{"id":8183,"date":"2026-07-16T14:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T14:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/8183\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T14:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T14:22:09","slug":"nato-planning-for-war-with-russia-but-has-moscow-left-the-door-open-rusi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/8183\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO Planning for War with Russia \u2013 but has Moscow Left the Door Open? | RUSI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NATO Planning for War with Russia \u2013 but has Moscow Left the Door Open?<\/p>\n<p>Moscow\u2019s strategic communications cast Russia as a backseat passenger on a road to war in Europe \u2013 but war is not inevitable.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov during the summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States at the Palace of the Nation in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Putin-Peskov-BannerImage-1168x440px.jpg\" style=\"height:358px; width:950px\"\/><\/p>\n<p>As expected, at the NATO <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/live\/2026\/jul\/07\/nato-summit-zelenskyy-trump-ukraine-rutte-defence-eu-spending-turkey-france-macron-le-pen-europe-latest-news-updates\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">summit<\/a> in Ankara the Alliance dedicated much of its time to the importance of boosted defence spending and reiterating support for Ukraine. It is also collectively considering preparations for warfare with Russia at an as-yet-undetermined date.<\/p>\n<p>NATO appears convinced that the next major war will be with Russia in Europe and is making plans accordingly. Numerous articles to this end have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/world-news\/2026\/07\/03\/russia-planning-attack-on-poland-test-nato-resolve-us-warns\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">appeared<\/a> of late, suggesting variously that Russia has designs on a limited land incursion of Poland to test Alliance resolve, despite there being no plausible evidence beyond Moscow\u2019s usual range of scenario planning to suggest that Russia intends to do this.<\/p>\n<p>But for Moscow, there are probably three parallel conversations taking place, which in the Kremlin\u2019s understanding are entirely separate \u2013 its current war with Ukraine; its bilateral relationship with the Americans, and the potential for a future war with NATO.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rusi.org\/explore-our-research\/publications\/commentary\/nato-planning-war-russia-has-moscow-left-door-open\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Click here for the full press release<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NATO Planning for War with Russia \u2013 but has Moscow Left the Door Open? Moscow\u2019s strategic communications cast&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[178,4639,543,2950,4640,47,4307,238,4641,2437,7,4642,4643,726,197,4312,4636,20,2224,71],"class_list":["post-8183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-alliance","tag-americans","tag-ankara","tag-click","tag-door","tag-europe","tag-july","tag-kremlin","tag-left","tag-moscow","tag-nato","tag-numerous","tag-open","tag-planning","tag-poland","tag-printable","tag-rusi","tag-russia","tag-thursday","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8183","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=8183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}