ELISSA NADWORNY, HOST:
Is Russia planning on launching direct military strikes against NATO? Some leaders in Europe are worried about that possibility. In addition to ramping up drone and missile strikes in Ukraine, Russia is being accused of hitting NATO members with so-called hybrid attacks, attacks that are not traditional military actions but are damaging nonetheless. NATO Secretary General Mark Ruttte spoke about this earlier this week in the U.K.
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MARK RUTTE: NATO will not be intimidated by Russia's campaign of hostile actions. Russia wants us to stop helping Ukraine, but their actions will only lead us to do more for Ukraine.
NADWORNY: Joining us now is Kurt Volker. He's a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and is a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
KURT VOLKER: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
NADWORNY: So we've heard about these hybrid attacks, which Russia is being accused of. Can you explain exactly what those are?
VOLKER: So the classic thing you think of with NATO is an attack on the territory of another country. An army attacks, tries to invade, tries to take things. That is not what Russia's doing with NATO members right now. They are doing it with Ukraine.
So what they are doing with NATO members - they have allowed drones to go into NATO airspace. Some of them have crashed and even, in Romania, hit an apartment building. They had a missile go into Polish airspace and crash in Poland. They've been cutting undersea cables that NATO countries use for telecommunications, and they've been hovering around the U.K. doing that.
They were near Danish territorial waters and the Danes sent out a helicopter to check out the Russian ship, and they fired flares at the helicopter. They've had other drones elsewhere swarming around the Copenhagen airport, an armed drone at Leipzig airport in Germany, accusations of a bomb on a train in France.
And that's on top of all of the other efforts to influence our political systems and processes - bribing politicians, paying for political parties, disseminating false stories and false information, trying to influence the domestic politics of NATO allies. So a lot of things that they have been doing that are aimed at undermining our NATO allies without a full-scale invasion.
NADWORNY: We should mention that Russia is denying that it's behind these attacks. I mean, where do you think the evidence points?
VOLKER: Well, of course, Russia is going to deny that they do that, but when you see a drone fly into an apartment building and it is a Russian drone, it doesn't matter if they deny it or not. You know what happened. And on some of these other things - the bomb at the Leipzig airport, the armed drone there, the airspace incursions - there's very little doubt about what's going on, and of course, Russia wants to deny it because they want to confuse us in terms of how we might respond.
And that has been really, I think, the target of Russia's actions, is to sow doubt, to cause NATO countries to back off of support for Ukraine, as Secretary General Rutte said, to make us fear that there might be a bigger escalation with Russia that we don't want. And so for us to ratchet down - that's what Russia is trying to achieve with all of this.
NADWORNY: Well, the chief concern is that all of this could lead to direct military confrontation between Russia and NATO. A few days ago, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Russia is planning to strike countries that support Ukraine with missiles and drones. I mean, how seriously do you take his warning?
VOLKER: Well, in different ways. So on the one hand, I do not believe that Russia is ready to do that against NATO countries right now. They are bogged down in Ukraine and the war is not going well, and they are lashing out, and that is why I think they won't do anything now. They can't handle the war in Ukraine as it is. They certainly couldn't handle a major conflict with NATO. That's on the one side.
On the other, they want us to think that they might do that. And therefore, we are driven into a posture of wanting to de-escalate. And that's exactly what Russia wants to achieve. I think the thing that we need to do is increase our level of readiness to shoot down anything that enters NATO territory that's not supposed to be there, to improve our own air defenses and counter-drone defenses so that Russia can see that we are ready and acting, not that we are backing down in any way, which is what they would want to achieve.
NADWORNY: And I take it that it doesn't feel like Russia actually has the muscle to back up a serious military threat. I mean, one of Vladimir Putin's closest advisors, Nikolai Patrushev, threatened Poland, saying that if Russia were to deploy all of its forces against it, that, quote, "Polish statehood would cease to exist within just two to three days."
VOLKER: Certainly not. Yeah, certainly not. And...
NADWORNY: That's an empty threat?
VOLKER: As - just as we're saying, the Russians want to make these threats. They want us to think that they are reckless and that they might cause a war like that. We, of course, do not want to be in a war, so they're hoping that that causes us to then de-escalate or ratchet down, which then helps Russia achieve its objectives. But objectively, Russia is in no position to challenge NATO right now.
They are stuck in a war against just Ukraine, a smaller country with a smaller military and less modern equipment and less modern training, but a lot of recent battlefield innovation, admittedly. They have no chance of starting a war with NATO and surviving that, and I think they know that, but that doesn't change the behavior of them wanting to intimidate us.
NADWORNY: What is the United States' position on all of this? How has the administration been responding?
VOLKER: President Trump has largely looked at all of this and said, that's a European problem. He doesn't feel a threat to the United States from Russia, and he doesn't see a need for the U.S. to increase its pushback on Russia at all. Rather, he views this as something European states need to do. I disagree with this. I think that we have a vested interest in freedom and free people everywhere being safe and prosperous. It creates a better world for us.
And I know sometimes people pooh-pooh the idea of domino theories, but if we allow Ukraine to fail, that increases the chances that Russia would attack a NATO member. If we don't defend one NATO member, which ones would we defend and why? And that really undermines the basis of NATO itself. So I think it's a very slippery slope when we start looking at this as not having any interest for us.
NADWORNY: Kurt Volker is a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and is a fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. Thank you so much.
VOLKER: Been a pleasure. Thank you, Elissa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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