British audiences were recently treated to a Sky reality television series entitled The Wargame. It was based on how a government would react to an escalating series of Russian attacks on British interests, culminating in an imminent nuclear war.
We may quickly discover quite how realistic the purported reaction of the TV politicians were to such an escalation between Russia and the West, because we are led to believe that this is indeed well underway.
The latest such incident is among the more dramatic, not to mention telegenic, of these destabilising acts on the part of the Kremlin. Swedish and Finnish fighter jets were this week successfully scrambled to intercept and identify Russian air force planes travelling through the Gulf of Finland.
Although they were all in international airspace, the joint Nordic operation demonstrated – to friend and foe alike – how their Quick Reaction Alert cooperation system could defend their territory and Nato’s northern flank. As the Atlantic Alliance’s two newest member states, and as nations which would have good cause to fear Russia’s neo-imperial ambitions (Finland was once a mere Tsarist grand duchy), it was essential that when their effectiveness was tested, they proved themselves. So they did.
What chance is there that such incidents could intensify? Many fear it will, including the French president, Emmanuel Macron, Donald Tusk, premier of Poland, Chancellor Merz of Germany, and the British chief of the Defence staff, Richard Knighton, all of whom have recently sounded warnings about Russia’s “hybrid warfare” campaign. This combines acts of sabotage (such as the failed drone strike on Leipzig airport), cyberattacks, assassinations, “accidental” landings of missiles and drones on Polish and Romanian territory, surveilling and dredging vital underground cables by the Russian “shadow fleet”, political interference, and outright buzzing of Nato planes and helicopters by Russian warplanes.
The possible next stage has just been outlined by the head of the Danish intelligence service. He warns that there is a “low but growing risk” that Russia would launch a limited military attack against one or several Nato members that border it. This could entail occasional strikes with long-range weapons such as drones or missiles on infrastructure supporting the Ukrainian war effort (as happened at Leipzig airport) or “false-flag” operations using Ukrainian-made drones, triggering fear and confusion.
At the moment, much speculation seems to centre on the notion of an invasion of Lithuania, which shares a border with the Russian exclave territory of Kaliningrad. This would leave the other Baltic republics, Estonia and Latvia, surrounded and cut off from their EU and Nato partners. Overwhelming manpower would force a Nato retreat, and neither Washington, London nor Paris would launch a nuclear warhead in response, given the stakes. That, at least, is one scenario.
On balance, however, it feels unlikely that President Putin, even equipped with his new, bogus parliamentary majority, would risk such a wild gamble. The Kremlin’s tactics, rather, seem to be keeping the pot simmering rather than boiling over. They are focused on undermining European government and public resolve, and thus financial and military support for Ukraine – without which Ukraine would eventually succumb. It is all about intimidation.
The idea, plainly, is to probe Nato members’ willingness to resist by unleashing hostile acts sufficient to provoke some kind of response – usually diplomatic and political, but always short of full military retaliation under the “one for all” Article 5 of the Nato charter.
Such harassment is designed to make European leaders nervous, their publics terrified of war with such a populous and cruel enemy as Russia, and to convince Americans that they should not want to get themselves in yet another European intracontinental war.
In this respect it has to be conceded that the Kremlin has enjoyed some unwelcome success. Hard-pressed treasuries in most of Europe’s capitals have found it difficult to find the political will to raise the funds to bolster defence budgets. The repurposing of European industry towards armaments is painfully slow – Poland being the outstanding exception to this dismal response.
In some countries, parties openly against helping Ukraine are gaining ground, such as the AfD in Germany and when Viktor Orban ruled Hungary. The “coalition of the willing” sometimes strikes a reluctant pose. Europe looks weak, and the context is even less encouraging.
One of the few bright spots that emerged from Donald Trump’s recent round of diplomacy is that, according to President Zelensky, Washington will, after all, permit Kyiv to manufacture Patriot missile systems. On the other hand, Mr Trump failed (if he ever tried) to persuade President Xi to stop propping up the Russian war machine. A glimpse of the fabled Trump ballroom didn’t alter settled Chinese foreign policy.
As winter creeps in, Ukrainian citizens can expect more bombardments of their energy and water supplies, and a colder and hungrier Christmas than they have yet endured. Their European neighbours will continue to be plagued by multiple disparate hostile acts by the Russians.
But the way to end such disruptions is not to abandon Ukraine, because that would merely prove to the Kremlin that such low-level warfare can yield disproportionately spectacular territorial gains. As with the previous appeasements, after Russia annexed Crimea, the bear will be back for more.
