Yigal Levin, Ukrainian military expert:
A very realistic next scenario could be this: during exercises, Russian soldiers “get lost,” wander into some border village, and stay there.
Whether it’s Poland, Lithuania, or Finland — doesn’t matter.
Maybe they “lost” a soldier during maneuvers and now they have to search for him, maybe equipment broke down, maybe some soldiers got injured, or maybe, you know, “Ukrainian EW.”
That’s exactly how they’d present it to NATO. But there are plenty of other scenarios — it’s not hard to come up with more.
What would NATO do in this case? Strike a platoon or company of soldiers in a border village?
What if they really got lost? What if they really are injured? What if someone genuinely went missing?
Striking “lost” and injured soldiers would be a direct act of war and aggression.
So what would NATO actually do?
Russia wouldn’t care about those soldiers, and Putin knows how to take a step back: when the Turks shot down his warplane, he swallowed it.
When, during another Israeli strike on Syria, Syrian air defenses missed and shot down a Russian plane, killing Russian officers, he swallowed it again.
That’s how Putin acts when struck: he retreats.
He’s a security service man — trained not to charge head-on.
But if you don’t hit him, if you don’t hit the Russians, they become emboldened — that’s a well-known truth.
So they won’t mind losing a platoon of “strays,” even if NATO strikes them.
When Turkey shot down his jet, he said: “Are the Turks helping ISIS terrorists?”
Here, he’ll say: “So now you’re helping the Kyiv regime not only with weapons and money but also with direct strikes?”
And we circle back to the question: what would NATO say then?
As I see it, there’s only one way out — an iron wall.
No trade with Russia (France recently bought energy from Russia), even at your own expense.
No talk of freezes or “the day after” — as if NATO soldiers will be sipping coffee in sunny Kyiv while the front is frozen.
For example, Russia conducts exercises at the border?
Fine, no problem: issue an official warning — anyone crossing the border with weapons, whether intentionally or by mistake, will be struck.
And also officially state: this isn’t an act of war, we’re not interested in Russian territory, we won’t strike inside Russia, but the border is a closed zone — anyone crossing it, by land, water, or air, will be hit.
Remember, Russia always operates in “grey zones”: private military companies, “little green men,” mercenaries, “strays,” “accidental” incursions or overflights, and so on.
The only effective response to this “grey zones” is absolute clarity and strict protocols: for action A (even if it’s ambiguous and may not be A at all), reaction B follows immediately, regardless of how clear A is.
Relations with Russia can only be like this — an iron wall.
Anything else is a trap and playing by the Kremlin’s rules.
news.sky.com
