In a New York Post opinion piece, Andrew Chakhoyan argues that Russia is deliberately provoking NATO not with bombs, but with psychological warfare — and the West is letting it work.
Moscow’s provocations are meant to provoke nothing
Russia’s ongoing airspace violations — including drones over Poland, fighter jets entering Estonian airspace, and incidents over Denmark and near Alaska — are not accidents. According to Chakhoyan, these incursions are carefully calculated. They are serious enough to trigger emergency NATO responses, but ambiguous enough to avoid real retaliation.
The point, he argues, is not “kinetic confrontation” — Russia is “is eager to weaken our collective ability to think, act and mount a defense.“
“Moscow keeps offering the same choice: act or fold,” Chakhoyan says. “And every time the West hesitates, the bluff gets harder to call.”
He describes this as Russia’s application of “reflexive control” — the manipulation of enemies into self-deterrence. In NATO airspace, drones and jets become tools not of destruction but of “a different sort of war — one Moscow believes it’s winning.”
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NATO’s hesitation feeds Kremlin propaganda
Chakhoyan states that NATO’s repeated failure to respond decisively hands Moscow a twofold win: weakening the alliance abroad and reinforcing the Kremlin’s narrative at home. According to him, Russian propaganda uses these provocations to claim the West is already at war with Russia — a narrative that legitimizes continued aggression against Ukraine.
Moscow’s “spin doctors frame it the same way: ‘See? The enemy is at the gates,’” the author writes.
Each drone that crosses into EU airspace helps Moscow frame its invasion as heroic resistance against an enemy that never existed.
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This staged war helps justify the real one. In the op-ed, Chakhoyan emphasizes that Russia portrays Ukraine as non-existent and frames NATO as the true adversary. As a result, fake threats feed a real invasion.
Western inaction taught Moscow that aggression pays
Chakhoyan links the current situation to decades of what he calls Western inaction. From Georgia in 2008 to Crimea in 2014 to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he argues that every red line crossed without real consequences taught Russia that provocation works. The Kremlin has learned that each incursion — no matter how small — causes panic, confusion, and only symbolic responses from NATO.
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The risks of paralysis — and the cost of delay
Chakhoyan warns that NATO’s political cohesion is its most fragile element. Article 5 doesn’t need to be repealed, he writes — it just needs to be doubted. That doubt turns NATO into “Schrödinger’s cat: both alive and dead.”
He criticizes the concept of “hybrid war,” calling it “absolutely the worst term” to describe what is happening. This isn’t hybrid, he argues — it’s psychological, political and informational war. And the West isn’t fighting back.
He concludes that only restoring peace through strength can shift the balance. He acknowledges that Poland’s invocation of Article 4 and recent comments by US President Donald Trump might suggest some momentum. But, he adds, “actions, not words, will make a difference.”