How Russia’s “salami-slicing” Is Testing the West — and What Comes Next

How Russia’s “salami-slicing” Is Testing the West — and What Comes Next

A steady drumbeat of incremental moves by Moscow — from calibrated military probes and maritime manoeuvres to covert economic workarounds and diplomatic pressure — has become a defining feature of the Kremlin’s strategy. Western officials and analysts increasingly describe the pattern as “salami-slicing”: a series of small, often ambiguous actions that together reshape facts on the ground while staying below the threshold that would compel a massive, united response. The cumulative effect is testing NATO’s cohesion, Europe’s political stamina and the transatlantic alliance’s willingness to raise the costs on Russia.

This week’s episodes brought the tactic into sharp relief. During a large Russian aerial assault on Ukraine, multiple unmanned aerial vehicles and missiles crossed into Polish airspace, prompting Warsaw to scramble jets and, in some cases, shoot objects down — an incident that immediately triggered emergency consultations in NATO capitals. Alliance leaders responded by accelerating defensive deployments to the eastern flank and intensifying patrols, illustrating how Moscow’s probing strikes can force costly military commitments from neighbours without an overt declaration of war.

Salami-slicing is not new; it is the modern iteration of tactics Moscow has used for years — annexing Crimea in 2014 with masked forces, promoting separatists in eastern Ukraine, and then escalating into full-scale invasion in 2022. But the current phase blends kinetic strikes with hybrid tools: shadow shipping and sanctions-evasion networks that keep Russian energy revenues flowing, cyber and information operations to muddy facts, and carefully chosen diplomatic moves that complicate unified Western pressure. Those small steps are designed to change costs and perceptions incrementally, calcifying gains before the West can find consensus on a proportionate, durable response.

Western responses so far have been a mix of stronger deterrence and drawn-out diplomacy. NATO has beefed up air and sea patrols and fast-tracked deployments to vulnerable eastern members, while the United States and the European Union have discussed new sanctions packages and tighter enforcement against shadow fleets and intermediaries that help Moscow export oil. Yet coordination is difficult: member states differ on their exposure to Russian energy, their trade ties with third-party buyers, and their political willingness to accept economic pain for punitive measures — gaps that Moscow’s incremental approach is designed to exploit. 

Analysts say the strategic logic is simple and chilling. Salami-slicing relies on inertia and ambiguity: small actions that are individually deniable or ambiguous avoid triggering automatic alliance mechanisms while cumulatively shifting the strategic balance. That puts a premium on speed and unity in Western decision-making — the very things that are hardest to achieve in democracies with diverse domestic politics and short electoral cycles. A growing chorus of think-tanks and security scholars argues that piecemeal Western responses risk normalising incremental gains by an adversary and slowly eroding deterrence.

The tactic’s effectiveness is illustrated by the interplay of policy and markets. While leaders debate sanctions and defence aid, Russia has sought to reroute sales through third parties and ship crude on “shadow fleets,” muting the bite of earlier penalties. Washington has explored harsher secondary measures and tariffs, but European capitals — conscious of energy costs and industrial exposure — have been more cautious, creating the political space for Moscow to keep funding its military campaign while the West negotiates its next move. That tug-of-war over policy options is precisely what salami-slicing aims to produce.

The risks of miscalculation are acute. Incremental moves can cascade into larger crises when they intersect with local incidents, technical failures or misread intentions. A drone strays, a missile explodes, or a ship is intercepted — and an act once treated as a manageable nuisance suddenly becomes a flashpoint with high political stakes. NATO’s credibility and the West’s bargaining leverage depend on imposing costs that are obvious and immediate enough to deter further slices of aggression. That, in turn, requires a readiness to marry forceful deterrence with smart, diplomatic pressure.

So what might blunt the salami? Experts point to several measures: clearer red lines that remove ambiguity about what will provoke collective action; faster, more visible defensive deployments that raise Moscow’s near-term costs; shoring up legal and financial tools to choke off circumvention networks; and tighter coordination with major third-party buyers such as India and China to combine incentives with penalties. Importantly, analysts stress that deterrence also needs political messaging at home: allies must be willing to absorb short-term economic pain (for example on energy) in order to preserve long-term security.

None of those remedies are easy. They demand a high degree of political unity that has at times proven elusive in the face of domestic pressures — rising consumer prices, contentious elections, and competing strategic priorities. Even where capitals are aligned, kinetic responses carry escalation risks; diplomats must thread the needle between credible punishment and restraint that avoids a wider war. The debate among Western policymakers now centers on whether to accept a higher near-term risk tolerance — more robust deterrence and sharper penalties — to deny Moscow the slow, steady returns of salami tactics.

For Kyiv, the stakes are existential: every incremental gain by Moscow complicates the starting point for any future negotiations and weakens Ukraine’s bargaining position. For NATO, the challenge is existential in a different sense: if incremental incursions become normalized, the alliance risks a slow erosion of the territorial and legal norms that underpin European security. And for the wider world, the case is a warning: sophisticated, denial-friendly aggression can succeed where blunt force fails, unless democracies can find faster, smarter ways to respond.

In short, salami-slicing works when it meets indecision. Whether the West can pivot to a posture that combines rapid deterrence, diplomatic unity and pragmatic economic measures will determine whether Moscow’s steady nibbling eventually produces strategic reconfiguration or whether it is checked before the slices add up to something irreversible. The coming weeks — as NATO reinforces eastern defences, the EU debates tougher sanctions, and Moscow calibrates its next moves — will be a crucial test of collective will and strategic imagination.