Trump Has Given Putin an Opportunity to Test NATO, Expert Says on Potential Russian Aggression Scenarios

Political expert and Ukrainian Armed Forces serviceman Oleksandr Musiienko said NATO should stop modeling scenarios of Russian aggression for 2030 and start joining Ukraine in this fight now, Politeka reports.

He discussed this in his blog.

According to the expert, prominent American analyst Michael Kofman says that Russia is already testing NATO. Indeed, Musiienko notes, many experts believe that Russia could launch aggression against NATO’s eastern flank in 2029–2030 because it is currently bogged down in the war against Ukraine and is exhausting its resources there. However, he stresses, there is no guarantee that such a scenario will not happen sooner.

“Right now, precisely because Trump is distracted by other issues and there is a lack of unity, this could happen. What we are talking about is that Trump has given Putin an opportunity to test NATO. Disagreements between Washington and its European allies could create a temptation to test NATO’s readiness to uphold the principle of collective defense,” Oleksandr Musiienko explains.

Among the potential scenarios, he says, could be the seizure of Latvia or Estonia in order to test whether the United States and Europe would be prepared to launch a large-scale war to retake a small piece of NATO territory. Along the eastern flank, the expert continues, NATO could deploy nine multinational combat groups, but its most vulnerable point is a shortage of interceptor missiles. This means air defense systems are needed, and production must be increased.

“Make it much simpler. Just admit Ukraine to NATO and the EU. Let’s produce weapons together, work together, strengthen ourselves, and build multinational forces. It’s much simpler, isn’t it? Come on, admit it—the answer is right there in front of us. I hope our European partners will understand this and, ultimately, stop being afraid of the Kremlin. Enough with modeling different scenarios. Let’s simply defeat Russia together,” Oleksandr Musiienko concludes.