Ted Jeffery is co-founder of Defence On The Brink
Vladimir Putin has never shied away from sabre-rattling. It’s almost become his raison d’être. Speaking after a Moscow investment summit, he declared that if Europe wants to fight a war, then Russia is ready now.
“We’re not planning to go to war with Europe, I’ve said that a hundred times,” he says. “But if Europe suddenly wants to fight us and starts, we’re ready right now. There can be no doubt about that.”
We’ve seen this trick before. It’s nothing new from Mad Vlad’s handbook, and it appears his tough talk comes off the back of NATO finally growing a pair and threatening pre-emptive strikes on Russia.
It was Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the head of NATO’s military committee, who said: “Being more aggressive or proactive instead of reactive is something that we are thinking about.” Left-leaning CND types, who have just come back from their inaugural Your Party conference, may indeed spill their fair-trade goji berries when hearing those words being uttered. But for those of us who know about the sacrifices Ukraine has and continues to make to repel Putin’s forces, it is long overdue.
A “pre-emptive strike” could be considered a “defensive action”, according to the Admiral, but he went on to say it was “further away from our normal way of thinking and behaviour”. Good. NATO’s usual way of thinking has been less about creating an effective deterrence and more about collective finger wagging.
Deterrence is all about having the capability and demonstrating the will to use such capability. What Putin has seen is that the West cannot even commit to helping Ukraine win. The inconsistent delivery of ammunition, equipment and aid shows the West is not even willing to do that.
After all, it was the Biden administration that refused to transfer Polish MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine because it would be a “high risk” step that could ratchet up tensions with Russia. Plus, Germany’s lack of will by failing to provide their Taurus missiles and not forgetting the still $300bn of frozen Russian assets sitting in a Brussels bank, when it could be sent to Ukraine.
NATO’s chronic spinelessness has been the West’s slowest-burning tragedy.
Since 2022, there have been more than 70 cases of Russian drones and jets violating NATO’s airspace. Most recently, on 25th November, a Russian drone flew 70km into Romania and parked itself in a farmer’s field, the deepest NATO penetration yet, and still no one pulled the trigger. Norway responded to three violations in 2025 by doing precisely nothing in public. The incursions were kept secret for up to six months to avoid escalation before being revealed at a North Atlantic Council meeting in late September.
We are 25 times the size of Russia. That’s what NATO chief Mark Rutte likes to remind us. It reeks of complacency. And so what if Russian pilots are, as Rutte says, “famously bad”? Does that mean we should not assertively enforce our borders on incompetent foes?
NATO’s Rules of Engagement for airspace violations remain peacetime-focused: detect, identify, intercept, and escort. However, Poland and the Baltics have grown tired and frustrated after 70+ incursions, instead pushing for a more proactive defence, allowing faster lethal responses without full NATO chain-of-command delays.
17 seconds. That’s how long a Russian Su-24 fighter jet lasted in Turkish airspace before being shot down by two F-16s back in 2015. As you’d expect, Putin was in a fit of rage at the time, and his Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, branded the response by Ankara as a provocation and ambush. The Kremlin responded with a package of economic sanctions, but after a year, Moscow folded, and there was zero escalation between the two states. Thus proving that a single unambiguous act of violence, delivered early, calmly and without apology, is the cheapest form of deterrence known to man.
Total war with Russia is what’s going on. Hybrid war, grey zone warfare, call it what you want. The terms suggest we are engaged in some sort of lesser war. The war Russia is waging on Europe is all-encompassing. The cyber attacks, incursions, and spy ships off the coast of Scotland are acts not just of espionage but of war.
For far too long, NATO has allowed Russian drones and jets to treat its airspace like a revolving door. Only to be met with parking attendant levels of moral outrage and presented with a metaphorical, sternly worded ticket that reads: “Please, would you mind awfully leaving our airspace?”
Every time the West has shown teeth, whether it’s supplying HIMARS, ATACMS, Storm Shadow, Challenger Tanks, Putin has cowered and stayed in his box. It is going to take a hell of a lot more than the words of one NATO Admiral to convince anyone of the alliance’s willingness to cease the finger wagging and slap Russia down instead. As Churchill once said, “If we fail to resist here, all will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age”.
