.5 million soldiers. The same decree also authorizes roughly 800,000 additional civilian positions within the army’s established strength. By Putin’s own account, the number of men fighting in Ukraine is less than half the force allocated to the army. That would not be enough for a war with NATO while fighting in Ukraine continued.
Russia has built military infrastructure along the Finnish border and in Belarus that could put large industrial sites and airbases in Europe at risk. Finnish officials have estimated that, with this infrastructure, Russia could now deploy about 80,000 troops on the Finnish border. At present, however, there is little open-source reporting of preparations at these sites for larger military action. Given the visible Russian buildup before the invasion of Ukraine and given the spread of commercial satellite imagery and public scrutiny since then, any serious preparation along NATO borders would likely be identified early.
The most recent Polish figures put the Polish army’s on-paper strength at about 220,000. That number is slightly misleading. Polish sources estimate the actual peacetime front-line contingent at 65,000 to 70,000 soldiers. In a war, a country of more than 37 million people such as Poland could mobilize far more given time, much as Ukraine has done.
Finland, which relies on trained reservists, could mobilize rapidly. On paper it has more than 800,000 trained reservists. Those figures should be treated with caution given Finland’s population, but the country could still field hundreds of thousands of soldiers if required. Since joining NATO, Finland has moved quickly to integrate into Alliance infrastructure. In any war with NATO, limited or otherwise, Finland would be a well-defended staging ground for attacks deep inside Russia. Together with Sweden, it is already strengthening plans to counter drone attacks similar to those used in Ukraine.
In a war with NATO, bases in Murmansk, Leningrad Oblast, and near the Baltic borders would be key logistics nodes. One-way attack drones, combined with Finland’s access to advanced stealth aircraft, would put much of that infrastructure at risk. Russia would not merely face strikes on targets such as Wildberries; it would face attacks on the homes of key government figures and on major military factories, including those that assemble important missiles. NATO would suffer deadly air attacks, but it has the means to destroy or disable key production facilities that Ukraine simply does not possess.
Russia would struggle even in a limited war involving only the NATO countries closest to its borders. An initially successful blitzkrieg against the Baltic states would not solve Russia’s core security dilemmas; it would make them worse. The arrival of troops and matériel from the rest of NATO would all but ensure a Russian defeat in a conventional war over the medium term. That does not even account for what Ukraine would do. A NATO-Russia war would give Ukraine some of its best opportunities to retake territory.
What Russia Could Do
Direct attacks on NATO, even if they produced only a limited war with some Alliance members, would be deeply dangerous for Russia. Short-term satisfaction from striking drone-manufacturing sites that supply Ukraine could give NATO a rationale for more open involvement and trigger an escalation spiral. Russian leaders have shown themselves capable of overconfidence and misperception, but the material situation still precludes Russia from carrying the war into the rest of Europe while Ukraine remains unconquered.
Instead of direct attacks, limited or otherwise, Russia will have to rely on less decisive measures that are unlikely to stop support for Ukraine in any meaningful way. It is almost certain to keep hiring people over social media to carry out sabotage. Those attacks are not strategically decisive, and they are not a mirror of the damage Ukraine can inflict on Russia with Western help. Recruits hired online can conduct reconnaissance and similar tasks, but they are less skilled than the professionals behind operations such as the Skripal poisonings.
So far, Russia has not responded to Western seizures of Russian-linked vessels in the so-called shadow fleet, or to the mysterious sinkings of ships linked to Russia’s arms trade off the European coast. Under international law, Moscow has some grounds to call these acts illegal, since the vessels are not under UN sanctions but under the sanctions of individual states. Putin’s threat to respond in kind is one of the more immediate steps Russia may take to restore what it sees as deterrence.
An expansion of attacks on European officials—such as alleged plots to assassinate defense officials helping Ukraine—is another way Russia may increase pressure without striking weapons factories or launching larger military attacks on NATO territory. In theory, that would make officials more reluctant to support Ukraine. Russia already faces attacks in Moscow and has not yet succeeded in kind. Officials in European countries could prove easier targets than Ukrainian officials in Kyiv.
Russia has many options short of war for pressuring European states to limit support for Ukraine. As the past decade of Russian policy has shown, however, those actions are rarely interpreted as Moscow intends and often produce blowback. The strategy is likely to continue as long as Russian leaders believe it will eventually work. Europe can expect continued aggressiveness. The use of military force against NATO countries, however, could prove even more self-defeating for Russia than the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
