Dr Robert Seely MBE is author of ‘The New Total War’, ConservativeHome foreign affairs columnist and a former Conservative MP.
Word has been coming out of security agencies in Poland, the Baltic republics and even the US, hinting that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is planning some kind of violent provocation in or near the Baltic Republics.
Why? And more broadly, what is happening in the Ukraine war and what are the changes taking place now that will influence the course of the war over the critical next 12 months? I am in Ukraine most months, and watching the evolution of the war is very much part of my life. So here are some thoughts from the ground.
First, just for folks new to this conversation, when people talk about Putin ‘attacking’ the Baltics, they are not arguing that he will try to ‘invade’, WWII style, but rather that his secret agencies and special forces will stage some kind of campaign or provocation with the aim of dividing NATO states, and potentially undermining Article 5, the clause that broadly commits states to a collective defence.
Put simply, it will very likely be primarily some kind of political warfare, using violence, rather than a military operation per se. The US appears concerned enough that the head of the CIA flew to Moscow last week.
So, what are the kinds of examples being thought about in security circles. Here are a couple of examples
A German Army wargame earlier this year played out a scenario whereby Russia, using the invented pretext of a humanitarian crisis in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, seized a Lithuanian city very near the narrow, 40km Suwalki gap that separates Russian-controlled Belarus from Kaliningrad.
In the confusion, the US declines NATO’s Article 5 call, Germany is indecisive and Poland, while mobilizing, does not send troops into Lithuania. Everyone looks at each other. The German brigade in Lithuania is trapped in its base because Russia used ‘bomber’ drones to lay mines on roads leading out of its base, besieging the garrison.
This wargame was treated as both significant and concerning as the outcome, seen to be a believable reflection of the possible, resulted in the effective destruction of Article 5. This is one of Putin’s strategic aims.
A second scenario doing the rounds sees Russia fly ‘Ukrainian’ drones at Russian civilian targets in Kaliningrad.
For those in doubt, Putin’s security agencies would not hesitate to kill their own, they almost certainly murdered 311 of their own people in the Russian apartment bombings to solidify Putin’s grip on power back in 1999. The Russians would claim that the drones came from a Ukrainian unit operating on NATO – Polish or possibly Lithuanian – soil. This would be the pretext for a strike at a nominal target in either country. No one, or very few people, would be killed – the target might be an empty building, for example, or it might even be an empty shack or series of tents near a NATO base. However, the Russian people would be told that a Ukrainian unit on NATO soil had been destroyed and that a warning had been sent to NATO. This action would also begin to normalise Russian military actions in NATO states.
Because no one outside Kaliningrad would be killed, Poland or Lithuania might well be pressured by the US and Germany not to militarily respond.
However, the incident will have triggered a significant international crisis. Putin would warn of World War III – and threaten to escalate, potentially to the use of nuclear weapons. Leftist peace rallies in European cities, including the UK, would press governments not to react. This would be very much part of Putin’s game plan – the use of our own populations against us. Putin would use a mix of military and non-military tools – in line with Russian doctrine and ideas about conflict – to break NATO support for Ukraine – at which point eventual Russian victory becomes conceivable.
Do I think this could happen? Yes, of course. Do I think it will happen? Well, in Putin’s mind it is possible, let’s remember he ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2024 and has sustained over a million dead and injured, hence the CIA boss John Radcliffe’s trip to Moscow last week.
There’s a third type of scenario; Russian action against specifically British targets. In Putin’s eyes we are concurrently a pathetically weak, shadow of our former selves (a bit too close to the bone in terms of accuracy), but also the Western liberal eminence grise that has fought Russia for two centuries and still secretly plots against its every move with our sinister machinations; think Prof. Moriarty against a Muscovite Sherlock Holmes.
There have been multiple threats, including nukes, the attempted assassinations of Sergei Skrypal, the actual assassination of former KGB agent Sasha Litvinenko. These have tended to be targets that Russia considers Russian, regardless of any passport they may have. However, more recently, Russian attack have been economic and designed to extract a price for our support of Ukraine. The most serious such strike against the UK was the August 2025 cyber hit on Jaguar Land Rover, which cost the entire UK economy some £1.9 billion and took months to fix.
It’s possible this time that he will try to seek other targets. I wouldn’t rule out another assassination, the sabotage of a factory, or perhaps a number of internet cables being broken under the sea. Some 65 cables supply 99 percent of Britain’s internet traffic. In the UK, these cables carry a little over £1 trillion in transactions daily. Globally, subsea cables carry $10 trillion of financial transactions a day.
They are both vital and vulnerable.
If Putin breaks a two dozen of them around the UK, it may not crash Britan’s internet traffic entirely, but it would do short-term damage, perhaps on a par with the Jaguar Land Rover attack. It would send a clear message not just to government but to the people of Britain: how much are you willing to pay to support a country – Ukraine – that most of you have never been to?
Okay, so that’s the speculation, but what is happening on the battlefield and how much does Putin actually need a provocative diversion?
Ukraine has better tactics and uses its soldiers much more effectively. The kill ratio is approximately 10 to 1 in Ukraine’s favour. Ukrainian drone tactics are ground-breaking, and are rewriting the basics of ground warfare for years to come. Russia continues to make snail’s pace progress on the battlefield, and given the cost per metre, it is hard to argue that Russia is ‘winning’. Its army take relatively small amounts of territory at very great cost. If it costs 100,000 soldiers dead and inured to take a small town like Pokrovsk, this may be a tactical victory but it is also but a strategic defeat in terms of manpower.
However, there is the threat that Putin may call for a second mobilisation (Russia is losing 30,000 a month) for a Spring offensive. He could do this, but it would be extremely costly and the consequences to his popularity, and peoples’ willingness to tolerate the war, would be difficult to predict. Mobilisation would be dangerous for both states. For Ukraine, it would increase pressure. Within Russia, it could break support for the war.
However, Russia also is developing a new missile capability, and this is what Putin will put his faith in for the coming months.
Half a dozen new missiles, including one called the S8000 Banderol, are causing problems for the Ukrainians. Their ranges are in the hundreds of kilometres, warheads are between 50 and 250 kilos with the average at around 100kg, enough to destroy or severely damage a large building and send shrapnel up to 200 metres. They are a new generation of cheap, reasonably fast cruise missiles, which cheap air defence is having trouble hitting.
In the battlefield areas, which are now highly transparent, thanks to the plethora of reconnaissance drones, and highly lethal, thanks to many suicide drones free hunting targets, these missiles, aligned with artillery, threaten to change the balance of power, even given Ukraine’s flexibility and dispersed forces.
They are also a considerable threat to Ukrainian cities. Ukrainian has missiles to shoot down slow-moving drones like the Russian Shahed (in Russia known as Geran II). What they don’t have is enough missiles to shoot down either old, high-end, very fast ballistic missiles (they go up high and coming down fast), or the faster, new cruise missiles (they fly low).
That’s in part because the Iran conflict is harming Ukraine’s missile supply.
The US had, according to Tom Karako from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2,500 Patriot missiles before the current Iran conflict. They may have less than 1,000 remaining now. The missiles take 36 months to build and although production ramping, the US is running low in stocks and is very short of the recommended number – perhaps as high as 14,000 – that the Pentagon want in its armoury. Whilst 18 other nations also have Patriots, only a few have missiles in quantity and only a few have been willing to donate to Ukraine.
So the Iran conflict is bad for Ukraine.
This autumn and winter, we are likely to see two things – and possibly three.
First, on the battlefield, Russia will throw men and materiel and making some more progress so that by next summer it will be able to capture the remaining parts of the Donbas that it does not have. Casualties are not relevant, as long as Putin can continue to find men willing to be recruited. His target is the so-called Fortress Donbas towns and cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka.
Second, this winter, Ukraine’s cities may see the worse arial assault they have faced since the start of the war. The lack of higher-end air defence means that larger missiles are getting through. Last week, on one day, the missile strikes continued day and night, making movement in the city dangerous. Putin’s generals aim not only to break Ukrainian will but also destroy their ability to store food or supply energy to homes or industries.
Third, there is talk not only of provocations against the Baltics, but also potentially a new thrust through Belarus towards Kyiv from the north. Whether this materialises is another matter, but plans, apparently, are being drawn up.
So, Putin probably hopes his new missiles will be silver bullets. There will be no realistic peace until next Spring or Summer, and only if Russia is successful on the battlefield. Ukraine will be a tough place this winter, but it’s difficult to see it being broken. Putin is increasingly inclined to hit Western targets, but he is not there, quite yet.