Donald Trump has derided NATO as an obsolete bunch of freeloaders for so long, it can be easy to forget that the transatlantic alliance remains the most powerful combined military force on Earth. And right now, it’s really acting like it.
Last month, Russian drones violated the airspace of several NATO member countries, including Poland and Denmark; 10 days later, three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets entered Estonian airspace, staying there for 12 minutes. Such Russian air incursions are not new, but these were more aggressive and lasted longer than others in recent memory. Coming as negotiations over a possible settlement of the war in Ukraine were at a standstill, they looked like an attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to intimidate and divide the alliance.
But he may have misjudged.
“I would say that it backfired on him,” Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal told me when we met at his office in Tallinn last week. He described how advanced F-35 jets, flown by the Italian air force, had intercepted the aged MiGs over Estonia’s Vaindloo Island, about 16 miles off the mainland. Earlier, Polish and other NATO militaries had scrambled jets and shot down up to four of the nearly two dozen Russian drones that threatened the country. (The low kill ratio suggests that Poland needs better, or at least more efficient, air defenses, but the incursion did not go unanswered.) And in response to Russia’s harassment, NATO established a more enhanced and coordinated defense of its eastern flank, including counter-drone measures, called Eastern Sentry.
“The violation of Poland’s airspace earlier this week is not an isolated incident and impacts more than just Poland,” the NATO commander, U.S. Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, said when he announced the new measures, adding, “NATO is not waiting; we are acting.”
Putin has surely noticed this resolve, and it might be worrying him. He had a two-hour phone call yesterday with Trump—“Great progress was made,” the American president wrote on Truth Social—and the leaders agreed to meet in Budapest in the next few weeks to discuss a potential end to the war. This call came ahead of a planned meeting today between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Putin seems to understand that he must act with some urgency if he wants to keep the allies divided, which has always been his strategy.
Trump, whose commitment to the transatlantic alliance is predicated on how much the member states spend on defense, affirmed last month that the United States would defend Poland and the Baltic countries. He didn’t elaborate on how, and at times seemed to qualify his remarks, so it was hardly an ironclad commitment. But considering that this is the same man who said last year that Russia should “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that don’t meet his high defense-spending targets, this is progress.
Michal, whose country has approved a four-year investment plan to significantly increase its defense spending, lauded the show of support from the White House and seemed to delight in how it must have affected the Russian leader. “This is a strong message,” he told me. Putin “probably didn’t expect that.”
Speaking with other government officials and security experts in Europe, I found a cautious but clear sense that there is rare alignment between Trump and European leaders on how to pressure Putin—maybe even enough to rid the Russian leader of his irrational fantasies of finally conquering Ukraine.
Of course, Trump has still not reversed his long-held antipathy toward a U.S.-led alliance that has helped secure peace in Europe for nearly eight decades. At his urging, many countries are moving quickly to build up their own military. But they’re also calculating that they cannot count on Trump to protect them—and perhaps not a future American president, either.
For the moment, at least, key NATO members are sounding the same notes, and Trump seems ready to join them. The head of Germany’s foreign-intelligence service, Martin Jäger, told lawmakers this week that Russia was testing Europe’s borders and its resolve. “At best, there is a frosty peace in Europe, which could turn into hot confrontation here and there at any moment. We must prepare ourselves for further escalations,” he said in Berlin.
Some security experts have cast the Russian violations of European airspace as a win for Putin. With little effort, he has exposed seams in air defenses, and Russian military planners will now better understand NATO responses. That’s useful intelligence should Moscow decide to launch full-on attacks. But Michal, whose country shares a border with Russia, is unbothered. “The most modern air fighters in the world were up, and they were there” to intercept the Russian MiGs, he said. “NATO is working,” he added, “and if something more is needed—some more capabilities, some procedures—then they will be there.”
Poland’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, was more blunt. Russia made a “tactically stupid and counterproductive” move when it tested the alliance, he told an audience in London on Wednesday, ahead of a meeting of European defense ministers later this week. The result was a more unified Europe: “What is he achieving? He is achieving the consolidation of public support for a policy of deterrence against Russia.” Sikorski stood next to a downed Iranian-made Shahed-136 attack drone, used by Russia in Ukraine, and called for the construction of an integrated defense system, often called a “drone wall,” along Europe’s eastern flank. In light of Russia’s recent provocations, it would be “irresponsible” not to do so, he said. (Sikorski is married to the Atlantic writer Anne Applebaum.)
Since Russia invaded Ukraine (for the second time) in February 2022, Kyiv’s NATO allies have constrained their direct military support, fearful of triggering Russian escalation, which could include the use of a tactical nuclear weapon. In hindsight, many Western intelligence officials think those fears look overblown and counterproductive. Vital time and ground were lost, and Russia still fell comically short of its initial plans to conquer Kyiv in 72 hours, decapitate its government, and install Kremlin loyalists.
“Your three-day special military operation can’t even conquer Donbas for 10 years now,” Sikorski, who delights in trolling Moscow, said in a pointed warning to Russia at the United Nations last month. His full remarks should be read as a threat to shoot down manned aircraft as well, if Putin were reckless enough to fly them over Poland. “If another missile or aircraft enters our space without permission, deliberately or by mistake, and gets shot down and the wreckage falls on NATO territory, please don’t come here to whine about it,” he said. “You have been warned.”
This is not isolated rhetoric. Trump has said he is considering sending Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine if the war is not settled soon. And he is not hiding his annoyance that the war, which he once boasted he could end in 24 hours, continues. Tomahawks would allow Ukraine to strike even deeper inside Russian territory. The Ukrainian military is reportedly already conducting strikes on Russian energy facilities thanks to more precise targeting intelligence provided by the United States. Perhaps Trump’s affection for the Russian dictator is finally wearing thin, now that the U.S. president sees what American intelligence analysts have been saying for years: Putin has no intention of ending the war in Ukraine, because he thinks he’s winning it. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Trump asked of Russia, “Do they want to have Tomahawks going in that direction? I don’t think so.”
Michal told me that he sees daylight between the Russian and American presidents: “President Trump has repeatedly mentioned that he’s growing impatient with Russia’s not acting to end the war, because everybody knows that the war would end the minute Putin would stop atrocities.”
If Putin responds only to force, as most of the analysts who have studied him closely believe, then intercepting his jets and shooting down his drones conveyed a clear message. “It sent a strong political and military signal that the alliance takes this seriously and can react quickly,” Kristian Fischer, a longtime official in the Danish Ministry of Defense and a former director of the country’s top security think tank, told me. “Seen from a transatlantic burden-sharing perspective, it was good that it was European military capabilities which were used.”
Ukraine’s allies are mounting a new economic offensive as well, aimed at Putin’s war machine. On Wednesday, the United Kingdom announced sanctions directed at Lukoil and Rosneft, Russia’s two largest oil companies, in addition to the so-called shadow fleet of oil tankers that Russia uses to evade sanctions on the sale of its natural resources. Michal portrayed the economic response as possibly more powerful than the NATO security plan for the eastern flank. The hundreds of decrepit vessels in the shadow fleet are an indispensable component of Putin’s war machine, providing nearly half the money needed to pay for military operations, by some estimates. Michal pointed to the balcony behind where we sat and joked that we could probably see the tankers sailing the Gulf of Finland.
“They are carrying Russia’s money to wage the war,” he said. “Pressure on revenues, Russia’s energy revenues, tariffs: That’s the key.”
He praised the French navy for recently stopping one ship in the fleet. But after questioning the captain and crew, it sent the Benin-flagged vessel on its way.
Absent a coordinated international approach, Putin will continue to find ways to evade sanctions and sell oil to pay for his war. The Americans, for all the president’s supportive talk of NATO lately, have left Europeans in a bind now that Washington is no longer providing Ukraine with weapons free of charge. European officials are persuaded that they need to tap more than $200 billion in frozen Russian-central-bank assets to pay for more weapons. Experts I spoke with said that could put Ukraine on a sustainable war footing for the next three years—and help position Europe to protect itself, rather than relying so heavily on the Americans.
It’s not clear if the Trump administration supports using the Russian funds. But it has signaled a possible willingness to impose stiffer sanctions, in concert with the Europeans.
“We are in a race now between how long can the Ukrainian military hold up versus how long can the Russian economy hold up,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Meet the Press last month, two days before the drone flights into Poland. Bessent said that with more sanctions and secondary tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, “the Russian economy will be in total collapse, and that will bring President Putin to the table.”
The unity might be fleeting: Trump could embrace Putin tomorrow and turn his back on Ukraine for good. In Denmark, security experts and officials I spoke with worry that Trump will move on from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine and return to his obsession with acquiring Greenland. Should the United States seize the territory of a NATO ally, that would effectively end the transatlantic alliance.
Carsten Søndergaard, a career Danish diplomat who served as an ambassador to Russia and the permanent representative to NATO, was circumspect about recent events. Statements like the ones the Polish foreign minister has made are helpful, he told me. But actions are decisive. “It matters much what we do,” he said. “Have we changed or adjusted our force posture? Do [the Russians] believe that we are willing to do what we are supposed to do?”
The answer to that question lies not in Russia’s assessment of Europe, but of the White House.
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