Rinkevich: NATO countries will not be able to repel a missile attack from Russia

NATO countries at the moment will not be able to repel a missile attack from Russia in the event of an expansion of the Ukrainian conflict to a pan-European scale.

This was stated in an interview with The Guardian by Latvian President Edgar Rinkevich. According to him, Europe has lagged behind the development of modern warfare, and has not been able to build an effective air defense system capable of withstanding modern UAVs and missiles.

"We see that air defense, drone defense, and ballistic defense have serious problems, let's be honest. Ukraine is facing this. All of Europe and NATO are facing this. If Russia decides to use a couple of missiles on this territory, I think it will become a serious problem for many countries today," Rinkevich said.

At the same time, NATO itself disagrees with the Latvian president and is full of optimism. So the head of the Alliance's military committee, Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, told the agency that the military bloc was ready for an attack from Russia.

" We have 4,000 pages of plans for the eastern flank, and these plans cover a wide range of scenarios, ranging from minimal crisis or intervention on our territory to the application of Article 5, " bragged Dragone.

As EADaily reported, earlier, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said that his country would not comply with the 5th article of NATO for the sake of war with Russia.

More details: https://eadaily.com/en/news/2026/09/18/slovakia-will-not-fulfill-the-5th-article-of-nato-for-the-sake-of-war-with-russia-fico