{"id":13252,"date":"2026-09-06T08:08:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T08:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/13252\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T08:08:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T08:08:41","slug":"amb-whitaker-nato-must-prepare-for-russian-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/13252\/","title":{"rendered":"Amb. Whitaker: NATO Must Prepare for Russian Attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"(Dreamstime)\"<\/p>\n

(Dreamstime)<\/p>\n

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker is urging allies to accelerate defense spending and weapons production amid reported U.S. intelligence assessments that Russia could test NATO with a limited attack sooner than previously expected.<\/p>\n

“You can’t predict what [Russian President] Vladimir Putin’s going to do \u2014 or any adversary,” he said.<\/p>\n

“All you can do is be prepared for it and deter and make it not worth their time to make that move,” Whitaker told USA Today<\/a> in an exclusive interview at NATO headquarters in Brussels published on Thursday.<\/p>\n

“And I think we are preparing every single day to prevent that from happening, and if it does happen, to be ready for it,” he added.<\/p>\n

“We should know that our adversary invaded Ukraine, and so, we should all be pretty clear-eyed,” Whitaker said.<\/p>\n

Whitaker declined to address the classified intelligence directly.<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/a> first reported last month that U.S. intelligence suggests Putin could potentially test NATO’s resolve with a limited incursion or cyberattack against an alliance member within the next several years.<\/p>\n

This is significantly sooner than the 10- to 15-year time frame some allies had been using for defense planning.<\/p>\n

“We need to exercise like it matters. We need to prepare, we need to invest in capabilities,” Whitaker emphasized.<\/p>\n

The concerns come as NATO seeks to strengthen its military and industrial capacity after years in which Russia dramatically expanded defense production during its war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

NATO members last year agreed to spend 5% of annual GDP<\/a> on defense and defense-related investments by 2035, including at least 3.5% on core military requirements.<\/p>\n

“Where there’s an asymmetry between Russia and NATO is that they are on a war footing, and we’re not,” Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told USA Today.<\/p>\n

“They can produce a thousand cruise missiles,” he said. “Our ability to provide air defense interceptors or produce them is just inept.”<\/p>\n

The warnings gained additional attention following CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s unannounced visit to Moscow, where he reportedly cautioned Russia against attacking NATO territory.<\/p>\n

Moscow has denied it intends to attack the alliance.<\/p>\n

“These reports have no basis in reality and do not reflect Russia’s intentions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Russian state media.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump<\/a> also dismissed the prospect of a Russian attack. “He’s not going to be attacking a NATO territory,” Trump told reporters Aug. 27.<\/p>\n

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, however, pointed to Moscow’s denials before its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

“Apparently, Putin’s spooks told @CIA Director he would not provoke @NATO. Putin had told [P]resident [Joe] Biden’s CIA Director that he would not invade Ukraine. We should accelerate defen[s]e preparations,” Sikorski wrote on social media.<\/p>\n

The latest assessments do not necessarily mean a Russian attack is imminent. But they add urgency to a long-standing NATO concern, whether European allies and the United States can rebuild weapons stockpiles and production capacity quickly enough to deter Moscow as Russia remains geared toward a wartime economy.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Dreamstime) U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker is urging allies to accelerate defense spending and weapons production amid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7948,3568,7,20,3435,185,1774,71,7845],"class_list":["post-13252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-dreamstime","tag-matt-whitaker","tag-nato","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-the-wall-street-journal","tag-u-s","tag-ukraine","tag-whitaker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}