“Putin always escalated when he felt he was in trouble … the most natural escalation is the provocation,” said Kasparov, a former world chess champion who is now one of the Kremlin’s most prominent exiled critics.
Kasparov said he expects such a move could involve an incursion into a country on NATO’s eastern flank, such as Latvia or Estonia, intended to test whether other members of the alliance — and particularly the United States — would respond.
He pointed to recently proposed legal changes by the Russian government making it easier to mobilize troops by eliminating the medical examination previously required to draft soldiers as one indication that Moscow is preparing for further conflict.
“There’s not a single sign in Russian propaganda machine, in Russian government actions, in Putin’s speeches,” that the Kremlin is preparing for peace, he said, adding that all the signs point in one direction only: “War, war, war, war.”
Kasparov dismissed the argument that Russia lacks the resources to open another front. Moscow would not need to launch a full-scale invasion to undermine NATO’s credibility, he said, but could instead seize a small border town — potentially one with a Russian-speaking population — and wait to see how the alliance reacted.
If the U.S. then failed to help defend the country under attack, Kasparov said, Putin would have achieved his objective: “NATO is no longer there.”