Is Putin Going to Attack Europe?

Putin is preparing to attack Europe in the coming months, EU leaders and intelligence chiefs are warning. As recently as last September, among those speaking of a Russian attack were the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the French President Emmanuel Macron and intelligence officials from Germany, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Sweden, Denmark, the US and other Western countries.

For his part, Putin, speaking at the Valdai Forum on October 1, once again threatened the West with the use of nuclear weapons in the event of an attack on Kaliningrad . This statement sounded as though he was warning Europe in advance not to even consider isolating the exclave as a possible response to Russian hybrid attacks.

The number, the frequency and the intensity of today’s warnings about an impending Russian attack on Europe are comparable to the accumulated signals preceding the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Does this mean that a new escalation is inevitable?

On the one hand, the very idea that Putin is seriously intending to start a war with NATO seems implausible. But the idea that he would send tank columns towards Kyiv seemed equally crazy five years ago. And yet he did.

On the other hand, there are many sceptics who perceive the numerous reports of an imminent Russian attack on the EU as either European alarmism or a Russian psyop aimed at intimidating the West and undermining its support for Ukraine.

At first glance, the arguments put forward by the sceptics sound convincing:

• the West’s economic and military potential is incomparably greater than that of Russia. Given that in four and a half years of war Russia has still not managed to capture the village of Mala Tokmachka , how can it possibly compete with NATO?

• according to Ukraine’s General Staff, throughout the war Russia’s forces have lost more than one and a half million personnel (killed or wounded), as well as over 12,000 tanks, 25,000 armoured fighting vehicles, 50,000 artillery systems, around 800 aircraft and helicopters, as well as a third of its strategic air force and a third of the Black Sea Fleet;

• Russia’s stagnating economy is unlikely to withstand the costs of yet another “special military operation”;

• a two-front war will only worsen Putin’s already precarious position: if he fails to achieve success on both fronts, he risks losing power.

However convincing these arguments may sound, they fail to take several important factors into account.

Firstly, we are not talking about a full-scale invasion of the EU similar to that of Ukraine. European leaders and intelligence chiefs are referring to drone and missile strikes and an intensification of hybrid and sabotage operations, and Russia has sufficient forces and resources for this.

Secondly, whatever military capabilities NATO may possess, the question remains of how determinedly and collectively the Alliance is prepared to respond to Russia’s threats.

Thirdly, over the course of its war against Ukraine the Russian army has not just suffered losses, but also gained invaluable experience. The importance of such experience has already been demonstrated on several occasions during the joint NATO–Ukraine training exercises where Ukrainian drone operators have been defeating entire NATO brigades. The Russian army has drone operators that are similarly well-trained.

And, finally, before asking whether Putin is capable of succeeding in a confrontation against NATO, it is worth considering what is understood by “succeeding.” By all accounts, the Kremlin is not aiming for deep tank breakthroughs or taking over huge areas of Western countries’ territories. “The aim will be to weaken NATO’s integrity as a whole and, above all, to convince its members that Article 5 is more theoretical than practical,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned. Referring to European politicians, he said that no one is “going to die for Latvia or Lithuania.” According to Tusk, Russia will use repeated incidents designed to erode confidence in the alliance without ever quite triggering a unified response.  

In my view, today such a scenario seems not just likely, but alarmingly obvious. Not only because of the reasons listed above — although each of them is undoubtedly significant — but rather because Putin appears to have no other options (acceptable for him) left for retaining his power. It’s not an external objective, but one inside Russia that I would describe as the main one for any potential Russian aggression against Europe.

All autocracies share a common vulnerability: the leading figure. As long as the leader is strong and successful, the political system can be highly efficient: no voting, no negotiations, no disputes and no doubts — everything is subordinated to the vision of the leader, whose orders are carried out without delay or objection. But as soon as the autocrat begins to lose power or, what is worse, suffer defeats, the system built around this figure falls into a state of imbalance.

All this applies to Russia as well. Putin’s regime is a syndicate run by the KGB and the criminals, which operates by the underworld’s rules. The power is divided amongst silovik clans that are free to plunder, kill and, in essence, commit any kind of atrocities as long as they remain loyal to the leader and devoted to his course, which means supporting the genocide of Ukrainians and the (yet) undeclared war against the West — in word and deed. Putin is the big boss of this criminal syndicate, the capo di tutti capi, the one to whom the clan leaders would go to pay their respects so that he could settle their disputes with a single nod.

But in the fifth year of the war, Russia’s big boss found himself in a position more vulnerable than ever. Even the “silent majority” don't believe the mantra that “the special military operation is going according to plan” any longer, let alone the security forces leadership and the top officials. No one understands what the plan is or where we’re heading next either. More and more of the Russian government gang’s members are beginning to suspect that there is no plan as such — only the leader’s maniacal conviction that “we’ll push them to their end,” because “we are Russians, and God is with us.”

Putin is increasingly and ever more frequently coming across as a delusional old man. One day he is bragging of having captured Kupyansk or a “record” amount of land, and the next one — of having surrounded “record” numbers of Ukrainian soldiers, all of it meanwhile the Russian horde has been losing 30,000–40,000 soldiers killed or wounded every month, unable to seize the cursed Tokmachka and other settlements in the Donbas for five years now. Unable to achieve his objectives by military means, Putin has unleashed his fury on the civilian population of Ukraine and resorts to bombing schools, universities, shopping centres, the sewage systems and the energy infrastructure of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa and other Ukrainian cities round the clock, in the hope of freezing and depriving children, the elderly and all the civilians of water, communications and food.

The history of warfare shows that terrorising the civilian population does not help to achieve military objectives and results in failure more often than not. But Putin’s knowledge of history is limited to the Polovtsians and the Pechenegs , so how could he possibly know that the genocide he has orchestrated will rather serve to cement his name once and for all amongst the most despised scum of the human race, alongside Chikatilo, Hitler, Stalin and other mass murderers of the defenceless?

When a gang leader becomes a scorned laughing stock, he quickly loses his power. Not necessarily by a violent coup (although such a scenario is entirely plausible, given the heightened tensions between Russia’s ruling clans and the fact that many of those have their own private armies); the more likely outcome is the loss of that element — intangible yet extremely important in any political system, especially in an autocracy — as the magic of power. When no one listens to what the leader is muttering; when no one believes what he promises; when, instead of the awe-struck terror he evokes a condescending smirk, his system crumbles under silent sabotage like a house of cards — much like in the late Soviet Union, where citizens would pretend to work whilst the authorities would pretend to pay them.

In such a situation, in order to retain (at least temporarily) their power, most mob bosses tend to resort to violence — showy violence, preferably. If we’re talking about a small gang, similar to Tony Soprano’s, it’s enough to pick a young, strong bodyguard nicknamed “Muscles Marinara” and beat him to the ground in front of the other gang members beginning to lose respect for the leader: not to let them forget who the “alpha male” is.

In the case of a government gang, especially as large as Russia's one, everything is more complicated, but the principle remains the same. Putin needs a new wave of violence to stay in power: violence both against those in his inner circle daring to say something inappropriate in a private conversation (and it doesn’t matter whether such a conversation would actually take place; what matters is whose name the leader underlines on his list) and against “the enemies of the Russian people”: in this case, it will be the FSB operatives across Russia who will designate the enemies and underline the names at their own discretion.

Another difference between the mob in power and a street gang is that a more widespread violence requires extensive powers and, as Russia’s mob boss puts it, “action” . A war with NATO could become such 'action’ which would allow Putin to divert attention from his setbacks in Ukraine, expand the security and intelligence services authority, isolate the country and increase repression. He believes he will be able to wage this missile, drone and sabotage acts war against the West long enough until the weary Western public ends up electing Russia’s far-right allies. Unfortunately, as the September elections in Germany and opinion polls in France are showing, this part of the plan has a realistic basis and might come to pass quite soon.

If one looks at this scenario from Putin's perspective, he stands to lose very little:

• the sanctions pressure potential has been exhausted; Russia is already the most sanctioned country in the world, and its economy is entirely dependent on China;

• Europe is unlikely to dare to invade Russia; in the worst-case scenario for Putin, NATO might respond to hybrid attacks and drone strikes with identical strikes, which is something the Russian population has long become accustomed to;

• blocking Kaliningrad or the Baltic Sea would perhaps be the most painful potential response, which is why Putin is already warning against it, using his nuclear threats: it remains to be seen whether Europe believes them or they are dismissed as yet another bluff.

But what about the negotiations and the “deal of the century” with the Americans? This scenario strikes me as far less likely.

Firstly, we mustn't forget that prior to the invasion of Ukraine Putin issued an ultimatum to NATO, demanding that the alliance’s infrastructure be withdrawn to the 1997 borders (meaning a withdrawal from Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). It is already clear that the Napoleonic ambitions of the Russian big boss have ended in a spectacular failure; however, this by no means implies that he has abandoned them, and certainly not for the sake of a deal with the Americans. He wouldn’t have started all this “action” in the first place otherwise.

Secondly, the Kremlin obviously follows American news and is well aware that Donald Trump’s approval ratings are hitting all-time lows and that his Republican Party is highly likely to suffer a crushing defeat in the upcoming November midterms. Trump will then lose much of his leverage, and his initiatives will be paralyzed by the Democrats.

That is why Russia’s mob boss realizes that the American wheeler-dealer’s words are worthless: all the papers he signs today will be revoked tomorrow.

Which in the logic of Putin means there is only one path left — the escalation of violence both within Russia and beyond its borders.