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Russian Dissident Garry Kasparov Warns That Putin Could Seize NATO Border Town to Test Alliance
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Russian opposition activist Garry Kasparov warned that Vladimir Putin has no intention of making peace with Ukraine, predicting instead that the Russian leader will escalate the war after September’s parliamentary elections.
The warning came from Kasparov in a Politico interview published on July 15.
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Kasparov argued to Politico that mounting pressure makes Putin more likely to escalate than to compromise. Any settlement short of a Russian defeat, he warned, would merely hand Moscow time to regroup.
"Putin always escalated when he felt he was in trouble … the most natural escalation is the provocation," Kasparov stated. The former world chess champion is now among the Kremlin's most prominent exiled critics.
The escalation he foresees could take the form of an incursion into a country on NATO's eastern flank, such as Latvia or Estonia. The aim, he explained to Politico, would be to test whether alliance members—particularly the US—would respond.
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Nothing in Russian propaganda, government actions, or Putin's speeches signals preparation for peace, he noted, telling Politico that every indicator points one way: "War, war, war, war."
Kasparov dismissed the argument that Russia lacks the resources to open another front. Moscow would not need a full-scale invasion to undermine NATO's credibility, he indicated. It could instead seize a small border town—potentially one with a Russian-speaking population—and wait to see how the alliance reacted.
Should the US then fail to defend the country under attack, Kasparov argued, Putin would have achieved his goal: "NATO is no longer there."
His comments followed remarks by NATO chief Mark Rutte, who days earlier acknowledged that "nobody" knows how to bring Putin to the negotiating table, as Russia's full-scale invasion grinds into its fifth year.
Kasparov became the undisputed world chess champion at 22 and ranks among the greatest players in the game's history. He is one of 10 Russian democratic opposition figures taking part in the Council of Europe's Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces .
More broadly, Kasparov maintained that Europe should abandon the idea of ending the war through compromise and commit fully to a Ukrainian victory. He contended that Ukrainian strikes inside Russia are already pressuring the country's power brokers.
"Our best hope is to separate Putin from the elites," he stated. "Ukrainians are doing a very good job because every time they hit something, someone loses money."
Kasparov also pressed the EU to intensify sanctions and ban tourist visas for Russian citizens. "We have to make sure Putin loses," he concluded, "because the moment Putin loses the war, he goes down."
Kasparov's claim that every Ukrainian strike costs Moscow money aligns with a campaign that has battered Russia's refining sector throughout 2026.
By mid-May, drone attacks had forced nearly every major refinery in central Russia to halt or cut output, knocking out facilities whose combined capacity exceeds 83 million metric tons a year, roughly a quarter of national refining.
The Kirishi plant, one of Russia's largest at 20 million metric tons annually, had been fully shut since May 5, while the Kstovo refinery, processing 17 million tons, was struck on May 20.
Ukrainian officials have valued the lost Kremlin revenue at some $7 billion since January.
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