As a former senior intelligence officer, I have learned to pay attention to the oddities, the small, unexplained details that make the hairs rise on the back of your neck. So when a US C-17 Globemaster was spotted flying from Latvia into Moscow last week, my curiosity was immediately piqued. When it emerged that the passenger was no routine diplomat but John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, I sat up properly.
CIA chiefs do not drop into Moscow for a fireside chat. The last comparable visit was by William Burns in November 2021, sent in a last-ditch attempt to warn Vladimir Putin off invading Ukraine. He failed.
That is why Ratcliffe’s sudden journey matters. In intelligence, unusual movement is rarely meaningless, and this one had ‘warning’ written all over it.
Ratcliffe’s chilling message to Putin? Keep your hands off the West, especially the Baltic states. US intelligence has been hinting at Russia possibly planning a ‘limited incursion,’ or at least plotting to test the West’s red line of land invasion.
At the same time, Russia is raging at the UK, warning that Britain is ‘playing with fire’ after Andy Burnham travelled to Kyiv to allow Ukraine to produce long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles from British blueprints. Moscow talks of ‘catastrophic consequences’ and says it will strike our military installations – with a drone factory near RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk firmly in its crosshairs, as 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 plants and sabotaging critical infrastructure to cripple military aid to Ukraine. Poland is going a step further by training 400,000 Poles in the art of conflict survival.
Putin is getting increasingly desperate, and it is widely reported that he is planning to feed a staggering 600,000 new recruits into his frontline meat-grinder. Concern is growing that he may strike out at the West to deflect attention from his failures in Ukraine and the growing impact of Ukrainian strikes in Russia on the Russian people.
US intelligence has been hinting at Russia possibly planning a ‘limited incursion,’ or at least plotting to test the West’s red line of land invasion. Launch of a Russian Sarmat ballistic missile in 2022
My concern has grown with the lack of any substantive commentary from the Americans on Ratcliffe’s visit and the casual way in which Donald Trump downplayed its significance, calling it ‘semi-routine’ and ‘nothing unusual’.
Russia has been equally dismissive. The Kremlin says invasion warnings are ‘scare stories’.
Simple fact: This is not routine and it is highly unusual. Something is happening, we just don’t know what… yet. So does it mean British troops in Estonia could find themselves 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, armoured vehicles or equipment to take on Nato in a war while his army is being chewed up in eastern Ukraine. No intelligence points to a Russian build-up on the Baltic frontier. No massing of armour. No field hospitals. No logistics surge.
So what are we likely to see? Russia is already at war with Europe, just not in a way most people recognise. Over the past year the Kremlin’s campaign has been ramping up, testing reactions, seeing how far it can push but not attacking in a conventional military way, rather in the grey zone – cut cables, jammed GPS, drones over military bases and critical infrastructure, railway sabotage, warehouse fires, cyber strikes and disinformation.
It is war by nuisance, intimidation and deniability: 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 into their own streets, ports, railways and skies.
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.
Its attacks in Europe nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024. Putin likely feels he has got away with it and is emboldened to do more.
If he lacks troops for a conventional assault, could 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 intermediate-range ballistic missile, already used against Ukraine, could be fitted with a nuclear payload. The usual doomsday chorus insists Putin may reach for a tactical nuclear weapon on the Ukrainian front. I do not believe he will.
Moscow talks of ‘catastrophic consequences’ and says it will strike our military installations – with a drone factory near RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk firmly in its crosshairs, writes Philip Ingram
He understands the one thing nuclear theorists sometimes forget: Once you put a nuclear warhead on a battlefield missile, you are no longer playing at intimidation – you are gambling with Armageddon, and the political consequences would be enormous.
His allies China and India would recoil. The wavering states of the global south would edge away. He would look reckless and isolated.
Nato’s response would almost certainly be conventional, not nuclear – closing the skies over occupied Ukraine, smashing Russian forces in occupied territory and making clear that Moscow had crossed the ultimate red line. For Putin, this is not escalation dominance. It is lose-lose.
But Putin does have one nuclear card to play, and almost no one is talking 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: Kyiv could be next. Or Poland. Or Estonia.
It would be theatre, not war, but white-hot radioactive theatre designed to terrify Western capitals into doing exactly what he wants: Turning support for Ukraine into pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept peace at any price.
There would be next to no military reprisal from the West for a device detonated over Russia. More sanctions may follow, but Putin may calculate that they are worth the political mayhem a nuclear explosion would cause.
If it moves the dial on Ukraine in Putin’s favour, that would be sold as victory. For the West, it would be surrender dressed up as diplomacy. Let us hope that this was not the reason for Ratcliffe’s mercy dash to Moscow.
Philip Ingram is a former colonel of the British Army.




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