Czech President Petr Pavel is pressing NATO allies to stop looking hesitant and start acting like they mean it. He argues that repeated Russian probes into allied airspace are not random accidents but pressure tests, and that weakness only invites more of them.
Pavel said the alliance cannot keep assuming restraint will be read as peacekeeping. In his view, Moscow watches for hesitation, measures the response, and then keeps nudging the line a little farther each time.
“There might be the time when we will have to shoot down some of these planes or unmanned vehicles that are testing our readiness,” Pavel said during a conversation on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. That blunt warning landed hard because it came from a retired general who once chaired NATO’s Military Committee.
He said allies do have a good reason to avoid escalation, but caution can turn into a dangerous message if it looks like fear. “What I am afraid of is that they see a lack of will on our side to take decisive action,” Pavel said. “Within Russian perceptions it demonstrates weakness. And they respect power.”
The remarks followed a string of fresh incidents near NATO’s eastern border. A Russian Mi-8 military helicopter flew from Kaliningrad into Polish airspace, triggering a fighter response, while Romania scrambled F-16s after an unidentified airborne target crossed in from Ukraine.
That same week, Denmark’s military intelligence service warned that Russia is likely to step up hybrid attacks against NATO in the months ahead. The agency also said the chance of a limited Russian military strike against one or more border states remains low, but is growing enough to keep leaders nervous.
Pavel has been sounding the alarm in public and private, arguing that Russia’s behavior is not just noisy theater. He said the pattern feels familiar from earlier years, when Russian aircraft pushed limits around Syria and repeatedly violated Turkish airspace before Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in 2015.
“They are, on one hand, provoking. On the other, testing what will our reaction be,” Pavel said. That kind of probing, he suggested, is exactly why NATO needs clear red lines instead of vague warnings that can be ignored.
The alliance already has steps for accidental intrusions, including attempts to contact aircraft and issue warnings. Pavel drew a sharp line between mistakes and deliberate violations, saying that if a violator refuses to respond, the alliance has to be ready to act.
“If it is deliberate and the violator doesn’t respond to our measures, then we will have to act, because otherwise Russia simply would push further on,” he said. That logic runs through his broader view of the standoff, which treats hesitation as an open door rather than a sign of calm.
His concern is not limited to airspace violations. Pavel also said Russia’s public talk about negotiations over Ukraine does not match the reality on the ground, where he sees no serious effort to reach a settlement on terms that respect Ukrainian sovereignty.
In his view, any real peace process would start with a ceasefire first, then talks without preconditions. Anything less, he argued, is just diplomatic fog meant to buy time while pressure continues elsewhere.
Pavel also pointed to a less visible but equally urgent problem inside NATO: empty shelves in weapons stockpiles. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have burned through ammunition and advanced munitions fast enough to expose how thin defenses can become in a long fight.
“With the amount of ammunition, especially intelligent ammunition, consumed over a short period of time, we all understand on both sides of the Atlantic how short we are when it comes to stocks of these kinds of equipment,” Pavel said. He argued that Europe and the United States need to move faster on production and stop relying on procurement systems that he described as slow and rigid.
The pressure on NATO is piling up from multiple directions at once, from airspace breaches to drone activity to hybrid tactics that keep allies guessing. Pavel’s message is simple and sharp: if the alliance wants deterrence to mean anything, it has to look ready before the next aircraft, drone, or border crossing decides to test it again.
