The Royal Navy has stepped up patrols to monitor Russian military activity as US spy chiefs warned Vladimir Putin could order attacks on a Nato country within weeks.
US officials fear Russia wants to test the alliance’s resolve by mounting a small land incursion or launching cyber attacks across Eastern Europe at any time from this autumn to 2029.
The warnings come after a Russian missile landed in Poland last week and an explosive drone was found at Leipzig airport in Germany on Tuesday, near a Ukrainian jet carrying weapons.
Increased vigilance by Britain’s Armed Forces has also been ordered, with Royal Navy crews out on patrol monitoring Russian activity in coastal and North Atlantic waters for 21 days in July.
Poland’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, speaking to the BBC yesterday, confirmed the US assessment. He said: ‘We think Putin is pretty desperate and may do some kind of false flag provocation.
‘He’s not capable of launching an invasion of Nato, but something nasty is possible.’
Retired rear admiral Mark Montgomery, director of US research institute The Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said military experts had been monitoring Russia’s move towards hybrid warfare in Eastern Europe.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting with members of the Security Council at the Kremlin on August 7
A burning building in the aftermath of Russian ballistic missile strikes in Kyiv region
He said: ‘They call it ‘new generation warfare’, which is a mix of explosive events, drone attacks, jamming events, cyber attacks, influence operations, disinformation and even weaponised migration.
‘Their likelihood of using it at some scale to try to send Nato a strong deterrent message to stop its support for Ukraine or an even more aggressive attack is coming.
‘I think there’s a reasonable belief that that’s true, and I’m glad the intelligence community is saying it out loud.’
He said a Russian land incursion into Eastern Europe or a Baltic state could be likely if hostilities in Ukraine cease and Europe gets distracted.
But Mr Sikorski said Putin’s attempts to weaken Nato have so far failed, saying: ‘I think he’s strengthened Nato’s resolve over the last few years.
‘We’re spending hundreds of billions on defence that we wouldn’t have done without Putin invading Ukraine. We need till the end of the decade to rearm, and then I’ll be confident he won’t dare attack.’
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) revealed yesterday that Royal Navy deployments to shadow Russian warships and submarines in British waters were up 25 per cent in the seven months of this year compared to 2025.
It comes after Royal Marine commandos intercepted and boarded a sanctioned shadow fleet oil tanker, Smyrtos, in the English Channel in June.
The UK is regarded as a leader in tackling the shadow fleet, having already sanctioned more than 500 vessels.
A MoD spokesman said: ‘By disrupting the shadow fleet, the UK and international partners are directly bearing down on the resources sustaining Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and reducing its capacity to threaten security across Europe and beyond.’
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky announced yesterday that Kyiv had secured a deal with the US for monthly deliveries of Patriot air-defence missiles.
Earlier, Russian strikes killed three people, including a child, near Kyiv. Explosions were reported at three locations near the capital, in the Boryspil district, with firefighters called to tackle blazes.
