NATO has been alert to Ukraine more than three and a half months ago since Russia, but a recent peak in the violations of the Alliance has increasingly caused security experts that warnings of war with Moscow are no longer theoretically, but inevitable.
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the US could “end in the Second World War” during the Russian war in Ukraine and admitted that Russian President Vladimir Putin “abandoned him” about his refusal to end his military campaign.
A day later, Russia sent three fighter jets over the capital of Tallinn of Estonia in a direct and clear violation of his airspace, as a result of which another NATO member encouraged Article 4 for the second time.
A photo shows French Mirage 2000 fighter jets flying over Estonia on March 30, 2022. (Didier Lauras/AFP via Getty images)
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Sakaliene said that the Friday violation was only the last in ‘an escalating pressure pattern by Russia’.
“For Estonia, for Poland, for Lithuania, for all NATOs eastern flank, this is a direct threat – not only for territorial integrity, but for the safety of citizens,” she added.
The Lithuanian Minister of Defense warned that the largest line of Defense NATO is currently, apart from the actual military readiness, a united front to discourage Moscow to take direct action against a NATO member and give rise to what could become a worldwide war.
“Our greatest risk is currently miscalculation by Russia,” said Sakaliene. ‘Does Russia believe that NATO does not allow violations of its territory? Russia rests that Europe again together with [the] United States?
“That is now the last line of defense between IF and when [war with Russia happens]”She added.
US President Donald Trump is talking to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a press conference and warns the Second World War during the continuous war of Russia in Ukraine during an event in Aynesbury, England, on September 18, 2025. (Leon Neal/Getty images)
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Earlier this month, concern about the direct NATO conflict with Moscow escalated after a swarm of at least 19 Russian drones flew over the Polish airspace, but forced a multi-countries reaction when NATO, for the first time since the war, shot Russian acts and pulled no fewer than four drones that formed a threat.
Although Trump suggested that the drone could have been a mistake, Poles refuted and said that it was “intentionally” and a “planned provocation”.
Drone Strikes have long been a favorite wartime of Russia in its operation against Ukraine, with the number of strikes that peak in July with approximately 6,297 long -distance drones that have been fired throughout the country.
That figure dived to 4,216 drones fired in August. Although most of those UAVs in particular was fired between 16 and 31 August, when about 3,001 drones were deployed from the day after Trump met Putin in Alaska on August 15.
Defense Minister of the Republic of Lithuania Dovile Sakaliene at a press conference. (Photo by Jörg Carstensen/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)
An American company, which was less than 30 miles from two other NATO countries, Hungary and Slovakia, was also struck at the end of August with “different” cruise rockets.
“The scope of air strikes from Russia to Ukraine is really rising. They use more drones, more rockets, and they are still expected to rise,” Sakaliene said.
“We must allow and adjust to this new reality. High intensity war by Russia against Ukraine is underway,” said the Minister of Defense. “That means that more and more UAVs are the areas of adjacent countries to the areas, and even further.”
Russia has increasingly turned to gray zone tactics, involving incidents that fall under the threshold of open warfare, but that enable Russia to test the determination and response capacities of NATO.
In the past month, Poland saw three separate incidents in which the airspace was violated by Russian drones, including UAVs that wore explosive components that crossed in its airspace from both Ukraine and White -Russia.
Black Smoke rises from the electronic production company while firefighters continue to put the fire after the Russian army had hit a large American company that produced civil electronics with two missiles in Mukachevo, Zakarpattia Region in Ukraine, on August 21, 2025. (Zakarpattia Regional Military Administration / Handout / Anadolu via Getty images)
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Only three days after the drone swarm bombed the Polish Air Defense Systems of the Drone, a Russian drone crossed in the Romanian airspace and led a French jet and the Polish helicopter to respond under the operation Eastern Sentry of the NATO – a defensive attitude that the Allianante Lanced.
These events came after Lithuania was forced at the end of July to sound the alarm after two separate incidents in which Russian Gerber drones violated his limits, including one that bore explosives.
But these tactics are not the only threats that security experts have been marked in recent weeks about behavior from Moscow.
Earlier this month, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) established in Washington, DC attracted attention to an OP-ED published by former Russian president and current Security Council Chairman Dmitry Medvedev on 8 September in the Tassen’s Sponsored news output by the Kremlin by De Kremlin by the State by the Kremlin by the Kremlin, immediately reflected the Kremlin. Through the Kremlin through the Kremlin through the Kremlin through the Kremlin through the Kremlin by giving the Kremlin by giving the Kremlin at the start of the Ukraine invasion.
In his article, Medvedev Finland accused of “Russophobe” and claimed: “The hunger for winning at the expense of Russia was installed in the Finnish Spirit in the days of Hitler.”
In deze poolfoto die door het Russische staatsagentschap Sputnik wordt verspreid, inspecteert de Russische president Vladimir Poetin de “ZAPAD-2025” (West-2025) gezamenlijke Russisch-Belarusiaanse militaire oefeningen op een trainingsveld in de Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Wit-Roestijn, Bel-Rusland, Wit-Rusland, Wit-Rusland, Wit-Rusland, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus, Belarus. (Mikhail Metzel/Pool/AFP via Getty images)
He further claimed that Helsinki tried to erase the ‘historical and cultural identity’ of ethnic Russians and said that he had joined NATO under the ‘disguise’ of defense, but in reality he secretly prepared for war against Russia, the ISW reported.
Medvedev’s comments were not an isolated threats. Several Kremlin officials, including Putin who said that “there will be problems” after Finland had come to NATO, claimed that the Alliance will use Finland as a “springboard” to attack Russia.
“These are the required preparations for the future war that Moscow prepares,” he warned.
Russian tanks move during the “Zapad-2025” joint Russian-Balarusian military exercises in a training area near the city of Borisov, east of the capital Minsk, Belarus, on September 15, 2025. (Olesya Kurpyayeva/AFP via Getty images)
Sakaliee echoed these concerns and also pointed to the use of Russia of ‘soft power’, often used via social media and traditional media to influence public perception that she warned is ‘alarmingly effective’.
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“We see a picture of a very aggressive country that invests a disproportionate amount of its funds in their military capacity,” said the Minister of Defense. “Despite heavy losses every week, every month, they move forward in Ukraine, and at the same time they expand their possibilities.
“It evokes considerable doubts if all that mass military power is only collected for Ukraine,” said Sakaliene.
