Putin is testing Nato at Ukraine’s borders

Jet-powered Russian drones recently hit a train in Ukraine a mere mile from the Polish border. The drone pilots, and their Kremlin minders, must have known that officials from Europe, the UK, the US, and elsewhere had previously left Kyiv by train after participating in the Yalta European Strategy (YES) Annual Meeting, a sort of Ukrainian Davos.

But the trains carrying former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, former CIA director David Petraeus, and former Polish president Aleksander Kwaśniewski, among others, were not hit. Had the Russians missed them intentionally or through incompetence?

Whatever the answer, there is no doubt that Western officials’ continued support for Ukraine, on display at the YES Annual Meeting, rankles the Kremlin.

At the end of one panel, Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski candidly remarked that, if attacked, Nato could defeat Russia quite quickly: “If the Ukrainians have knocked out half of Russia’s refining capacity in six months, we could do it in six weeks and take out the other half.” Sikorski later confirmed that he was referring to Nato’s European members.

The Kremlin was stunned by this matter-of-fact remark and quickly went on the offensive, with Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova calling it “Russophobia”.

Perhaps Kremlin officials have grown accustomed to friendly exchanges with US president Donald Trump’s so-called “negotiators,” Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—blind amateurs “unburdened with geopolitical detail,” as Edward Luce put it in the Financial Times.

Viktor Sobolev, a member of the State Duma Defense Committee, dismissed the premise: “We don’t plan to attack anyone; the president has said this many times.”

Never mind that Russian president Vladimir Putin also vehemently denied that he had any intention of invading Ukraine and, before that, Georgia. To make his point more clearly about how inoffensive Russia was, Sobolev went on to warn Poles against picking a fight with “a country that possesses nuclear weapons”.

The most pathetic comment came from Putin’s aide Nikolai Patrushev, who accused Sikorski of “Russophobic frenzy” and claimed that Russia poses no threat to anyone because it has no reason to conduct military operations against Europe.

But if Russia were to attack Poland, he added, the country would cease to exist within 2–3 days. (In a subsequent TV interview, Sikorski dismissed Patrushev’s threat, remarking that “2–3 days” is how long it was supposed to take Russia to occupy Kyiv back in 2022.)

The Kremlin is determined to isolate Ukraine. That means not only breaking the will of the country’s backers, but also cutting it off physically by striking merchant ships on the Black Sea and shelling Odesa’s three main ports.

This has paralysed the export of grain at the peak of an exceptional harvest and prevented even the cautious movement of cargo along the coast of Romania and Bulgaria, which will have consequences for Ukraine’s economic survival and world food prices.

Making matters worse, the Danube is so shallow this year that its river ports are practically unusable. And those vessels small enough to enter it risk coming under fire.

A civilian cargo boat en route to Galați, Romania, was recently hit by a Russian drone at the mouth of the Danube, killing the captain and several crew members.

Overland routes are also being disrupted by Russian attacks on Ukrainian border posts. The Starokozache crossing, which leads into Moldova, was recently hit; so was the Mayaki bridge on the same route.

The closures of border checkpoints, no matter how brief, can turn waiting trains and cars into sitting ducks for even the most inexperienced drone operators.

Roads may be slightly less dangerous than rail tracks because itineraries can be changed on short notice. Petraeus, one of the officials almost struck by a Russian drone when leaving Kyiv by train, suggested that next time he might take a car.

These assaults cannot go unanswered, because they isolate Ukraine and embolden Putin to continue testing the West. After this recent train bombing, Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte was asked about the possibility of a Russian attack that could demand the alliance’s response.

He cautioned: “If you are willing to sacrifice 1.2 million of your own people in this crazy unprovoked fight, let’s not be naive about what Putin could do.”

With winter approaching, Ukraine desperately needs help: generators, heaters, warm clothes, and power stations. When the border is shut, bringing aid feels a bit like delivering items for inmates at the prison gates.

But that is precisely what Putin is trying to achieve. He is seeking to destroy an entire country by severing its ties with the outside world. Ukrainians know what awaits them if Putin succeeds. Are the rest of us aware of what we are enabling by failing to act? In Rutte’s words, let’s not be naive.

Anna Husarska, a former senior policy adviser at the International Rescue Committee, is a journalist and political analyst.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.

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