Buying time: Can NATO be ready for Russia by 2027?

EUROPE / RUSSIA / USA

As Moscow escalates its shadow war, NATO is racing to close its defences before the danger of direct confrontation grows.

RUSSIA risks triggering a direct conflict with NATO as it pushes its shadow war in search of the alliance’s red lines, a leading Sibylline analyst has warned.

Alexander Lord, Sibylline’s Lead Europe Analyst, says Moscow is deliberately testing how far Europe will allow it to go as it seeks to deter Western support for Ukraine, but does not yet know what would provoke a decisive NATO response.

The danger, he says, is that Russia continues escalating until it discovers that threshold by crossing it.

Sibylline assesses that the risk of an open Russia-NATO confrontation, currently 25-35%, could rise to a “realistic possibility” of 40-50% from mid-2027.

Europe is racing to close dangerous gaps in its defences while seeking to avoid an escalation for which it is not yet ready.

Lord says there is “an element of playing for time” in Europe’s cautious response to Russian grey-zone operations, although many policymakers have yet to fully accept that Europe and Russia are already engaged in such a conflict.

“The Leipzig incident exposed in the clearest possible way that Germany’s drone defences are wide open,” Lord says.

Counter-drone capabilities across Europe remain in their “relative infancy”, he adds, creating a dangerous mismatch between rapidly developing offensive technology and the ability to defend against it.

That race was thrown into sharp relief during Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s visit to Kyiv last week.

Britain agreed to provide Ukraine with blueprints for classified components of the Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missile, potentially allowing Kyiv to accelerate domestic production.

At the same time, Britain became the first country to gain access to Ukraine’s Avengers AI Labs and four years of battlefield data gathered from drone operations, strike missions and flight profiles.

The data will initially train AI-enhanced sensors around an undisclosed British defence site, with the technology potentially protecting airports, railways and power grids.

Lord cautions against viewing the agreements as a straightforward exchange, saying they demonstrate how the relationship has evolved. He assesses that the Storm Shadow blueprints will “significantly accelerate Ukraine’s own domestic cruise missile design and production timelines”.

Moscow has responded with increasingly explicit threats.

After reports that British-manufactured drones had been used by Ukraine for deep strikes inside Russia, the Russian embassy accused Britain of escalating the conflict and warned of consequences.

Kremlin adviser Andrei Fedorov subsequently raised the prospect of “semi-military” operations against UK-linked defence companies and drone manufacturers, with facilities in Swindon and Suffolk considered particularly exposed.

Earlier this month, explosive-laden drones were used in a failed attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport, a major logistics hub. One was discovered near a Ukrainian Antonov cargo aircraft, while another is suspected of colliding with a DHL cargo plane.

The subsequent discovery of another drone carrying 50g of military-grade explosive suggested the perpetrators may have planned an even larger attack. German investigators suspect Russian involvement, although Moscow denies responsibility.

Berlin has so far stopped short of publicly blaming Moscow. But Chancellor Friedrich Merz says his government will shortly announce who it believes was responsible and has warned that the perpetrators will “pay”.

Lord says that could prove significant. European governments have traditionally been cautious about attributing grey-zone attacks directly to Russia. Naming Moscow would make it harder for Berlin simply to absorb the attack, potentially forcing it to demonstrate that such operations carry a cost.

“It’s becoming harder to claim plausible deniability given the sheer scale and breadth of the grey-zone war which is being waged across scores of countries’ borders,” Lord says.

And that goes to the heart of the danger. Russia is testing not only what it can get away with, but what Europe will actually respond to.

The stakes were underlined last week when CIA Director John Ratcliffe made an unannounced visit to Moscow, the first known US-Russia intelligence contact of its kind since November 2021.

While the purpose remains unclear, Sibylline assesses it was most likely intended to warn Moscow against testing NATO, although Lord cautions that other explanations, including Iran, cannot be discounted.

US intelligence assessments reportedly point to Russia potentially testing NATO’s collective defence commitments before the end of the decade.

Sibylline identifies 2027 as a particularly dangerous year.

Crucially, Russia would not necessarily need to end its war in Ukraine before testing the alliance.

Lord says a fresh Russian mobilisation would be an important warning sign.

It would take months to generate additional forces and indicate that President Vladimir Putin was prepared to accept the domestic political costs of putting Russia on a broader war footing.

Such a move could increase Moscow’s capacity both to sustain its campaign in Ukraine and generate forces capable of pressuring NATO.

Whether NATO will be ready may therefore depend as much on political decisions at home as Moscow’s timetable.

Across Europe, critical vulnerabilities remain, particularly against drones and other grey-zone threats, raising the risk that Russia could test NATO before those gaps are closed.

In Britain, Chancellor John Healey has declined to set a date for defence spending to reach 3% of GDP, despite arguing as defence secretary that the target should be met by 2030.

Current plans would see spending reach 2.7% by then.

Nor would confrontation necessarily begin with Russian tanks crossing a NATO frontier.

It could be triggered by a missile strike, large-scale physical or cyber sabotage, the seizure of commercial shipping or a deliberately ambiguous territorial incursion forcing NATO governments to decide whether Moscow has crossed the threshold requiring a collective response.

Russia does not want a full-scale war with NATO, Lord says. But its efforts to discover what Europe will tolerate risk producing precisely that outcome.

“Until the Russians perceive that either they have crossed a red line or are rapidly approaching it, they will continue to escalate until they discover where that is,” he says.

“The fear is they won’t learn where the it is until they cross it.”