Vladimir Putin has shifted from ambiguity to overt threats. On Monday, at an extraordinary meeting of Russia’s Security Council convened on the eve of NATO consultations on an alleged 12-minute Russian incursion into Estonian airspace, the Russian leader warned the West that Moscow would answer “strategic threats” not with rhetoric but with “military-technical measures”. Estonia has also placed the matter before the UN Security Council.

Formally, Mr Putin framed his remarks around arms control. He said it would be a “mistake” to allow the New START treaty to expire without reciprocal restraint, and that Russia is prepared to observe the treaty’s central ceilings for one year after its scheduled expiry on 5 February 2026—if the United States does the same. The limits are well-known: 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and 700 deployed delivery systems per side. Inspections and notifications remain suspended since 2023. The Kremlin’s message is thus a conditional offer of numerical restraint without verification.

The political signal sits elsewhere. “Military-technical measures” is a phrase the Kremlin has used before episodes of force projection, including in the run-up to major escalations against Ukraine. Its scope ranges from deployments to posture changes and new weapons basing. The context matters: in August, Moscow publicly ended its unilateral moratorium on the deployment of ground-launched intermediate- and shorter-range missiles—a step that arms-control specialists warn could compress decision times in a crisis and complicate European defence planning.

The timing of Monday’s session is not incidental. It preceded NATO discussions on Estonia’s report that three Russian MiG-31s entered its airspace over the Gulf of Finland, remaining for around 12 minutes, and a UN Security Council debate requested by Tallinn. Russia denies the violation and accuses Estonia of seeking to “whip up tensions”. The alliance is also reviewing responses to earlier incidents in the Baltic and over Poland.

The pattern over recent weeks supports the view that the Kremlin has moved to a policy of managed escalation following the August leaders’ meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, which ended without a concrete agreement on Ukraine. The summit produced no enforceable undertakings and was followed by sharper signalling from Moscow.

Poland has become a focal point of this signalling. Warsaw reported that nineteen Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace during a wider strike on Ukraine on the night of 9–10 September. When U.S. President Donald Trump suggested the episode might have been an error linked to Ukrainian air defences, senior Polish officials publicly rejected that account. Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated that the raid “was not a mistake”; Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski called it a deliberate attack. Mr Tusk has since said Poland will shoot down aerial objects in clear-cut violations, while stressing caution in ambiguous cases to avoid unintended escalation.

Seen together—the New START one-year offer, the scrapping of the INF-range moratorium, the alleged incursion into Estonian airspace, and the drone overflights into Poland—Moscow’s approach is coherent. The Kremlin couples a narrow, reversible gesture on strategic ceilings to preserve narrative leverage, while widening pressure on NATO’s north-eastern flank and normalising risk through repeated probes. The cancellation of the missile moratorium is the practical hinge: it enables prospective ground-based deployments that would place additional stress on allied air and missile defence architecture and reduce warning and decision timelines.

The immediate test is diplomatic. Estonia’s appeal to the UN puts Russia’s behaviour on the record in a forum where Moscow wields a veto but not a monopoly on narrative. Within NATO, consultations now need to translate into calibrated measures that reinforce deterrence without providing Moscow with an escalation pretext. Poland’s public stance—rules of engagement that distinguish between unequivocal intrusions and ambiguous incidents—reflects that calculus.

Washington’s response to Mr Putin’s conditional New START proposal will be read against this backdrop. Accepting mutual adherence to the treaty limits for one year past February 2026 would keep the two largest arsenals capped through early 2027, but it would not restore inspections or data exchanges. Without transparency, confidence in compliance degrades over time; with INF-range deployments back on the table, crisis stability in Europe would still worsen even if strategic caps hold.

In short, the Kremlin’s message is blunt: negotiate on Moscow’s terms or face a rolling series of “military-technical” faits accomplis. The alliance’s task is equally clear: close the space for probes over Poland and the Baltics, uphold airspace integrity through predictable responses, and treat any discussion on strategic ceilings as separate from, and not a substitute for, countering coercive actions in Europe’s sky.

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