Ukraine Military History Institute
The question is not whether Putin has ambitions beyond Ukraine
Francis Farrell puts the Baltic question the other way round from how it is usually asked. The interesting thing is not whether Putin would like to test NATO. It is what is currently preventing him.
His answer is specific. Putin will not move on those ambitions while his forces are still struggling to get closer to Sloviansk. Ukraine holding that line is causing enough problems that even the minimalist version of Russia's goals, let alone the maximalist one, remains out of reach, on a timeline he measures in several years, if it happens at all.
That is what is stopping the first FPV drones flying into Narva, or into Lithuania from Kaliningrad. Not deterrence in the abstract. A front line several hundred kilometres away that is absorbing the force which would otherwise be free.
It is a useful correction to a common framing. European security is often discussed as though it depends on what NATO signals. Farrell's point is that a large part of it currently depends on something else entirely: whether Ukrainian units hold at a particular place.
The problem with fighting a war nobody else knows how to fight
Underneath that sits a capability gap Farrell states bluntly.
None of these countries know how to fight this type of war. Only Ukraine and Russia understand the kind of war that has a kill zone in it. He relays what a soldier had told them the previous day: NATO troops need to learn to live for weeks underground.
That is a concrete training requirement, not a slogan, and it is the sort of thing that does not appear in a procurement plan. An army that has not practised being unable to move in daylight for weeks at a time is not prepared for the conditions both sides now treat as ordinary.
What Europe is actually signalling
Farrell's central argument is about perception, and it is uncomfortable.
European NATO countries have stepped up a lot with support. What they have not done is take actions that show Putin they have real skin in the game. So the message Putin receives is not the one Europe thinks it is sending.
As Farrell reads it, Putin already believes Ukraine is a NATO puppet and the resistance is artificial. What Europe adds to that belief is a second signal: that if he can break the military on the front line, which has a great deal of help but is still made up of Ukrainians, and break the economy and society in the rear, Europe will not come. That is all he has to do. After that he can take what he wants, and then consider Estonia and the Baltic states.
His conclusion is that Ukraine's partners need to treat the defence of Ukraine as the defence of their own security, both philosophically and tangibly, and act accordingly.
The miscalculation that worries the host
Samuel Cook raises a different risk, and it follows from something that has changed this year.
Russia's rear was, until roughly this year, fairly secure. Ukraine's was not. But Ukrainian factories are increasingly being exported to Europe through joint ventures with defence companies, and European production is starting to have a real effect on the battlefield, with large European firms putting drones and ammunition into Ukraine.
That makes European industry a participant rather than a donor, and there has been noise from the Kremlin and its mouthpieces that European targets should be ready.
The miscalculation Cook fears is not a Russian invasion of the Baltics. It is smaller and more plausible: if things are going badly, why not put the chips in and send jet-powered Shaheds across Europe to see what the response is. Russia may not have what it needs to take the Baltics, but it may not need a full invasion to cause a real crisis inside NATO and find out whether it is a paper tiger.
Why the same event could cut the other way
Farrell's response is the most interesting exchange in the chapter, because he does not simply agree.
If fear of escalation is the line your thinking runs along, then yes, that is a serious concern. But the same event could have the opposite effect. A drone campaign into Europe could finally entrench the idea that the two theatres cannot be separated and that Europe and Ukraine have to act as one.
The condition he attaches is doing the work: if the response is appropriate. That is where the argument lands. The danger is not that Russia tests NATO. It is that Russia tests NATO and the answer is threats and grumbling, because that outcome teaches exactly the lesson nobody wants taught.
What to watch
- Whether the Sloviansk line holds. Farrell made it the load-bearing element of European security, which means it is also the clearest indicator. If that front moves significantly, his own logic says the calculation behind Baltic risk changes.
- Whether European defence plants are struck. Cook named this as the miscalculation path. A strike on a European production site, or on a joint venture inside Ukraine, would be the first real test of his scenario.
- The character of any NATO response. Farrell's argument turns entirely on whether a response is proportionate rather than rhetorical. The first incident is the test, and the reaction to it will be more informative than the incident.