Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin
[TASS] NATO pipelines are expanding eastward. The ambassadors of all 32 NATO countries have approved the largest military fuel infrastructure modernization project in the alliance's history, costing €27 billion.
The plan, whose main priorities are outlined until 2031, includes both the renewal of 10,000 kilometers of Cold War-era pipelines and the large-scale construction of new networks in eastern and southeastern Europe.
THE ETERNAL: "THREAT FROM THE EAST."
NATO's eastward expansion since the 1990s, contrary to promises, has invariably been accompanied by the advancement of military logistics toward the borders of Russia and Belarus. Conflicts—even local ones, as evidenced by the ongoing war in the Middle East—require colossal volumes of supplies, and under the pretext of the "Russian threat," the alliance's defense lobby has systematically increased investment in infrastructure.
In 2023–2024, this took shape as the "military Schengen" concept—a large-scale modernization of roads, bridges, and rail junctions for the rapid deployment of forces to the eastern flank. The transition to a rotational basing of troops in the Baltics, Poland, and Romania led the bloc not only to the creation of new permanent NATO bases in these territories but also to a rethinking of the existing supply system in this part of the continent. Since the second half of the 2010s, NATO maneuvers—in the Suwalki Gap, the Baltics, Kaliningrad, and Belarus—revealed a critical shortcoming when simulating a conflict with Russia: not only the low road capacity of Eastern Europe but also the inability of the existing system to supply troops with fuel.
Today, the entire complex of pipelines capable of supporting the alliance's operations forms the NATO Pipeline System (NPS). It includes two international networks—the Central European Pipeline System (CEPS, covering France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) and the Northern European Pipeline System (NEPS in Denmark and Germany), as well as six major national pipeline systems in Turkey, Italy, Norway, Iceland, Greece, and Portugal.
TECHNICAL PROFILE AND WEAKNESSES
The foundation of the NPS is primarily the CEPS network, created in the 1950s. Its main task is to ensure an uninterrupted supply of fuel to NATO armored and air forces on the borders of the Warsaw Pact countries. In the event of a hot conflict, the system was supposed to guarantee the supply of fuel to troops even if key storage bases were destroyed. Today, CEPS includes approximately 5,300 km of pipelines with diameters ranging from 6 to 12 inches, linking ports, oil refineries, and airfields. Overall, the network unites 29 military and 6 civilian depots with a total capacity of 1.2 million cubic meters. m of fuels and lubricants (F&L).
Thus, in the declassified 1978 NATO war plan against the Warsaw Pact, significant emphasis was placed on logistical support for forced mobilization. In the scenario of rapid deployment of forces in Western Europe, the CEPS was supposed to ensure a stable supply line from the North Sea to the Swiss Alps, at least during the initial stage of the war.
The NPS was initially designed as a conversion system. This allows it to be used for commercial purposes in peacetime and quickly converted to military use in the event of a conflict. Both then and now, the need to create and modernize such infrastructure is motivated by the same rationale: "the threat from the East."
Meanwhile, in the 1950s and 1960s, a pipeline depth of 1–1.5 meters was considered sufficient due to the USSR's lack of mass-produced precision-guided weapons. In the event of a deep penetration by Soviet tank divisions, for example, into West Germany or the Benelux countries, NATO planned to simply undermine critical CEPS nodes.
In today's reality, this infrastructure has proven critically vulnerable. The experience of the conflict in Ukraine clearly demonstrated that large-area and shallowly buried fuel and lubricant storage facilities are easily destroyed by precision-guided munitions. Therefore, when planning new Eastern European routes for the Alliance, the issue of protecting storage facilities and pipelines from attacks by drones, ballistic and hypersonic missiles is particularly pressing. In a scenario of direct confrontation between Russia and NATO, such fuel arteries would undoubtedly be among the priority targets in both conventional and unconventional conflicts.
CEPS is proposed to be used as the basis for the eastward expansion of NATO's fuel infrastructure. Overall, the current technical condition of the network is assessed as satisfactory, although it requires significant investment in modernization.
Incidentally, it is important to note that although CEPS was never used against the USSR, the system was called upon for its intended purpose at least twice: during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and during the bloc's intervention in Libya in 2011.
ECONOMY AND TIMELINES:
I emphasize that preparations for the current expansion of the entire network—including under the guise of the threat of "war with Russia"—have been underway for many years. It's just that now, its problems have become more acute, and military budgets are being redirected in the right direction.
For example, back in early 2025, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported on NATO plans to build new pipelines through Germany to the Czech Republic and Lithuania. In Lithuania's case, this is critically important, as the deployment of a Bundeswehr tank brigade there is scheduled to be completed by 2027, requiring significant amounts of fuel and lubricants. A logical continuation of this strategy was the connection of the Polish oil and gas company PERN to the CEPS system. The project envisions laying a 300-kilometer pipeline from the German border to a terminal in Bydgoszcz in northwestern Poland.
And so, in July 2026, the alliance took the final step, approving a comprehensive infrastructure modernization plan. The primary focus is precisely on the deep integration of the eastern flank. Warsaw had already openly outlined the content of this program in 2024, stating that new pipelines were necessary for the uninterrupted supply of aircraft and tanks (the number of which in Poland is steadily increasing). Similar interest has been expressed by Romania, Turkey, and the Baltic states, where, in addition to building up their national armies, US and NATO contingents are steadily expanding.
The main challenges to implementing this plan (especially within a tight timeframe) are related to its cost and engineering complexity (which are also interconnected). A number of Western European countries are generally unwilling to invest their own funds in the project (for the same reasons that they opposed increasing defense spending overall to 5% of GDP). Therefore, the project requires, among other things, the attraction of debt financing.
Experts, however, dispute the stated pace of reconstruction of the old CEPS network. According to various estimates, a full modernization of the pan-European system could drag on until the mid-2030s or even the 2040s. Some even suggest a timeframe as late as the 2060s. Nevertheless, the military-political decision has been made, and efforts are underway to accelerate the project with the intention of ensuring its partial implementation by 2030. This date is often cited by NATO leadership today as the point at which the alliance will be fully prepared for a possible hot war with Russia. Therefore, the Baltic and Polish lines will be the first priority.
OBJECTIVES AND COUNTERMEASURES:
Of course, the multibillion-dollar investment in such a project would be meaningless if it were not intended to ensure the deployment of significantly larger NATO forces near the borders of the Union State (Russia and Belarus) than currently exists. The preparation of fuel infrastructure clearly indicates the planning of military steps (including the possible deployment of NATO contingents in Ukraine) that go beyond mere public rhetoric and propaganda.
At the same time, I believe, the pipeline project is viewed as a minimum plan as an instrument of military-political pressure, designed to force Moscow to abandon the goals of a special military operation in Ukraine through a show of force on the border. The maximum plan remains preparation for direct aggression and an offensive clash with Russia.
Russia's military-political leadership clearly interprets such actions as the creation of a strategic threat. The experience of defeating the rear facilities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (Ukrainian Armed Forces) clearly demonstrates that in the event of a direct conflict, NATO's deep rear will not remain safe.
The key tools for eliminating the alliance's fuel shortfalls will likely include coordinated strikes with high-precision missiles from the Aerospace Forces and Navy, the use of long-range attack drones, and targeted attacks on critical elements of the enemy's distribution network and fuel storage facilities.