NATO’s top military commander, General Alexus Grynkewich, heaped praise on Ukraine and tempered fears of imminent conflict with Russia, laying out how the alliance would approach an attack on the east amid heightened tensions.
“Ukrainians have done an amazing job throughout 2026; the frontline is largely stabilized. We really ought to laud them,” Grynkewich, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said on Monday in Warsaw.
“They’re going to get through this winter,” added Grynkewich, who also leads US forces in Europe. “They’re going to come out of it with more resolve.”
Those words came just as US President Donald Trump resumed verbal attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and struck a deal with Moscow to import diesel. Grynkewich’s remarks drew cheers and applause from a room of European officials and diplomats who had widely expressed dismay · at Trump’s move.
Despite weeks of heightened tensions and increasing worry about Russian hybrid attacks, open warfare is avoidable, he said.
“I do not assess that conflict is imminent or inevitable. It isn’t,” he said, reaffirming NATO’s defensive nature and saying all parties should avoid provocations and misunderstandings with “open lines of communication.”
NATO and Russia recently had a tense exchange in which Moscow threatened to use nuclear weapons.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization wouldn’t seek to strategically defeat Russia, he said, but to decisively repel an attack.
Grynkewich’s NATO “theory of victory” for that scenario would focus on “blocking, blunting and breaking” enemy forces, he said, and the alliance would not be caught by surprise thanks to its sophisticated intelligence.
But he was evasive on whether Europe already had the “overpowering mass of affordable and scalable systems” his strategy foresees, joking that the military always demanded more.