There’s trouble brewing in Russia, reports the Wall Street Journal, citing a widely noted unannounced visit by CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s to the Russian capital.
The surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit. … U.S. officials are concerned that Putin, squeezed in Ukraine and under pressure at home, could launch an assault ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion, likely on a Baltic nation, the Journal reported. ... The trip was a rare visit by a U.S. spy-agency chief with the Russia-Ukraine war now in its fifth year. The last known visit by a CIA director to Moscow was in November 2021, when William Burns, who led the agency under former President Joe Biden, warned Putin not to attack Ukraine.
This follows NATO exercises ostentatiously aimed at defending the Baltics and Poland last week. “The flight paths Tuesday of a variety of NATO aircraft were logged over Poland and the Baltic region, including near Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave situated between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea.” Yet despite this exhibition, some pundits believed a conventional invasion was less likely than gray-zone activity — GPS jamming, undersea cable interference, cyber operations, arson/sabotage of infrastructure, airspace violations, and the use of “disposable” proxy agents — by Russia.
The future is a mystery, but the past is on record. Europe has already been repeatedly assailed by “Gremlins from the Kremlin,” according to press reports. The Telegraph writes that “Russia has launched a fresh wave of attacks on European armaments factories under the guise of plausible deniability, according to Western intelligence sources. The Kremlin is recruiting local gang members to sabotage defence manufacturers to test Nato’s resolve.”
The attacks appear carefully calculated to fall just short of triggering Article 5, Nato’s mutual defence clause, intelligence officials believe. This week, Latvia detained three of its own nationals on suspicion of an arson attack against a drone manufacturer in neighbouring Estonia. A building belonging to Milrem Robotics, a Tallinn-based firm that supplies weapons to Ukraine, was set ablaze on Aug 15.
The Kremlin has reportedly been sending drones toward European airports, including those in Germany. “German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has warned that those responsible for drone attacks and other hostile acts against Germany, including a recent case at Leipzig Airport, would ‘pay a price’.” It is a deadly game of brinkmanship. But the German chancellor’s veiled threat also reveals Europe’s reluctance to confront Putin directly.
In brinkmanship, you can go too far or not far enough. The point of a threat is usually not to carry it out but, if you are afraid of the risk, to hope that words alone will suffice. The problem is that Merz, by uttering the threat, creates an implied commitment, and if Europe won't make good on it, Europe could lose credibility. In this context, Putin, perceived to be at a disadvantage or stalemated in Ukraine, may believe he still has one ace up his sleeve to salvage victory from defeat: Russia’s resistance to pain. Putin is threatening to escalate, believing the West does not have the stomach for more. He may believe that in a contest of wills, in a metaphorical game of chicken, it will be Brussels or London or Paris that will swerve before Moscow.
Putin’s most direct threat would be to invade the Baltic countries of Estonia and Latvia instead of continuing his existing “gray zone” war against European NATO members. Although possible, the former would carry a high risk. While neither Baltic nation could indefinitely withstand a Russian onslaught, Moscow’s forces remain constrained by the war in Ukraine and probably lack the decisive capacity to open a major new conventional front without critically weakening their efforts on other fronts. The Baltics would be reinforced by NATO, perhaps not sufficiently to push Putin back to the starting line, but enough to stop a Russian advance.
Recent NATO warfighting doctrine in the Baltics, according to open sources, has evolved from “tripwire + later liberation” toward forward defense and deterrence by denial, that is to say, by copying Ukraine almost exactly. While that is a hard act to follow, should NATO reinforcements pull it off, it would hand Putin a second Ukraine-like front. Given the scale of such a disaster, a Russian ground invasion of NATO is probably too high a jump on the escalation ladder for Putin to risk at present. It is far more probable that the Kremlin will up the ante with more gray-zone attacks. To that end, Putin is reportedly building a saboteur army across Europe.
Europe’s criminals have a new boss, and his name is Vladimir Putin. Some may not realise who ultimately sits at the top when they take orders on messaging apps to sabotage arms factories, but the Russian President’s fingerprints are all over these operations. Over the weekend, Western intelligence reported that Moscow has unleashed a new wave of disruption, outsourcing attacks on the continent’s defence industry to local gang members and disposable foot soldiers.
After hundreds of GRU officers were expelled from Europe after 2022, Moscow shifted to cheap, deniable proxies, recruiting them via Telegram and similar apps, paying them in cryptocurrency, and controlling them through criminal intermediaries so that Russian officers could remain at home. Among those particularly susceptible to recruitment are foreign nationals and people in precarious situations: Spaniards, Colombians, Cubans, Moldovans, and Ukrainians. Migrants and refugees have appeared in arson and sabotage plots in the Baltics and elsewhere.
In this regard, Europe’s open-borders policy provides a vector for Russian attack. The Jamestown Foundation reports that “migrants and refugees are becoming ideal targets for Russian intelligence services, primarily due to their social, legal, and economic vulnerability.” Al Jazeera notes that Russia is already using Muslim migrants to fight its war in Ukraine. Why not employ the multitudes of unemployed, military-aged males within Europe itself? Well, why not? Vladimir Putin may be stuck on the muddy roads of Ukraine, but he may have a clear path to triumph elsewhere. If Putin’s intent to attack Europe is a foregone conclusion, what remains to be answered is how.
