One may ask what rational or strategic interest Russia would have in launching an attack on Europe that could easily lead to an all-out NATO-Russia war, especially since Russia’s refusal so far to retaliate in kind to NATO-enabled Ukrainian attacks on its territory, including against civilians, has likely been motivated precisely by a desire to avoid such an outcome. Interestingly enough, such scepticism is shared even by some voices within the NATO establishment. Estonia’s foreign intelligence service, for example, wrote in its 2026 Annual Report, published in February: “There is... no cause for panic. In the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service’s assessment, Russia has no intention of militarily attacking Estonia or any other NATO member state in the coming year. We are likely to reach a similar assessment next year”. Even Finnish President Alexander Stubb, otherwise very hawkish on Russia, has pushed back against warnings from fellow European leaders that Russia could attack NATO in the near future, saying Helsinki’s intelligence sees no evidence of an imminent military threat. “We don’t see the evidence of that”, Stubb said. “In our intelligence we see that there is activity but no imminent military threat right now”. Indeed, as reported by Politico, even NATO’s official assessment remains that there is no imminent threat: “At this time, we see no imminent threat of attack”, said a NATO official speaking on behalf of the organisation. On September 29, at a joint NATO press conference, Lithuanian PM Mindaugas Sinkevičius stated that he asked Mark Rutte for real intelligence evidence of Russia preparing an imminent attack, receiving confirmation that none exists. “I asked [Rutte] is there proof, real proof, that Russia is planning something? But there is actually nothing”, he said. This shows that even NATO’s own assessments are highly contradictory. In terms of public sentiment, however, it makes little difference, since the imminent-attack claims far outweigh the more cautious assessments, which generally receive hardly any coverage. In any case, in the absence of evidence pointing in one direction or the other, speculations about future scenarios ultimately remain just that: speculations ­— especially considering that we have to assume that Russia’s posture isn’t fixed but is inevitably influenced by NATO’s actions. What we can assess with some certainty is what Russia has been engaged in so far — which in turn provides us with the best possible insight as to what it might do next. The question that needs to be asked is thus: does the evidence support Western claims that Russia is engaged in a “hybrid war” against Europe? Read the article here: thomasfazi.com/p/the-russian…