As a former senior intelligence officer, I’ve learned to pay attention to the quirks, the small, inexplicable details that raise the hair on the back of your neck. So when an American C-17 Globemaster was spotted flying away Latvia inside Moscow Last week my curiosity was immediately aroused. When it turned out that the passenger was not a routine diplomat but John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, I sat up straight.
CIA chiefs don’t come to Moscow for a fireside chat. The last similar visit was by William Burns in November 2021, in a last-ditch effort to warn Vladimir Putin stop invading Ukraine. He failed.
That’s why Ratcliffe’s sudden journey is important. In intelligence, unusual movements are rarely meaningless, and this movement had “warning” written all over it.
Ratcliffe’s chilling message to Putin? Keep your hands off the West, especially the Baltic states. US intelligence agencies have hinted that Russia may be planning a ‘limited incursion’, or at least a plot to test the Western red line of land invasion.
At the same time, Russia rages against Britain, warning that Britain is ‘playing with fire’ next Andy Burnham traveled to Kiev to enable Ukraine to produce Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles based on British blueprints. Moscow speaks of ‘catastrophic consequences’ and says it will hit our military installations – with a drone factory nearby RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk is firmly in the crosshairs, The Mail on Sunday reports today.
Finland has raised the alarm, warning that Putin is unleashing “hybrid attacks” across Europe – explosive drone strikes, arson at European munitions factories and sabotaging critical infrastructure to cripple military aid to Ukraine. Poland goes one step further by training 400,000 Poles in the art of surviving conflict.
Putin is becoming increasingly desperate, and it is widely reported that he plans to feed as many as 600,000 new recruits into his frontline meat grinder. Concerns are growing that he will attack the West to distract from his failures in Ukraine and the growing impact of Ukrainian attacks in Russia on the Russian people.
US intelligence agencies have hinted that Russia may be planning a ‘limited incursion’, or at least a plot to test the Western red line of land invasion. Launch of a Russian Sarmat ballistic missile in 2022
My concern has been heightened by the lack of any substantive commentary from Americans on Ratcliffe’s visit and the casual way in which Donald Trump downplayed its significance, calling it “semi-routine” and “nothing unusual.”
Russia was equally dismissive. Kremlin says invasion warnings are ‘fear stories’.
Simple fact: this is not routine and very unusual. Something is happening, we just don’t know what yet. Does this mean British troops in Estonia could be staring down the barrels of Russian tanks? No.
Putin may be reckless, brutal and desperate, but he is not yet suicidal. He does not have the troops, armored vehicles or equipment to take on NATO in a war while his army is being eaten away in eastern Ukraine. No intelligence indicates a Russian build-up on the Baltic border. No collection of armor. No field hospitals. No logistical peak.
So what are we likely to see? Russia is already at war with Europe, just not in a way that most people recognize. Over the past year, the Kremlin’s campaign has ramped up, testing its responses and seeing how far it can go, but not attacking in a conventional military way, rather in the gray zone – cut cables, jammed GPS, drones over military bases and critical infrastructure, railway sabotage, warehouse fires, cyber attacks and disinformation.
It is war by nuisance, intimidation and denial: cheap enough for Moscow to repeat, ambiguous enough to avoid a NATO military response, and serious enough to force European governments to divert troops, police, intelligence officers and money away from Ukraine and back to their own streets, ports, railways and airspace.
Instead of relying solely on professional intelligence officers, Moscow is increasingly using proxies, criminals, extremists, migrants or disposable agents recruited online to set fires, photograph military logistics, damage railways or plant devices.
Attacks in Europe have almost tripled between 2023 and 2024. Putin probably feels he has gotten away with it and is encouraged to do more.
If he has no troops for a conventional attack, can desperation drive him to the nuclear button? That question keeps intelligence chiefs awake. Western agencies monitor Russia’s nuclear forces with obsessive attention. Moscow’s Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile, already used against Ukraine, could be equipped with a nuclear payload. The usual doomsday scenario emphasizes that Putin may resort to a tactical nuclear weapon on the Ukrainian front. I don’t believe he will.
Moscow speaks of ‘catastrophic consequences’ and says it will hit our military installations – with a drone factory near RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk firmly in its sights, writes Philip Ingram
He understands the one thing that nuclear theorists sometimes forget: once you put a nuclear warhead on a battlefield missile, you are no longer playing with intimidation – you are gambling with Armageddon, and the political consequences would be enormous.
Its allies China and India would back down. The wavering states of the Global South would withdraw. He would look reckless and isolated.
NATO’s response would almost certainly be conventional, not nuclear: closing airspace over occupied Ukraine, crushing Russian forces in occupied territory and signaling that Moscow has crossed the ultimate red line. For Putin, this is not escalation dominance. It’s lose-lose.
But Putin does have one nuclear card, and hardly anyone talks about it. He could launch a tactical nuclear-armed missile at a remote part of Russia and call it a “test.” The message would be unmistakable: Kiev could be next. Or Poland. Or Estonia.
It would be theater, not war, but white-hot radioactive theater designed to scare Western capitals into doing exactly what he wants: turn support for Ukraine into pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept peace at any price.
There would be virtually no military reprisal from the West for a device detonated over Russia. More sanctions may follow, but Putin may estimate that these are worth the political chaos that a nuclear explosion would cause.
If it shifted power over Ukraine in Putin’s favor, it would be sold as a victory. For the West it would be a surrender dressed up as diplomacy. Let’s hope this wasn’t the reason for Ratcliffe’s march to Moscow.
Philip Ingram is a former colonel of the British Army.
