Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Ratcliffe's surprise visit to Moscow this week quickly prompted speculation over why the spy chief would make the long, but brief, journey to the Russian capital—including whether he hoped to head off a possible Russian attack on NATO. President Donald Trump, while not detailing the agenda nor who was present from the Russian side, described the meeting as "semi-routine." The Kremlin said Ratcliffe hadn't met with Russian President Vladimir Putin but had made the unannounced trip to keep up "contacts between security services." Ratcliffe warned top Russian officials not to up the long-running hybrid warfare campaign against NATO allies, particularly against the three Baltic states deeply worried about how Moscow may respond to the standstill in the war against Ukraine, Politico reported, citing two anonymous people familiar with the matter. For many, Ratcliffe's trip revived memories of former CIA head William Burns' rare personal visit to Moscow in November 2021, when Burns sat down with senior Kremlin names and the head of Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshki.
Burns, a former U.S. envoy to Moscow, later said he had made the journey to warn the Kremlin against launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine as its troops amassed on the border with its neighbor. Russia invaded little over three months later. "I came away from those conversations even more troubled than when I arrived," Burns said in July 2022.
Ratcliffe's visit comes just weeks after U.S. officials said Washington now assesses Russia could launch a "limited" attack on NATO's eastern European edge as soon as this fall. This could involve sending a small number of Russian troops over into the Baltic states or Poland or the upping of Moscow's hybrid warfare operations, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. "Hybrid attacks" is a catch-all term for operations that stop short of open fighting, like cyberattacks, information campaigns, arson incidents or the targeting of vulnerable infrastructure, such as undersea cables.
NATO says Russia has been waging a hybrid war with the alliance for years. Russia has repeatedly denied planning to attack NATO territory, and dismissed the claims as "nonsense." Moscow also denied planning to invade Ukraine in the months leading up to the start of the war in February 2022. So, what could a Russian assault on NATO look like, if Russia did greenlight some form of attack?
A large-scale military attack on NATO is extremely unlikely. But a small, probing land grab against one of the Baltic states or Poland is generally seen as the realistic worst-case scenario. However, it becomes increasingly likely the more time passes, the U.S. officials told the Journal.
For this type of incursion, Russia wouldn't need a high number of troops, analysts say; Moscow would just require a small force that takes a sliver of land, but ultimately doesn't inspire all of NATO—including the U.S. and the western European nations—to strike back overwhelmingly. Their failure to do so, they say, would spell the end of NATO's credibility because NATO states are bound by Article 5 of the alliance's founding treaty, which commits all members to the defense of another NATO country if they're attacked. Some experts say that if Russia did move to take part of NATO territory, it would probably amass soldiers close to Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania's eastern borders.
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