Some of Europe’s biggest Nato members are moving to strengthen their professional armies through voluntary national service schemes.
Large conscripted armies were a feature of Nato states during the Cold War but they dwindled in size after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the ongoing war there have kindled fears of a possible future Russian attack on Nato.
Russian spies who hacked Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign have been linked to the Salisbury poisonings for the first time.
Boris Antonov, Nikolai Kozachek and Pavel Yershov were previously indicted by the United States for releasing tens of thousands of emails from Mrs Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
They were among 11 Russian military intelligence officers sanctioned by Britain on Thursday in the wake of a public inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, who was exposed to the nerve agent Novichok in 2018.
“The Russians are coming!” Throughout the Cold War, that phrase expressed the anxiety felt by Western democracies about the possibility of a surprise nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. Half jest, the tongue-in-cheek quip evoked Russian chief Nikita Khrushchev’s notorious braggadocio in 1956 addressed to Western powers: “We will bury you!”
Later in an address at the United Nations, the Communist leader hinted that the promised burial could come by the year 2000.
By 1992, however, another phrase was making the rounds in Western capitals: “The Russians are going!”
Deliberate drone incursions into sovereign NATO airspace. Suspicious damage to undersea cables. Calculated attacks that test the West’s cybersecurity. All these actions by Russia have just been a prelude to the latest effort to intimidate the West from aiding the embattled Ukrainian nation.
Of late there has also been a deliberate effort to sabotage the Polish railway system. No surprise: the gateway had become a crucial gateway for sending military aid to Ukraine. That attack signals Russia’s willingness to escalate warfare beyond Ukraine’s borders and into NATO territory. This “anonymous” incident, however, reveals an extremely calculated strategy to intimidate European nations while Russia maintains plausible deniability.
Thanks to the norms of inter-state combat which have governed much of history, we’ve long been conditioned to think of war and peace in binary terms. But what’s happening on Nato’s east shows us that it is in fact a spectrum, with Poland caught right in the grey zone at its midpoint.
This weekend, for the first time since the Second World War, a deliberate explosion damaged a railway line connecting Warsaw to Lublin in what Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called an “unprecedented act of sabotage”. Although Polish authorities have not yet named a specific culprit, they’re already stating the obvious — that “all traces lead to Russia.” That’s hardly surprising, given that the damaged rail line serves as a key pathway for shipping aid to Ukraine, and Russia has sent recruits to gather intelligence on Polish rail hubs near military bases and to disrupt train services using radio networks in the recent past.
Assuming it was Russia.
Poland: Ukrainians Working for Moscow Responsible for Railway Explosion
Russia is amassing nuclear weapons and attack submarines in the Arctic Circle as it prepares for war with Nato, Norway’s defence minister has warned.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Tore Sandvik said Oslo had detected increased weapons development on Russia’s Kola peninsula, where its prized Northern Fleet and parts of its nuclear stockpile are based.
He also said that Vladimir Putin was trying to gain full naval control over the Arctic region so that he could block Nato allies’ access to two key shipping routes that would help resupply Western forces in wartime.
The US has announced new sanctions targeting Russia’s two largest oil companies – Rosneft and Lukoil – in an effort to pressure Moscow to negotiate a peace deal in Ukraine.
“Every time I speak to Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere. They just don’t go anywhere,” President Donald Trump said, after a meeting with Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte to discuss peace negotiations.
The sanctions announcement came one day after Trump said a meeting planned with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest would be shelved indefinitely.
Vladimir Putin’s hybrid war is pushing Europe towards a deadly new “Pearl Harbour moment”, a former Lithuanian foreign minister has warned.
Gabrielius Landsbergis, who stepped down as the Baltic country’s most senior diplomat in November, said Nato was “doing nothing” in the face of brinkmanship by Russia, allowing Putin to drag the West closer to all-out conflict.
His warning follows a series of Russian provocations, including MiG-31 fighter jets breaching Estonian airspace and a drone barrage over Poland. As fighting continues in Ukraine, swarms of drones have caused mayhem at airports and spied on infrastructure as part of the Kremlin’s “shadow war”.
Drones have been detected flying around a Danish jet fighter base and four airports, causing the diversion of flights in the second night of disruption this week.
Aalborg airport, which is the country’s third busiest and is used by the military, was briefly forced to close late on Wednesday night and at least three flights had to be rerouted.
The transport wing of the Danish air force, including Hercules and Challenger aircraft, and the Jaeger Corps of special forces commandos are located at an adjacent base.
Russian?
The Prime Minister of Denmark just addressed the nation, admitting she does not know what the UFOs invading the country are. China—or non-human intelligences—pitting us against each other? We’ve seen them trigger missile launches in the USSR, perhaps to blame the U.S. pic.twitter.com/BcgFSXgx1c
— Rony Vernet (@RonyVernet) September 26, 2025
Ross Coulthart on the Denmark incursions: “I don’t believe they are drones”
“Something or someone is demonstrating an ability to operate with total impunity. The absolute assurance of knowledge that they cannot be tracked [or] detected.
They are operating craft of some kind… pic.twitter.com/hsraWd1oOa
— UAP James (@UAPJames) September 25, 2025
In 1984, Yuri Bezmenov, a former Soviet KGB officer turned defector, issued a chilling warning to the West. As a specialist in the USSR’s propaganda and subversion, he revealed how Moscow’s “active measures” were designed not only to mislead but to fundamentally destabilize societies from within. The West, convinced that victory in the Cold War would be purely military or economic, ignored his words. Yet Bezmenov understood what few in Washington or Brussels could grasp: the battlefield was psychological, cultural and moral.
Russian president Vladimir Putin hailed North Korean troops sent to fight in Ukraine as “heroic” in a letter to Kim Jong-un, North Korean state media reported on Friday.
In a letter marking the anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese rule, Putin recalled how Soviet Red Army units and North Korean forces fought together to end Japan’s colonial occupation.
“The bonds of militant friendship, goodwill and mutual aid which were consolidated in the days of the war long ago remain solid and reliable even today,” Putin said in the letter revealed by North Korean state media.
Russian hackers took control of a Norwegian dam this year, opening a floodgate and allowing water to flow unnoticed for four hours, Norway’s intelligence service has said.
The admission, by the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST), marks the first time that Oslo has formally attributed the cyber-attack in April on Bremanger, western Norway, to Moscow.
The attack on the hydropower dam, which produces electricity, released 500 litres (132 gallons) of water a second for four hours until the incident was detected and stopped.
President Trump has ordered the deployment of two American nuclear submarines in response to “foolish and inflammatory” threats from a former president of Russia.
The US president accused Dmitry Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, of making “highly provocative statements”.
“I have ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances.”
The United States of America owes credit for its birth in the 18th century and its survival during the Civil War to an unlikely source: Russia.
That narrative has taken hold in some circles inside the former Soviet Union, and it’s a viewpoint recently espoused by Russian President Vladimir Putin. This month, Mr. Putin went out of his way to highlight historical examples of what Moscow’s state-run media called “Russia’s contribution to U.S. statehood.”
