Romania’s Defense Minister Radu Miruta said on Aug. 30 that he does not believe Moscow intends to attack a NATO member state, noting that other allies share this assessment, according to Romanian news outlet Digi24.
The comments come amid renewed discussions about a potential Russian threat to the NATO frontier after CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Moscow on Aug. 25, reportedly to warn the Kremlin against hostile operations against the alliance.
“I don’t think Russia has any intention to attack a NATO member country,” Digi24 was told by Miruta, whose country shares a 614-kilometer (381-mile) border with Ukraine and has repeatedly faced cross-border violations by Russian drones, including one that injured two civilians in the city of Galati in May.
The defense minister stressed that Romania and its allies share intelligence data and, based on their analyses, “there is no indication (of a threat of an attack) today.”
Miruta also argued that the Russia-Ukraine war has reached a new stage where Russian forces are unable to advance.
“It seems that for now, the situation has turned into a stalemate along the entire front line,” he said.
Ukraine has warned that Russia is preparing for a new mobilization wave after its parliamentary elections in September, a step that might, according to Kyiv, set the stage for fresh offensives in Ukraine or an attack against NATO’s frontier.
Several Western intelligence agencies have also said that Russia may be planning a hostile provocation in the Baltics or Poland to test NATO’s response. Moscow has previously been linked to increasingly frequent cases of cyberattacks, sabotage, airspace violations, and hybrid operations across Europe.
Nevertheless, officials in the Baltic countries, which sit on NATO’s northeastern flank bordering Russia, said last week that while Russia continues to pose a persistent threat, they see no signs of an imminent Russian attack.