Washington shifts stance: Russian attack on NATO from fall

Serbia is not a NATO member and has no plans to become one, but it is surrounded by NATO member states on every side except toward Bosnia and Herzegovina. That makes an assessment of a possible Russian attack on the alliance more than a distant headline here, it describes the security environment the country actually lives in. The Wall Street Journal reported on August 6 that new US intelligence assessments point to the possibility that Vladimir Putin could use a limited attack to test the alliance’s readiness to defend its own members, and that this could happen as early as this fall.

Until now, warnings about such a scenario have come from European officials and the German military, while Washington stayed reserved. The real news here is the shift inside the US intelligence community, not the scenario itself.

From cyberattacks to a ground incursion

The range of possibilities American analysts are weighing runs from a cyberattack to a limited incursion by ground forces. The target would be the alliance’s eastern flank, and the point would not be seizing territory but testing Article 5, the collective defense clause the entire alliance rests on. The timeframe cited by US officials begins this fall and extends to 2029.

The goal of such a move, according to those sources, would be to fracture the alliance’s unity while the war in Ukraine is still going on.

“The unknown is how the United States would respond in such a scenario.”

That was the assessment Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, gave to the Wall Street Journal, adding that undermining NATO’s credibility and driving a wedge between Washington and its allies has always been a Russian goal. Her reservation is not about the alliance’s ability to respond, but about the political decision that would have to be made in the White House, within a matter of hours.

Why did Washington change its assessment?

The earlier assessment held that Russia, worn down by the war in Ukraine, would not open a second front. That view changed early this year, when three factors converged: Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, the slow and costly advance of Russian forces at the front, and pressure on the Kremlin to show some kind of victory.

American and European officials point to concrete incidents as signs of preparation and reconnaissance: cruise missiles that landed on Polish territory and drones that entered Romanian airspace. The logic behind the assessment has flipped. Putin is not more dangerous when he is advancing, he is more dangerous when he is cornered.

The Baltics and Poland as the closest targets

Lithuanian Defense Minister Robert Kaunas told LRT Radio on August 6, citing new intelligence data:

“The Kremlin, Putin, needs a new escalation, some new victory, and in that case the Baltic region and Poland are the closest targets.”

The statement followed a series of drone incidents across all three Baltic states. On August 5, a drone struck a Ukrainian cargo plane at the airport in Leipzig, and German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt described the incident as a “hybrid attack scenario,” without naming Russia.

Germany’s assessment, and empty warehouses

Germany’s Army chief, Lieutenant General Christian Freuding, estimated in June that Russia could strike NATO within three years. That assessment now overlaps with the American one, though the timeframe coming out of Washington is shorter by several months.

Alongside these assessments runs a second, material story:

• deliveries of allied air defense missiles to Ukraine fell by two thirds in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025, Volodymyr Zelensky said
• the United States itself is short on ammunition, including ATACMS missiles and portable Stinger launchers, partly because of deliveries to Ukraine
• on August 6, responding to a new Zelensky request for long range missiles, US President Donald Trump said the missiles are needed by the United States itself

For Serbia, this is not an abstract calculation. The country borders six NATO members: Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, and the alliance also maintains its KFOR mission in Kosovo. A crisis on the eastern flank would pull allied resources and attention toward the Baltics and Poland, and every new round of sanctions against Moscow tends to reach questions Belgrade has been putting off for years.

A front that has shifted 2,000 kilometers

August 7 showed once again that the war has long since stopped being confined to the front line. Ukraine struck a logistics center belonging to the company Wildberries in Yekaterinburg, roughly 2,000 kilometers from the front, with the first footage of smoke over the site appearing on Russian social media around 5 a.m. local time.

The governor of Sverdlovsk Region said eight drones were shot down over the region, three of which fell on the roof of the logistics center. Artyom Zhoga, the Russian president’s envoy to the Ural Federal District, said no one was hurt and that around 800 people had been evacuated from the building.

The next date in this sequence concerns Serbia directly. The Kyiv Independent, citing a senior Ukrainian official, reported that Zelensky is due to visit Serbia for the first time on August 8.