Russia vs. Nato: who is likely to win in a war?

The war in Ukraine has brought Russia and Nato closer to conflict than ever before.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Vladimir Putin could attack a Nato country within five years to test the alliance. Zelenskyy told Sky News that he did not believe Putin is ready now because "today, Ukraine is holding him up, he has no time to drill the army" but "starting from 2030, Putin can have significantly greater capabilities".

Although Ukraine is not a Nato member, if Moscow were to attack one of Ukraine's allies that is, then all other Nato countries, including the US, would be compelled, under Article 5 of the Nato agreement, the mutual assistance clause, to come to their aid. And, together, their substantial firepower could give Nato the edge in all-out war.

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A full-scale attack on a Nato member is not as far-fetched as it might seem, according to Germany's chief of defence, General Carsten Breuer. Russia has been producing "hundreds of tanks a year", he told the BBC – enough to attack a Nato Baltic state by the end of the decade.

And the ammunition supplies, such as drones, missiles and artillery shells, that Russia is also producing aren't all going to the war in Ukraine; "there's a build-up of the stocks, too", the general said. He identified the Suwałki Gap, an area on the Russia border with Poland, Lithuania and Belarus as the most "vulnerable" area for an invasion that "could trigger a larger war between Russia and the US".

Nato's military power

In his first term, Donald Trump repeatedly criticised member states for failing to meet their defence spending obligations, and he has ramped up criticism of the alliance since returning to the White House. The US is by far Nato's biggest player and spends almost as much on defence as the next 10 spenders in the world combined. Its total in 2023 was about $916 billion (£715 billion), according to Statista – nearly 40% of the total military spending worldwide that year. The UK sits in sixth place, with spending of $74.9 billion (£60 billion).

While members have been slow to hit the Nato guideline of spending 2% of their GDP on defence, they have finally woken up to the threat posed by Russia and begun to boost defence allocations. President Trump's tepid enthusiasm for Nato has prompted its members to consider how to reduce their reliance on the US for defence, especially after he made a point of saying that Putin is "a friend" who should have been included in the G7 summit in Canada in June, and resisted calls to impose harsher sanctions on Russia.

Nato's resources have also been bolstered by the accession of two new member states since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine: Finland, which joined in April 2023, and Sweden, which was admitted in March 2024 after a two-year struggle to overcome vetoes from Hungary and Turkey.

While both have large defence industries and advance military capabilities, the biggest contribution the two new members bring to the table is "geostrategic", said the US Institute of Peace think-tank, their location shoring up the alliance's exposed northeastern flank and shielding the Baltic states, regarded as most vulnerable to future Russian aggression.

The UK government said in May that it would strive to spend 3.5% of its GDP on defence, however, it may now be "forced to commit a further 1.5%" to "keep the US on side", said Sky News. Defence spending of 5% was the norm among Nato countries during the Cold War.

But as well as how much governments spend, what and how they spend that money is also important. "Duplicate and incompatible capabilities" are a problem: there are 178 weapon systems types and 17 different makes of tank in the EU alone, said the BBC. Defence contracts tend to be negotiated years in advance and production takes a long time so untangling inefficiencies and pooling resources would not be quick or easy.

Collectively, the 32 members of Nato can field a "powerful, and modern fighting force," said Kyiv Independent, "but – its European contingent at least – faces ammunition shortages, a fragmented defence industry, and insufficient air defence coverage".

Western armies, with their artillery and armoured vehicles, are out of date whereas "it is Ukraine that today has perhaps the most combat-ready army in Europe", wrote Oleg Dunda, a member of parliament for Ukraine, in The Spectator. The US has more weaponry but Ukraine's army is unique in having adapted to the new, mostly electronic, unmanned systems that are the most successful elements of the Russian barrage. A potential invasion of the Baltic states might not involve a single tank.

"It will be unexpected: with communication blackouts, drone strikes on infrastructure and civilian convoys in uniform without identification marks," said Dunda. "Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania may simply wake up as part of Russia. Without a single shot fired by Nato." An invasion of the Baltics could happen at any time, including while Russia is still fighting in Ukraine. Europe does not necessarily have much time to prepare but it is not necessary to spend 5% of GDP, as Nato chief Mark Rutte is pushing for, because drones cost a lot less than nuclear submarines and are more effective for the war ahead.

There is also the question of how Nato's untested "mutual assistance" agreement would play out in the event of an attack by Russia on a member state.

The latest German intelligence assessment "suggests Putin may seek to challenge how seriously that commitment would be honoured", said UK Defence Journal. In a February report, Danish intelligence said Russia could engage in a local war with a neighbouring country within six months and pose a credible threat to one or more Nato countries within two years.

Russia's military power

Despite international sanctions and its well-publicised struggles in Ukraine, Russia has "accelerated its military production", said the defence news site. Military spending has surged to an estimated €120 billion (£103 billion) in 2025 – equivalent to over 6% of GDP – nearly quadrupling the country's 2021 defence budget.

The German intelligence service and army "believe the Russian war economy is generating more output than is required solely for operations in Ukraine", suggesting it could be preparing for a wider confrontation.

In April, Putin launched Russia's biggest conscription drive in over a decade, as he looks to boost the number of active servicemen to 1.5 million. While this would give Russia a bigger army than the US alone, it still falls well behind Nato's collective might. According to Statista, Nato has 3,439,197 active soldiers. Russia has only about 4,957 military aircraft compared with Nato's combined 22,377, and 339 military ships compared to Nato's 1,143. Russia is decisively outnumbered by Nato for tanks (5,750 to 11,495), and in terms of armoured vehicles overall its stock of 131,527 is dwarfed by Nato's 971,280.

The two forces are evenly matched in terms of known nuclear capability, with the Nato nuclear powers – the US, UK and France – able to field 5,559 nuclear warheads to Russia's 5,580.

Russia's war economy has so far remained remarkably resilient in the face of Western sanctions. This has allowed its "military-industrial complex to churn out tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, missiles, ammunition and artillery pieces," although "it still cannot keep up with battlefield losses", said Al Jazeera.

Russia is now operating "with a society that seems prepared to bear any costs imposed by its leadership" said Foreign Policy, while Nato's cohesion is frayed and the citizens of its member nations have yet to accept the trade-offs in terms of spending that a war economy demands.

The cost of war

Fatalities and displacement of people would be the immediate human cost of a Russian attack on one of its Baltic neighbours and the effect on the wider economy would be a drop in global output by 1.3% or $1.5 trillion (£1.1 trillion) in the first year according to Bloomberg Economics. That figure includes the direct cost of destruction in the warzone, higher energy prices as supply from Russia is cut off, and a sell-off in financial markets.

Who would win then?

Despite small signs of improvement, "Russia is in no shape to take on Nato", with the alliance having been "revitalised" by the invasion of Ukraine, said Al Jazeera.

Even without the US, the collective military capability of Nato members is "formidable", said George Allison in The Telegraph.

"The technological sophistication and interoperability of Nato forces significantly amplify their combat effectiveness." The alliance's "strength resides in its ability to leverage cutting-edge technology and integrated command structures to conduct operations adaptable to the battlefield’s rapidly changing circumstances".

With an integrated command structure developed over decades, better trained and equipped troops and the "notable difference in the quality of Western weapons, all this adds up to the conclusion that Nato would quickly prevail in any conventional war against Russia", said Al Jazeera.

Yet herein lies the "danger": that "a series of defeats might force Moscow to use tactical nuclear weapons or face total defeat".