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Jennifer Welch

June 24, 2025

The last thing the world wants to contemplate in the wake of the US military showdown with Iran is a Russian attack on NATO. But that’s exactly what’s on the mind of the alliance’s war planners as NATO leaders convene today in The Hague.

A Russian assault remains unlikely in the near term. The Kremlin doesn’t want to fight on two fronts, and more than three years into its war on Ukraine it lacks the capacity to take on the bloc. That doesn’t mean it’s beyond Moscow’s vision for the future.

President Vladimir Putin denies he has any such plans, though he said the same before Russia invaded Ukraine. He has made clear he seeks to reclaim what he views as historically Russian territory.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — NATO frontline members — were once directly administered by the Soviet Union and are home to large Russian minority populations.

WATCH: Bloomberg’s Oliver Crook breaks down issues at the NATO summit.  

To the Baltic states, the threat of a Russian invasion is more than hypothetical. All three countries have hiked defense spending in recent years, and are in the process of withdrawing from an international landmines ban so they can be used to bolster defenses.

Further complicating NATO’s planning, a war may start under ambiguous circumstances. Russia has a history of using hybrid operations – false flags, staged incidents, disinformation – to create pretext for a larger attack.

For the Baltics, that could involve a rail line connecting Moscow to Russia’s Kaliningrad region via Lithuania. Russia could claim the train was stopped in Lithuania, and it needed to send in troops to rescue stranded Russian citizens.

The question facing NATO members would then be whether this would invoke their mutual-defense commitment. For the Baltic states, it absolutely would.

That scenario is the focus of a new modeling exercise by Bloomberg Economics. The implications? Untold casualties, a $1.5 trillion hit to the global economy, and a further blow to the fragile global security order. — Jennifer Welch

Members of the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee march during the NATO summit. Photographer: Lina Selg/Bloomberg

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Iran denied it fired missiles after Israel accused the Islamic Republic of breaching a ceasefire US President Donald Trump announced hours before to end the 12-day war. “THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT,” Trump said on Truth Social. “PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!” Meanwhile, satellite images suggest that the US Air Force was careful not to hit Iranian nuclear reactors at a key research facility during its weekend air strikes.