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ANALYSIS: NATO Faces the Ukrainian Bill; Twenty-Five Years of Russian Tests Ignored

Jacques Pj Provost

2026-06-20 16:23:56

From Chechnya to Mariupol: A Continuous Path

Let’s be clear. Moscow hasn’t been testing NATO since 2022. Moscow has been testing NATO since the late 1990s. The Second Chechen War in 1999 set the pattern: maximum violence, disregard for humanitarian law, official lies, and no Western sanctions worth mentioning. Vladimir Putin learned a clear lesson from this. European capitals would speak out, condemn the actions, and then go back to business as usual. He has applied this lesson methodically: Georgia in 2008; Crimea in 2014; Donbas in 2014; Syria in 2015; Ukraine in 2022. Each step was a test. Each test confirmed that the political cost would remain manageable. Each silence fueled the next bold move.

Serious analysts have been repeating this for years, and their warnings lie dormant in reports that no one reads in cabinet meetings. The Gerasimov Doctrine, formalized in 2013, already explained how to combine hybrid warfare, cyberattacks, disinformation, migratory pressure, and limited military operations. The cutting of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, election interference in France, Germany, and the United States, poisonings on British soil, drones now crossing the Latvian and Romanian borders—all of this paints the same picture. It is not a series of incidents. It is a strategy. A patient, coherent, and formidably effective strategy—as long as the opposing side refuses to recognize it for what it is.

Ukraine as a Testing Ground, Not as an End Goal

Those who imagine that the war in Ukraine is Moscow’s ultimate goal are looking at it from the wrong perspective. Ukraine is a laboratory. A full-scale laboratory where the Russian military is testing its Shahed drones, its hypersonic missiles, its infantry tactics, its electronic jammers, and its saturation operations. It is learning. It is adapting. It is rebuilding itself faster than Western intelligence agencies had anticipated. The Russian defense industry is now operating around the clock, funded by a military budget that exceeds 7% of GDP, according to SIPRI estimates. This is not the economy of a country preparing for peace. It is the economy of a country preparing for what comes next.

Former Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid, quoted in the same diplomatic report, used a phrase I’d like to see posted in every European ministry. Ukraine, she said, has become a military power with immense production capabilities that must under no circumstances be allowed to fall into Russian hands. That is the real stake. If Kyiv collapses, it is not just a country that falls. It is drone production lines, expertise in electronic warfare, and units seasoned in high-intensity combat that switch sides. The strategic balance of the continent would then shift in an instant. And NATO, which today hesitates over a few billion, will tomorrow have to find hundreds of billions to repair what it has let slip away.

I often think of this image: a neighbor who has been knocking on the door for twenty-five years, trying every window, pushing every latch—and here we are, still debating the price of the alarm. There is something almost unbearable about this collective stubbornness in refusing to see.

Section 3: The Cold Mathematics of European Defense

What Is the True Cost of Doing Nothing?

Let’s talk numbers, because that’s where the debate lies. Total military aid provided to Ukraine since February 2022 by all Western allies exceeds 280 billion euros, according to the Kiel Institute. That seems like a colossal amount. In reality, it’s a fraction of the combined defense budgets of NATO countries, which exceed $1,400 billion annually. In other words, providing military support to Kyiv over three full years amounts to the equivalent of just a few months’ worth of their combined defense budgets. The financial sacrifice that some governments complain about is, in reality, statistically marginal. What’s holding things up isn’t the money. It’s political will. It’s fear of public opinion. It’s the illusion that a partial U.S. withdrawal could be offset by promises.

In his speech in Stockholm, Rutte hinted that U.S. military commitments in Europe could still change. To put it bluntly: Washington will continue to reduce its presence, and the Europeans will have to take over. Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, has raised the possibility of Ukraine’s associate membership in the European Union. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO Secretary General, speaks of a necessary new mindset and a chief negotiator to revive a diplomacy that no longer exists. All of this points to the same conclusion. Europe must come of age strategically, and it must do so now, not in five years.

Capabilities, Not Just Percentages

Czech President Petr Pavel, a former general and former chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, offered the most accurate observation of this discussion. What matters is not the percentage of GDP allocated to defense. It is actual capabilities. A country that spends 3% of its GDP on military personnel salaries but has no ammunition, no drones, no air defense, and no high-intensity combat logistics is useless. Russia now produces more shells in a single month than the entire European NATO alliance does in a year. It is this industrial asymmetry that should be the primary concern of governments, not disputes over how funds are allocated.

Pavel also made a statement that should be etched in our minds. Peace in Europe is no longer a given. For thirty years, we believed it was. We dismantled armies, closed munitions factories, and forgot how to wage conventional war. We confused the end of the Cold War with the end of history. Yet history never stopped. It was simply waiting for us to let our guard down. If Ukraine is forced into a bad peace, Pavel warned, we will all live with the consequences for decades. This statement is not a figure of speech. It is a strategic projection. A bad peace means a strengthened Russia, a crippled Ukraine, an exposed Central Europe, and a clear message sent to all authoritarian regimes around the world: the West will negotiate if you press hard enough for long enough.

There is a kind of comfortable cowardice in telling ourselves that all of this will be resolved through diplomacy. Diplomacy without a balance of power, I have come to understand, resembles a theater where one recites lines to an adversary who isn’t listening.

Section 4: The Baltic Sea as a Silent Front

Drones, Disinformation, and the War of Nerves

While ministers were debating in Stockholm, the Baltic states were experiencing a day typical of this new normal. Latvia confirmed a drone incursion into its southeastern airspace before finally lifting the alert. Lithuania continued searching for a drone whose origin remained unclear. Belarus claimed that a Lithuanian drone had violated its border, an accusation immediately disputed by Vilnius. Estonia summoned a Russian diplomat to protest a disinformation campaign aimed at portraying the Baltic states as facilitators of Ukrainian attacks. The Polish foreign minister made it clear: Russia has no right to falsely accuse the Baltic states.

This string of incidents is not just noise. It is a signal. The European Commissioner for Defense put it clearly: Moscow is putting pressure on the Baltic states in the hope of discouraging public opinion from supporting Ukraine. It’s a tried-and-true method. Flood the media with ambiguous incidents. Blur the line between provocation and accident. Force governments to constantly justify themselves. Plant the idea in the public’s mind that continued support for Kyiv will eventually trigger an uncontrollable escalation. And in the meantime, gain ground on the front lines, meter by meter, city by city.

The Greek Incident and the Fragility of the Coalition

A telling detail slipped into the day’s diplomatic proceedings. The Greek defense minister demanded an apology from Ukraine after a stray naval drone reportedly drifted into a sensitive area. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson immediately defended Kyiv, pointing out that Russia was exploiting every incident to fracture the Western coalition. The Polish defense minister, taking a more cautious approach, called on Ukraine to be precise in its use of drones so as not to fuel Russian provocations. These tensions are predictable. They are also extremely dangerous, because they give Moscow exactly what it is looking for: internal points of friction within NATO.

Hungary, for its part, has announced a limit of eight years on the prime minister’s term of office, in an institutional move whose strategic significance remains a matter of debate. In France, Emmanuel Macron is facing pressure over the issue of restorative justice related to France’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. Every capital has its own domestic issues, electoral constraints, and budgetary priorities. But none of these concerns can halt Russia’s machinations. Geopolitical time moves at a pace that parliamentary schedules cannot keep up with. It is precisely this gap between strategic urgency and democratic slowness that Moscow exploits with cold-blooded skill.

I look at the map of incidents in the Baltics almost every evening. And I wonder how many more drones, how many more severed cables, and how many more spy flights it will take before a European capital finally utters the word that no one wants to say: hybrid war.

Section 5: What NATO Must Do Now

Invest heavily, ramp up industrial production

The time for promises is over. What NATO must do now amounts to a wartime industrial effort. Expand production lines for artillery shells, drones, and anti-aircraft missiles. Standardize calibers to facilitate Ukrainian resupply. Fund strategic stockpiles over a ten-year period, not just one annual budget cycle. Reactivate factories that have been closed since the end of the Cold War. Train tens of thousands of technicians in the maintenance of complex weapon systems. All of this comes at a cost. All of this takes time. But all of this is less costly than a Ukrainian defeat followed by a direct confrontation on Alliance territory.

This assessment is now widely shared among military analysts. To achieve a credible deterrent capability against a Russia operating under a war economy, European NATO countries would need to increase their military spending to 3.5 or even 4 percent of GDP over the next decade. This is the level of effort Western Europe made at the height of the Cold War. This is what France did under General de Gaulle. This is what Poland and the Baltic states are doing today. The rest of the continent must follow suit, or accept that its security depends on the goodwill of a U.S. president whose commitments become more uncertain with each passing quarter.

Breaking Free from U.S. Dependence Without Breaking the Alliance

The challenge is a delicate one. We must strengthen NATO’s European pillar without giving Washington a pretext for total disengagement. We must source from European suppliers without penalizing American suppliers, who remain essential. We must develop a continental defense industry without unnecessarily duplicating existing capabilities. The European Commission has launched several initiatives to this end, including SAFE and EDIP, but their scale remains insufficient given the magnitude of the challenge. The budgets allocated to joint arms procurement and the modernization of industrial bases would need to be increased fivefold, perhaps tenfold.

Above all, we must face an unpleasant truth. Russia is not waiting. It is not negotiating in good faith. It is rebuilding its forces while we debate. German, Danish, and Estonian intelligence agencies estimate that Russia could develop the capability to project power against a NATO country within five to eight years. Five years is the length of a term in office. Eight years is the timeframe for a major arms program. If we decide today, we’ll be in time. If we decide in two years, we’ll be too late. If we wait for a crisis to decide, we’ll have lost before we even begin.

I conclude this piece with a weighty certainty. Ukraine is not just a Ukrainian matter. Nor is it a European matter in the narrow sense. It is our last concrete bulwark before war ceases to be an abstract word for the residents of Berlin, Paris, Madrid, or Rome. Either we pay the price now, or our children will pay a price I cannot even bring myself to write down.

Signed, Jacques Pj Provost, columnist