Published in Newsroom.co.nz (Wellington), 22 September 2026
I do not often write columns that I later come to regret. But I wrote one for Newsroom in January 2022 that turned out to be completely wrong. I cautiously predicted that Putin might not need to invade Ukraine, because he had already achieved many of his foreign policy goals simply by building an intimidating force on Ukraine’s border.
My arguments were not completely ludicrous. Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014 had already shut Ukraine out of Nato, because the alliance will not admit a member with a disputed border. Washington was negotiating with Moscow over Europe’s head, which was precisely what Putin wanted.
Europe, meanwhile, was doing his work for him. Berlin was defending Nord Stream 2, a major gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, from US and Eastern European objections. When Kyiv asked for 100,000 helmets, Germany offered 5,000 and a field hospital. Vitali Klitschko, Kyiv’s mayor, asked what would arrive next, pillows.
I did also write that you never know what Putin will do next. Still, I thought it possible he would count his diplomatic gains and refrain from military action.
How wrong I was.
My arguments might have appealed to a rational leader. But Putin’s calculus was different, as I conceded six weeks later.
And still, my assessment should have been different.
All the information was out there. The troop numbers were on the front page of every serious newspaper. American intelligence had published the likely routes of advance and described the provocation Moscow was preparing as a pretext.
US intelligence might also have been wrong, of course. It was certainly wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003.
I am reminded of all this today, more than four years later, as I listen to the growing chorus of politicians, military leaders and intelligence chiefs warning about Putin’s next steps and a possible attack on Nato.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told his parliament last Thursday that Russia intends to fly drones and missiles into Nato countries this winter and call it an accident. The intelligence, he said, was highly consistent and unfortunately persuasive. And indeed, four Russian strikes hit crossings on Poland’s border with Ukraine in a week, and Nato jets shot down a drone of Russian origin over Lithuania.
Once again, we are told that something major may be imminent. But unlike early 2022, just what that something might be is hard to see.
Back then, huge numbers of Russian troops were massing on Ukraine’s border. Western intelligence had detected them moving blood supplies forward. It was clear what would happen, if anything happened at all.
The picture in 2026 is different. There are no comparable troop movements and no obvious point of attack. Nor is there a territorial prize worth an invasion.
The only obvious motive would be to test whether NATO’s Article 5 – the commitment to collective defence – means what it says.
The intelligence services are picking up signs of a growing threat in the not-too-distant future. That is a more diffuse claim than a prediction of imminent invasion, and it also lacks a clear timeline.
The idea of something happening in the late 2020s most likely originated in a Nato assessment in 2023, speculating that Russia might attack within three to five years, sometime between about now and 2028. In mid-2024, Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius started talking about 2029. This date has been repeated many times since.
Of course, there are multiple uncertainties around any such dates, not least the ongoing war in Ukraine. Western intelligence services need to figure out how much Russia’s capability depends on the war ending and Moscow having a chance to rearm. But conversely, part of the analysis involves Europe’s own rearmament and how that influences Russia’s calculus.
The result is a set of warnings with a rather fluid timeline. Tusk is talking about this winter, Pistorius about 2029, and Dutch military intelligence will start its clock only when the fighting in Ukraine stops, which means its warning has not yet begun.
That is a major difference to the situation before the invasion. Back then, American warnings were precise enough to be proved wrong within weeks. Today’s warnings are too vague for that, because whatever they describe can always happen later.
There is another difference between this year and 2022. Whereas then there was a possibility of an attack, this time, the attacks are already happening, albeit at a lower level.
Politico counted about 60 attributed hybrid incidents, meaning sabotage, arson, cyberattacks and drone incursions that stop short of open warfare, in the first eight months of 2025 and about 100 in the same months this year. One official put the figure above 200.
In August, I wrote here that Berlin would not name Russia over the explosive drone at Leipzig airport, because naming it raised Article 5 questions nobody wanted to answer (Germany silent on suspected Russian drone attack to avoid boosting far right, 11 August 2026).
Three weeks later the evidence became too strong to ignore. Germany did name Russia, closed the Russian consulate in Bonn and raised its threat level from general to high. Even so, the announcement was left to the interior and foreign ministers, with Chancellor Merz keeping his distance.
This month, a Russian frigate fired flares within metres of a Danish helicopter. Copenhagen summoned the ambassador and announced that it was not invoking Article 5.
The vocabulary has changed too. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, dropped the word hybrid and called Leipzig an attack with military-grade material on European Union soil. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, called it state-sponsored terrorism, and Lithuania’s foreign minister said Russian attacks on Europe were no longer hybrid but kinetic.
Despite this, Nato headquarters said last week there was no imminent threat of attack, and Estonia’s service still expects no Russian move this year.
And so, here we are with more evidence than before pointing towards a Russian escalation in its operations against Nato. Yet this time, I would not even dare to guess what Putin might want to do next. Europe and Nato must prepare for every possibility.
And, unlike columnists, they cannot afford to be wrong.
