Former U.S. Army Europe commander Ben Hodges on why a Russia-friendly peace plan would ‘guarantee’ an attack on NATO

In October 2025, speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior NATO official told journalists that Moscow was “taking a professional approach to learning the lessons” of the war in Ukraine. Combined with the militarization of Russia’s economy, the official said, this means that in some ways, the country will “actually have a modern, more capable force that it had when the war [started].” For NATO’s eastern members like Poland and the Baltic countries, this analysis casts an ominous light on the latest U.S. “peace plan,” which has been widely criticized for favoring Moscow. To find out what a deal like the one Trump is pushing would mean for the security of Russia’s western neighbors, Meduza senior news editor Sam Breazeale spoke to retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

— The U.S. has been pushing for a deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. By all appearances, Russia would come out of the war with a militarized economy, new lessons learned from the past three years of warfare, and a president selling the idea that he’s defending the country against an aggressive West. So do you think a peace deal in Ukraine would make a Russian invasion of NATO territory more likely?

— It depends on what kind of deal is arranged. The best way to make sure that Russia never attacks a NATO country is to help Ukraine defeat Russia. And it shouldn’t cost the life of a single Latvian soldier if all of us are helping Ukraine economically and by providing equipment and ammunition.

A deal where Ukraine is not able to properly defend itself and the Russians get amnesty for whatever war crimes have been committed would guarantee that Russia will attack European countries within the next couple years. So the key is a just, sustainable peace where Ukrainian sovereignty is recognized and the Ukrainians are able to do whatever they want to make themselves as strong as possible to deter Russia from ever doing this again.

I don’t know that I would agree that Russia is going to have this big, gigantic military that’s super experienced and ready to go [after this war]. They are getting hammered. They are in trouble. Of course, they do have lots of people, but they are feeding these guys into a meat grinder. It’s taken them 11 years to get to what they have now, and over a year just to go from Avdiivka to Pokrovsk.

Now Ukraine is aggressively going after Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure in such a way that, given the artificial nature of Russia’s economy, I think will leave them in serious financial trouble sometime next year. But everything I’m saying is based on the premise that the West will continue to help Ukraine, even if the United States fails to do so.

— Just to be clear, is it your opinion that the 28-point plan that the U.S. presented a few weeks ago would effectively guarantee Russian aggression against NATO in the next 5–10 years?

— Absolutely. You would have to believe that Russia would be satisfied with just those four [regions] that they wanted to “protect themselves from NATO.” You would have to believe that they would live up to any agreement, which they’ve never done unless compelled to. You would have to believe that Vladimir Putin is sincere when he says, “We just want peace. We don’t want to be attacked by NATO.” Nothing in the facts would give that any credence. So I think that, fortunately, even if the United States has clearly taken the side of the Kremlin here — and this is all about business for Trump’s administration, his family, and some associates — most Europeans seem to be waking up to the reality that this is not the United States that they remembered, and that they’re going to have to make sure that Ukraine does not fail.

— NATO officials often cite the lack of cable cuts in the Baltic Sea since the launch of the Baltic Sentry monitoring mission a year ago as evidence that its vigilance activities are effective. In September, they also launched Operation Eastern Sentry in response to Russia’s airspace incursions in Poland. Is NATO doing enough to deter Russian hybrid warfare?

— Of course not. We just had drones flying over Romania last week. I read the other day that the airport in Vilnius has been shut down for the 10th time because of balloons coming over from Belarus. So no, it’s not enough. I’m glad that they are doing things, but we haven’t inflicted enough consequences on the Russians yet for them to actually stop. I hope what NATO is doing will not only be sustained but will be increased. I’m not ready to declare victory yet. But if there’s been a decrease [in Baltic Sea incidents], then obviously that’s good news, and credit where it’s due.

— There have been many incidents on NATO territory attributed to Russia that seem like plausible grounds for invoking Article 5. Does NATO’s military doctrine need an update?

— The way Article 5 works is that a nation goes to the alliance and says, “Hey, this is an armed attack on us,” and then the alliance quickly goes through a process. It probably works faster than many might think — and the Russians know that. That’s why everything they’re doing is aimed at obscuring who’s doing what, ensuring the incidents can’t be attributed to them. So invoking Article 5 [over a hybrid incident] would be a challenge, and there’s nothing automatic about Article 5. It’s not like a laser beam that you walk through and the doors open up.

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I think the alliance should be [more] proactive. Don’t sit around and wait to get schwhacked and then respond, but take steps that would preempt Russia from doing some of these things. The Russians need to believe that the alliance is capable and willing to do these things. That’s what deterrence is all about. And I would imagine that the vast majority of these people flying drones around or doing sabotage operations are not Russian [intelligence officers] or soldiers waving a Russian flag. They’re idiots, knuckleheads, that were recruited to do one-time things and then they’re expendable. If they get caught, too bad for them.

[European] counterintelligence and interior security services have to be looking at gaming organizations, watching what people are doing online, because that’s what the Russians do. They recruit these people and say, “Hey, if you do this, you can get a shitload of money.” When we were in Afghanistan, General [Stanley] McChrystal used the phrase “the unblinking eye.” And of course what he’s talking about is 24/7 constant surveillance through a variety of sensors and capabilities. So human intelligence, signals intelligence, satellites, all the different ways to watch what’s going on.

And so I would imagine if you detect a drone that’s flying around Frankfort Airport or Brussels Airport or wherever, then you can [trace] where it came from. It probably took off from some park, some field, or maybe even one of these shadow fleet vessels. And [from there,] you build up a pattern of life. This is classic counter-terrorism operations. The idea is not to shoot down those stupid things, but to set up an ambush — to see if [the agent] shows up again and sends another drone from his favorite launching pad. And then you begin to take down the network.

— What if Moscow attacked a NATO country with hundreds of drones launched from Russian territory, like the attacks it constantly carries out against Ukraine?

— First of all, NATO, individual nations, and the European Union need to say clearly: “Russia is at war with us, even if we’re not at war with them.”

[Polish Foreign Minister Radosław] Sikorski and [German Chancellor Friedrich] Merz have both said things like, “We’re not at war but we’re not at peace.” I think civilian political leadership has to say, “Russia is at war with us.” It doesn’t mean we’re going to be shooting missiles at each other, but [Russia] is clearly at war with us and they are testing us. They are trying to create divisions to scare us or distract us from supporting Ukraine. And unless you inflict consequences, they’re going to keep doing this, because it costs them basically nothing.

Just a few weeks ago, everybody was talking about the [E.U. putting up] a big drone wall. That’s a classic bureaucratic [response], like Trump on the border with Mexico. But most of those drones are actually taking off from inside European countries. So a wall on the border, even a virtual wall, is not going to do anything here.

But we should have something that creates the effect of a wall. And again, we’re talking about this “unblinking eye” of sensors that can see deep into Belarus and Russia as these drones begin to approach.

In the Polish case, they detected the incoming drones almost immediately. The thing that was unsatisfactory and unsustainable was that their response was an F-35 and an F-16. That absolutely is not something you could do, especially if there’s 300 or 400 drones and Kinzhal missiles coming at you all at the same time. You have to have enough capabilities and be able to predict where the missiles are going to land — that’s what the Israeli Iron Dome does. If it’s going to land out in some field, you let it go. It looks like the Ukrainians are getting very good at using interceptor drones, and as artificial intelligence becomes more and more usable, I think that will be the way to knock down these swarms. Because then you’ll have your own 200 drones that will go out and find a mate, if you will.

Finally, [NATO has] never done a serious exercise on this where [we simulate Baltic or North Sea] seaports being attacked by hundreds of drones, or something similar to what Ukraine experiences every night. A situation where your sensors and command control get overwhelmed, and you’ve only got enough capabilities to shoot down a portion. In the last 12 years, there hasn’t been a multinational theater-wide missile and air defense exercise where you had to deal with all these things. Plus, you can be sure there will be massive cyberstrikes going against all the command and control systems and power grids. So we need to practice [countering] that.

— You recently told journalists at the Warsaw Security Forum that if Moscow carried out a full-scale attack on Poland, Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave would be “eliminated in the first hours.” At the same time, you sound skeptical of NATO’s preparedness, so could you expand on that comment?

— Of course. What [I meant was] that in the opening hours, things like Kaliningrad’s air defense, command and control, and port facilities would be targeted and hit. I’m not talking about [sending in] troops. In fact, we wouldn’t need to. That would be a political decision: since Kaliningrad is a Russian oblast, having boots on the ground would be a different calculation.

[This would also involve] long-range Tomahawk missiles, or air-delivered munitions, and the enormous airpower that NATO now has all around the Baltic Sea, especially thanks to Sweden and Finland coming into the alliance. We’re talking about dozens and dozens of F-35s, for example, plus other things. So I think it would be a very bad day to be shopping in Kaliningrad, if the Russians ever did decide to launch an attack.

Interview by Sam Breazeale

Portrait of Ben Hodges: Foto Olimpik / NurPhoto / Getty Images