A NATO video from July 2024 is being shared online as evidence the alliance is preparing the public for imminent war with Russia. France 24's fact-checking unit reported on September 22, 2026 that the footage was produced for NATO's 75th anniversary and has been stripped of its original context.
The video was published on NATO's official accounts in July 2024 ahead of a Washington summit. France 24 reports it has since been downloaded and recirculated — including by the Russian embassy in the Netherlands and, in the United States, by Alex Jones — as supposed proof of coming conflict. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last week that intelligence indicated Russia may be planning drone and missile strikes against Poland and other NATO eastern-flank countries. French President Emmanuel Macron separately warned of intensifying Russian hybrid attacks and said he had ordered plans to protect critical infrastructure. France 24 notes that the video being misrepresented doesn't mean those tensions aren't real.
Separately, North Korea accused NATO on August 1, 2026 of preparing for war by expanding a roughly 10,000-kilometre fuel supply network across Europe — linking western European infrastructure with newer member states in the east and north. The Straits Times reported that North Korea's state media outlet KCNA offered no evidence its claim was correct. NATO says the Fuel Supply Chain Capability Programme Plan is intended to strengthen deterrence and defence following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. North Korea and Russia signed a comprehensive strategic partnership — including a mutual-defence commitment — in June 2024, and Pyongyang sent an estimated 14,000 troops to Russia's Kursk Region that year. A third thread comes from the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, which summarised a study by Russian China scholar Vasily Kashin arguing that Beijing is conducting whole-of-nation preparations for a large-scale war it regards as possible — or even unavoidable — in the late 2020s to early 2030s. The study, titled "The New Great Wall," argues Chinese policy is being advanced under the assumption of severe sanctions, maritime blockades and missile strikes on urban areas. The Sasakawa summary notes Kashin's findings can't be fully endorsed and that field research inside China has become increasingly difficult.
What we have are three separate and unconnected claims, reported by three different outlets, none of which confirms the others. A recycled anniversary video doesn't tell us NATO's intentions. North Korea's reading of a fuel logistics programme — from a government that sent troops to fight alongside Russia — is not a neutral assessment. And a Russian scholar's analysis of Chinese war preparations, however carefully argued, is an analysis, not confirmed intelligence. For Canada, the questions that matter are more specific: if Polish and French leaders are genuinely warning of Russian hybrid attacks on NATO's eastern flank, what obligations does that trigger, and has Parliament been told what they are?
Those questions aren't answered by any of the three pieces of reporting above, and none of the outlets that filed them are asking them.