© Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
Recently, operators from the Department of Active Operations and the Department of Unmanned Systems of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine carried out a joint deep-strike operation with the Ukrainian Defence Forces, during which another oil refinery on Russian territory was struck. The refinery in question is ‘Slavyansk-ECO’, located in […]
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The Ukrainian Defense Forces struck the Volgogradpromproekt facility in the Russian city of Volgograd during the night of September 11. Ukraine used FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles in the attack. This was reported by Fire Point on its Telegram channel. The Flamingo cruise missiles successfully reached their intended target. The Dnipro OSINT community reported on Telegram […]
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Satellite imagery and new data reveal the aftermath of the recent strike on Novorossiysk. As a reminder, during the night of September 9, Ukraine’s Defense Forces – including the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Unmanned Systems Forces, Ukrainian Navy, the GUR Defense Intelligence active operations department, and the State Border Guard Service – attacked a […]
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Specialists from Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence Directorate (DIU) conducted a cyberspace operation targeting the aggressor state of Russia, during which they obtained a large dataset containing information on the structure, existing and planned developments, management, and employees of the Moscow Institute of Heat Technology (MIT) corporation. The MIT corporation includes, among others, the Prozhектор Design Bureau, […]
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The United Kingdom has allocated £100 million ($135.1 million) for a new winter air defense package for Ukraine. According to a press release from the UK Ministry of Defence, the package includes Patriot missiles. As part of the joint PURL (Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List) initiative, the UK will provide air defense interceptor missiles, large-caliber artillery […]
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At the MSPO international exhibition in Poland, the Ukrainian unmanned systems developer UKRSPECSYSTEMS unveiled an attack drone with an X-shaped wing for the first time. It is reported that the RAM-2X system has already proven itself to the military, but had previously remained classified due to security restrictions. To demonstrate the operation and effectiveness of […]
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The Ukrainian side has called on the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to urge its member states to completely suspend air traffic over the territory of the Russian Federation. The appeal came a day after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that flying there was becoming absolutely unsafe. On Tuesday, senior Ukrainian officials announced plans to step […]
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On September 1 and during the night of September 2, 2026, Ukraine carried out strikes against a number of military targets belonging to the Russian aggressor. According to the official Facebook page of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the attack was successful, with Ukrainian Defense Forces units striking enemy ammunition and […]
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The reason for CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s recent surprise visit to Moscow hasn’t been officially revealed. However, indications suggest that at least part of the unusual trip was meant to warn the Kremlin against possible provocations targeting NATO.
Given its current situation, the idea that Russia might deliberately pick a fight with NATO right now seems, on its face, absolutely insane.
Moscow has failed to achieve anything close to its original objectives in Ukraine. Its military remains heavily committed there, and Kyiv is increasingly taking the war inside Russia, creating additional economic and political pressure on the Kremlin.
Why the hell would Putin want to pick a fight with NATO now?
For starters, there’s an important distinction between provoking NATO and actually wanting to start a war with it. The former may very well be the objective. The latter is something Putin almost certainly wants to avoid.
A deliberately murky incident designed to test NATO’s political resolve and widen the growing divide between the United States and Europe, however, is a different story.
Take, for example, a Ukrainian-made drone, or a convincing Russian copy, that crosses into Lithuania or Latvia and strikes critical infrastructure or a military target. Polish and Baltic intelligence officials have recently warned that Russia could be gearing up for precisely this kind of false-flag operation.
Whatever form the provocation takes, it only needs to be serious enough that NATO cannot ignore it, but ambiguous enough that its members can’t agree on how to respond. And that’s the point.
Article 5 says an armed attack against one NATO member is considered an attack against them all. However, it neither requires every member to respond in the same way nor automatically commits the alliance to war. Each ally ultimately determines what action it considers necessary. Critically, the treaty itself does not explicitly define what constitutes an “armed attack.”
Create enough ambiguity over whether that threshold has even been crossed, and suddenly 32 governments are left debating not only what happened, but what they are willing to do about it.
This type of hybrid attack would put Washington in an especially uncomfortable position.
With the Iran crisis still ongoing and the midterm elections just months away, the Trump administration would likely be deeply reluctant to risk a direct military confrontation with Russia over an ambiguous incident—even if European governments were pushing for a stronger response.
That alone will deepen political divisions at home while simultaneously widening the existing rift between Washington and Europe.
For Moscow, that’s a hell of a payoff from a relatively small provocation. And ultimately, driving the U.S. and Europe further apart would very likely be the larger strategic objective.
U.S.-European relations are already under extraordinary strain. But one thing often gets overlooked is that for nearly 80 years, the U.S. has served as much of the political glue holding NATO, and indirectly, the wider European security order, together. That role has never been based solely on America’s military strength.
The United States occupies a distinct position within NATO as one of only two members—along with Canada—located distinctly outside the European sphere. As an “outside” ally, America is powerful enough to help guarantee European security while remaining geographically removed from the historical rivalries that have repeatedly divided the continent.
Today, Western Europe and the EU can look like a collection of regional best friends. However, historically, they most definitely were not.
For centuries, European powers competed over territory, resources, influence and security, often with disastrous consequences. One of the great achievements of the post-WWII order was finally breaking that cycle.
In fact, NATO expressly notes that preventing renewed destructive competition in Europe—including “the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence”—was one of the founding purposes of the post-World War II transatlantic security order.
We shouldn’t assume Europe’s extraordinary period of tranquility and partnership is somehow its natural state or that it would continue indefinitely under radically different security conditions.
That doesn’t mean European countries will suddenly start shooting at each other if the American “glue” substantially weakens. But national interests, regional rivalries and competing security goals could begin to reemerge. And history gives us plenty of reason to take seriously the possibility that renewed political competition in Europe could eventually become military competition.
In the near term, European governments will begin asking whether resources currently devoted to collective security objectives might eventually be needed closer to home.
And that’s where Ukraine comes into the equation.
If European governments become less certain that the United States will guarantee their security, continued support for Ukraine will look very different in their wider strategic calculations.
Britain, France, Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states will still view Russia as a threat. However, they won’t necessarily agree about how limited defense resources should be allocated, which threats are most urgent, or how much risk each country should accept on Ukraine’s behalf.
The more national security becomes national again, the harder it is to preserve a unified European position.
Russia doesn’t have to defeat NATO militarily. It just has to create a situation where NATO cannot agree on what to do.
That strategy exploits a basic reality of international politics that often gets overlooked because we talk about countries as “friends.” Nations don’t have friends in the same way people do. They have allies with shared strategic interests.
Shift those interests, even slightly, and allies can become competitors. Competitors can become rivals. And history has repeatedly shown what can happen when rivalries in Europe are allowed to spiral out of control.
So if Putin believes he can start pulling at the threads holding NATO together without triggering a war, there is every reason to believe he will try.
The most consequential part of any Russian provocation will not be the incident itself, but how NATO chooses to respond.
Moscow may be betting that distance, domestic politics, and competing national interests can pull the alliance apart. The best answer would be to prove otherwise.
The Atlantic may physically separate North America from Europe. Still, in today’s interconnected world, geography provides far less insulation from shared threats than it did 77 years ago when NATO was founded.
Whatever disagreements exist between Washington and European capitals, both sides would do well to remember a fundamental strategic reality. Strong allies make each member stronger, and preserving those relationships remains firmly in everyone’s national interest.
Tim McMillan is a retired law enforcement executive, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing typically focuses on defense, national security, the Intelligence Community and topics related to psychology. You can follow Tim on Twitter: @LtTimMcMillan. Tim can be reached by email: tim@thedebrief.org or through encrypted email: LtTimMcMillan@protonmail.com
This week, Romania accused Russia of sending a drone boat loaded with explosives to a vital European natural gas platform in the Black Sea. A Romanian F-16 fighter jet used its cannons to disable the surface drone so that explosive ordnance experts could blow it up safely.
On August 20, the Romanian Coast Guard first spotted the maritime drone a few hundred meters away from the Neptun Deep project’s main drilling platform, where several hundred workers were busy with the platform’s ongoing installation, Defense Minister Radu Miruță said in a Facebook post. The offshore gas project would make Romania the largest gas producer in the European Union once it starts full production in 2027.
To protect the lives of the workers and the offshore gas infrastructure, the Romanian military scrambled two F-16 fighter jets to stop the drone with cannon fire, Miruță said. Army specialists later carried out a controlled detonation, as seen in a Facebook video shared by the defense minister.
© Romanian Ministry of Defense
Ukrainian drone teams demolished a brigade of US Army tanks and armored vehicles during a live war game held this year—but the US soldiers were lucky enough to get “respawn” attempts while learning from the experience.
The semiannual military exercise, called Combined Resolve, gave the US military a firsthand taste of how modern drone warfare has evolved on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Ukrainian drone operators participating in the exercise were easily able to spot and destroy US armored vehicles by mimicking the actions of dropping bombs from above or moving close enough to simulate a kamikaze strike, according to US officials and a participant who spoke with The Wall Street Journal.
US armored vehicles were being destroyed so quickly that they were “respawned” and sent back into the simulated fray, a US official told The Wall Street Journal. The US troops who participated in the exercise—held in Germany from April 9 to May 10—were on rotational deployment from Fort Hood, Texas.
© Sgt. Joseph Mcdonald | US Army
Romanian army divers used explosives to destroy two Russian-made drones found floating in the Black Sea near Romania’s largest natural gas project, according to the NATO member country’s defense minister.
Defense Minister Radu Miruță posted a Facebook video supposedly showing one of the drones being blown up in the water by explosive ordnance disposal divers of the Romanian army on August 11, as reported by Reuters and other news outlets. The drones were first spotted in the water by a ship working in the vicinity of the Neptun Deep—an offshore gas project under development in the Black Sea that will make Romania the largest gas producer in the European Union.
A Romanian Coast Guard ship that responded with army soldiers aboard found two drifting Gerbera-type drones of Russian design along with other debris. Miruță also disclosed that Romania had reached out to “Ukrainian partners who confirmed that the systems do not belong to them.”
© Romanian Ministry of Defense
On the evening of August 10, 2026, a MiG-29 fighter jet operated by the Ukrainian Air Force was lost while carrying out a combat mission. This was reported on the official Facebook page of the Ukrainian Air Force Command. It was reported that the pilot was carrying out a combat mission to destroy enemy aerial […]
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