Putin Is Testing NATO at Ukraine’s Borders

LVIV—Jet-powered Russian drones recently hit a train in Ukraine a mere mile from the Polish border. The drone pilots, and their Kremlin minders, must have known that officials from Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere had previously left Kyiv by train after participating in the Yalta European Strategy (YES) Annual Meeting, a sort of Ukrainian Davos. But the trains carrying former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt , former CIA Director David Petraeus, and former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski , among others, were not hit. Had the Russians missed them intentionally or through incompetence?

Whatever the answer, there is no doubt that Western officials’ continued support for Ukraine, on display at the YES Annual Meeting, rankles the Kremlin. At the end of one panel, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski candidly remarked that, if attacked, NATO could defeat Russia quite quickly: “If the Ukrainians have knocked out half of Russia’s refining capacity in six months, we could do it in six weeks and take out the other half.” Sikorski later confirmed that he was referring to NATO’s European members.