WSJ: CIA Director Went to Moscow to Issue a Warning

Two days ago I asked the question “Why was the CIA Director in Moscow?” At the time it was being described as a surprise visit and no one seemed to have a clear idea what had motivated it. 

Today the Wall Street Journal has an exclusive report claiming that meeting was intended as a warning to Russia not to push its luck with NATO.

The surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.

The trip was spy-agency chief John Ratcliffe’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital. It followed new U.S. intelligence assessments, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, that Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test the resolve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years.

U.S. officials are concerned that Putin, squeezed in Ukraine and under pressure at home, could launch an assault ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion, likely on a Baltic nation, the Journal reported.

Yesterday we learned that U.S. Intelligence officials had concluded the attempted drone attacks at Leipzig airport in Germany were likely put there by the GRU.

An explosive drone found near a Ukrainian cargo aircraft at Leipzig airport in Germany earlier this month bore the hallmarks of devices typically employed by Russia’s Military Intelligence Directorate, the GRU, a U.S. intelligence source told ABC News.

The U.S. official, who was briefed on the investigation into the alleged sabotage plot, said the explosives fitted to the drone as well as the structure of the lethal device were “typical” of those used by Russia’s GRU.

Those drones are just one of several hybrid attacks organized by Russia. For instance, a cyberattack on Norway was launched this week.

The hacker group Server Killers writes on Telegram that they have declared cyber war against Norway. 

“Reason for the attack: On August 23, Norway and Ukraine signed a new agreement on defense and security cooperation with a focus on the drone agreement, in which Norway continues to strengthen Ukraine’s defense capabilities through the Nansen program.”

There have also been arson attacks and attempted murders in several NATO countries.

Just this month, Poland said it thwarted an attempted assassination of a US citizen originally from Ukraine that was ordered by Russia while Estonia accused Moscow of being behind a fire at a drone maker…

Moscow has increasingly relied on recruitment via social media to carry out arson or other sabotage attacks, after large scale expulsions of its diplomats following the invasion of Ukraine.

Two Ukrainian nationals were handed prison sentences in the UK in June, after a jury found them guilty of conspiring to commit arson attacks on a car and property linked to then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The prosecution said during the trial that one of the perpetrators was recruited online by a Russian-speaking Telegram user.

All of this is already happening, but Director Ratcliffe’s visit may have been about preventing another escalation.

There are indications that Russian intelligence and security services are looking at hybrid warfare operations against the Baltic States and Poland, an intelligence official told Bloomberg earlier this month. Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said Moscow is weighing a potential false flag operation using captured Ukrainian drones to strike critical infrastructure in the Baltic region.

“Russia’s ongoing hybrid warfare in Europe is a highly coordinated, sub-threshold campaign aimed at destabilizing Western political systems, fracturing NATO and EU unity, and eroding support for Ukraine,” said Alex Kokcharov, geoeconomics analyst at Bloomberg Economics in London. “To achieve these goals, the Kremlin maintains plausible deniability by exploiting anonymity and utilizing proxies to obfuscate direct state attribution.”

In short, Russia can’t fire missiles at targets inside NATO countries because that could trigger a wholesale NATO response including from the United States. But Russia can quietly offer people money to carry out attacks it wants to see happen. These attacks give Russia plausible deniability in case they are caught. Instead of refusing to identify who is behind these attacks, Germany and others need to say openly what they already know is true and hold Russia accountable.

Director Ratcliffe’s visit to Russia is America showing Europe how it’s done. Just confront the problem directly and stop showing weakness in the face of attacks.

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