NEW YORK - Czech President Petr Pavel insists that NATO needs to outright demonstrate its willingness to respond to Russian aggression or else Moscow will continue to push the alliance and its European boundaries.
"There might be the time when we will have to shoot down some of these planes or unmanned vehicles that are testing our readiness," Pavel, a retired general and former chair of NATO's Military Committee, predicted in a conversation with Fox News Digital on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City this week.
Pavel said alliance members understandably want to avoid escalation, but risk sending the wrong signal as he warned Moscow views restraint as weakness and is testing allied defenses with its continued aggression.
"What I am afraid of is that they see a lack of will on our side to take decisive action," Pavel said. "Within Russian perceptions it demonstrates weakness. And they respect power."
The warning followed fresh incidents along NATO's eastern flank, where a Russian Mi-8 military helicopter crossed from Kaliningrad into Polish airspace Wednesday, prompting Poland to scramble fighter jets. Romania scrambled F-16s Thursday after another unidentified aerial target crossed its border from Ukraine.
Denmark's military intelligence service also warned Thursday that Russia is likely to intensify hybrid attacks against NATO in the coming months and assessed a "low but growing" risk of a limited Russian military attack against one or more NATO countries bordering Russia.
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Pavel said in a speech before the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday that Russia's "aggressive posture poses a direct threat to European security" and warned that the risk is growing.
He told Fox News Digital that the pattern of recent escalation was familiar from his years at NATO, recalling Russian aircraft testing U.S. pilots over Syria and repeatedly violating Turkish airspace before Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in 2015.
"They are, on one hand, provoking. On the other, testing what will our reaction be," Pavel detailed.
NATO already has procedures for accidental airspace violations, Pavel said, including warning aircraft and attempting to establish contact. But he drew a distinction between mistakes and aircraft that deliberately enter allied airspace and refuse to respond.
"If it is deliberate and the violator doesn't respond to our measures, then we will have to act, because otherwise Russia simply would push further on," the Czech president added.
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The comments come amid recent drone incursions involving NATO members along the alliance's eastern flank, including incidents in Poland, Romania and Lithuania.
Pavel was similarly skeptical that President Vladimir Putin is serious about talks to end the war in Ukraine, saying he has seen no significant Russian effort to negotiate. He argued that while Moscow publicly expresses willingness to hold talks, the conditions it has attached would effectively strip Ukraine of sovereignty.
He said a genuine negotiating process would require Russia to agree to a ceasefire first and then enter talks without preconditions.
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The Czech president also warned that the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have exposed another vulnerability across the NATO alliance: depleted weapons stockpiles and defense-production systems struggling to keep pace with demand.
"With the amount of ammunition, especially intelligent ammunition, consumed over a short period of time, we all understand on both sides of the Atlantic how short we are when it comes to stocks of these kinds of equipment," Pavel said.
He said the lesson for both Europe and the United States is to accelerate weapons production and overhaul procurement systems he described as "extremely long and rigid."
Pavel's warning underscores a broader challenge facing NATO as it weighs how forcefully to respond to Russian activity without triggering a wider confrontation, while simultaneously replenishing the military stockpiles needed to sustain deterrence over the longer term.
