This article was originally published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

There’s no guarantee that Russia won’t repeat the mistake it made in 2022. Back then, the Kremlin was counting on Ukraine, its army, population and fake actor-president to prove weak and futile. Now it is counting on NATO to be weak, divided and indecisive, and on the absence of any modern-day de Gaulle on the continent. Moscow is literally quoting its own propaganda, just as it did on the eve of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

As with the threat to invade Ukraine in the months before it happened, by trying to save face, Putin is slowly moving toward war. And since as with Ukraine, Russia’s stated goals may prove unachievable using the selected means, to avoid suffering a symbolic defeat, Russia will be forced to get closer to the fatal threshold in order to appear more convincing. It’s possible that by testing NATO and trying to scare Europe away from Ukraine, Putin will create his own equivalent of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Who knows where a stray drone might land?

At the European Security Summit in Copenhagen on Oct. 2, one of the subjects under discussion was Sweden’s proposal to devolve drone defense to the national level. That would not only shorten the chain of command for a response and support local defense industries, it would also eliminate the need to consider every drone flight over an airport an attack on all NATO countries.