Russia plotting military operation against NATO member state — former Finnish intelligence chief

Pekka Toveri, Finland's former Chief of Military Intelligence and Member of the European Parliament, stated this in an interview with Espreso.

"Without a doubt, Russia is preparing for a prolonged war. Its economy has essentially transformed into a war economy, with everything else suffering and declining except defense production. They're trying to build new strategic reserves to prepare as quickly as possible for a potential confrontation with NATO. However, recently Russia has been facing increasingly serious difficulties due to Ukraine's powerful defense. Russian forces are sustaining ever-greater losses," Pekka Toveri commented.

According to him, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte recently emphasized that Russia is losing about 20,000-25,000 troops per month in Ukraine in killed alone, not just wounded. This prevents the Russian military from accumulating significant reserves.

"Nevertheless, the fact remains: Putin is preparing for a confrontation with NATO. NATO military intelligence chiefs are speaking quite unambiguously about this. They believe that while Russia lacks the capability to create a large-scale military threat to NATO, it is still capable of challenging Article 5. We're talking about a scenario involving a small, limited operation against one NATO member state, followed by an attempt to blackmail the Alliance with nuclear threats. In other words, if there's a counterattack, Russia might resort to using nuclear weapons. The calculation is straightforward: provoke a division and test whether NATO will 'break' and refuse to defend one of its members. This is likely what they're preparing for, and it's an entirely realistic scenario in the near future," noted the former head of Finnish military intelligence.