Former President Donald Trump deludes himself that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin basically wants to forge a mutually beneficial compromise between the United States and Russia. Vice President Kamala Harris deludes herself that strengthening NATO is compatible with a continued tolerance of European defense freeloading.
Both these delusions matter because Russia is an ardent enemy of the U.S. Putin is increasingly rolling the dice to that effect. Indeed, he is flirting with what could realistically be considered acts of war.
Take the Wall Street Journal’s new reporting on Russia’s infiltration of incendiary devices into air cargo routes from Europe to the U.S. and Canada. Two incendiary device-laden packages detonated in sorting facilities in the United Kingdom and Germany in July. Russia’s GRU military intelligence service is believed to be responsible for the acts.
While the devices detonated in warehouses rather than at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, this is a wake-up call for those who pretend that Russia seeks a positive alignment with the U.S. Putin, a child of the Soviet Union’s KGB intelligence service, despises the U.S. for what he regards as its humiliating Cold War victory and its ensuing support for democracies in Eastern and Central Europe. Put simply, Putin would be willing to forge a friendship with America, but only if America first surrendered its support for democracies in Ukraine and Poland and the Baltic States and central Asia. Oh, and supported Russian energy and political blackmail of Europe.
But with Putin now infuriated by U.S. support for Ukraine’s defensive war effort, the Russian leader has unleashed always unpleasant-minded intelligence services. This parcel plot is only one element of a broader Russian campaign of sabotage that has been underway throughout 2024. The Washington Examiner was one of the first to identify this campaign back in April. This Russian sabotage targeting warehouses, factories, and individuals involved in supporting Ukraine is designed to invoke fear and disunity in the West without leading to direct NATO retaliation. It speaks very poorly of U.S. deterrence posture that Russia thinks it can threaten civilian airliners without risking American reprisals.
While all of the big three Russian intelligence services (the GRU, the SVR foreign intelligence service, and the FSB domestic security service) are involved in this sabotage campaign, it makes sense that the GRU is involved in the most aggressive plots involving threats to multiple lives. GRU Director Igor Kostyukov is a devoted hard-liner who prefers the quiet pursuit of mayhem rather than the grandstanding of his SVR counterpart Sergei Naryshkin. And when authorized to take action against a particular target, the GRU has an impulse for unbound aggression. In 2018, two GRU officers callously disposed of a highly potent nerve agent in a manner that led to the death of a random British woman, for example.
The GRU’s sabotage campaign also reflects the predictable rise of Russian spy tsar Nikolai Patrushev. Fanatical in his anti-Americanism, Patrushev is prone to long-winded rants over the evils of the “Anglo-Saxon” international order. But Patrushev is also a deadly serious and highly intelligent strategist.
The secretary of Russia’s national security council until May, Patrushev now serves as a presidential aide. This reassignment was wrongly described by some analysts as a demotion. In fact, Western intelligence services believe it was designed to open up the secretary role for former defense minister and Putin friend Sergei Shoigu while keeping Patrushev in place to supervise Russian intelligence antics. Putin’s appointment of one of Patrushev’s sons as a deputy prime minister underlines his continuing power at the Kremlin court. Patrushev is also believed by a number of Western intelligence officials to be the mastermind behind Russia’s so-called “Havana Syndrome” employment of nanopulsed microwave weapons against U.S. diplomats, military, and intelligence personnel.
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Nevertheless, Russia’s attempt to set civilian aircraft on fire as they transit the Atlantic Ocean is clearly a major escalation. The U.S. should respond by openly authorizing Ukraine to use long-range U.S. weapons against military targets inside Russia. If not, Putin will sense that he has the political space to continue this covert war in tandem with his overt war in Ukraine.
That would be a problem. Presentation of weakness is to Putin what blood in the water is to a shark.