Wars can begin with a single, disastrous miscalculation. In 1914, the Kaiser believed Britain would stay neutral if Germany invaded Belgium. He was wrong.
Prime Minister Herbert Asquith promised Brussels the Empire’s “whole-hearted and unfailing support” and led Britain into the Great War, a conflict that claimed the lives of three-quarters of a million Britons.
More than a century later, Vladimir Putin may be approaching a similarly catastrophic miscalculation—one that could invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and push Europe towards a third world war.
Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Europe has watched with growing alarm as Putin pursued increasingly expansive ambitions. Concern turned to panic after the Kremlin’s vision of renewed imperial power culminated in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
But there is little reason to assume Russian forces would stop at Kyiv. A leaked 2023 Kremlin memo reportedly set out plans for the annexation of ally Belarus by 2030.
Vladimir Putin may be 73, but he continues to portray himself as a vigorous wartime leader in the tradition of Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible.
After observing the dictator for three decades, I have little doubt that he wants to emulate those predecessors by pushing Russia’s borders deeper into Eastern Europe, particularly areas with strong Russian cultural ties.
Putin is, in effect, an ageing leader in a hurry. I fear he is nearing a reckless escalation that could plunge Europe—as Churchill once warned—into a new Dark Age.
Vladimir Putin may be nearing a catastrophic miscalculation that could send Europe towards World War III, writes Mark Almond
Ukrainian firefighters work at the scene of a Russian strike on a shopping mall in a residential area of Dnipro, Ukraine, this month
Three developments lead me to believe the Russian leader may be preparing further military action—moves that could inadvertently trigger Article 5, the Nato provision declaring an attack on one member to be an attack on all.
The first is credible evidence that Moscow is preparing a major new mobilisation of troops.
Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia was planning a “rapid mobilisation” of roughly 300,000 men by the end of the year. During the final week of August, at least 113,000 Russian citizens reportedly left the country through Georgia’s Upper Lars checkpoint, apparently seeking to avoid the expected draft.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin has instructed Army generals to improve their records on reservists, including their locations and readiness for combat. A draft law would also allow fines of up to one million rubles—about £9,000—for Russian companies accused of failing to support the war effort or obstructing mobilisation.
The second, and more troubling, development came last weekend, when Russia’s Federal Security Service restricted movement in two areas bordering Estonia, including by imposing a night-time curfew. Reports also indicate that Russian forces are reinforcing the bank of the Narva River, which marks the border—possible signs of preparations for a land assault on the Nato member.
Estonia is a small nation of just over one million people with only around 7,000 active military personnel. Much of its population speaks Russian, while some border communities retain a strong sense of Soviet nostalgia.
Estonia has been a Nato member since 2004. Yet would its allies truly go to war with Russia on its behalf? Would people in Nuremberg, Nantes or Nottingham risk their lives for the residents of Vasknarva or Lutepää?
The third development came last week, when Belarus, a close Russian ally, began a major four-day military exercise close to its borders with Poland and Lithuania. The drills included tank battalions and took place near the strategically vital 25-mile Suwalki Gap, the shortest land route between Belarus and Russia’s Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, across Lithuanian and Polish territory.
A Russian seizure of the Suwalki Gap would have grave consequences for the Baltic states. Cut off from the rest of Europe, they could become vulnerable targets for Russia’s military machine.
RELATED: Staffer for California State Legislator Arrested in Latest ICE Operation
Adding to the concern, Moscow allegedly flew a drone across the Gap into Kaliningrad earlier this month, apparently testing or surveying Nato air defences.
The direction of travel seems all too clear.
The question for Andy Burnham and other Nato leaders, then, is whether or not any of these actual or potential incursions meet the threshold for triggering Article 5. And, more to the point, whether Western Europe has the means to triumph in a clash with Moscow and its allies.
To his immense discredit, Donald Trump has long cosied up to the repulsive Putin. With the US President’s foolish war in the Middle East proving hard to stop, he is unlikely to embroil American troops in further escalations in Europe, especially for a perceived ‘minor’ incursion by Russia into the Baltics.
Knowing this, other European countries have signified their readiness to act. Last Friday, French President Macron held a successful cross-party summit to build consensus on a plan in the event of war between Europe and Russia.
Yet while France is also mobilising aggressively, Britain sits on its derriere.
Just three months ago, then-Defence Secretary John Healey resigned over failures to boost military spending to three per cent of GDP. Now promoted to Chancellor, Healey looks set to fall short of that mark again.
Members of an electoral commission wait for voters, sitting under portraits of Vladimir Putin and Denis Pushilin, the installed leader of the Russian-controlled parts of the Donetsk region
For Britain, the real challenge will not be boldly answering the call to Article 5 and coming to the aid of the Baltic states but rather if we have the capabilities to do anything to help them in the first place.
The Labour Government has talked tough on defence but failed miserably to put its words into action.
By the end of the Cold War the British Army had 153,000 regular soldiers. Today, we have fewer than half that.
Of course, a Russian attack on Nato could come in another more deniable form: cyber warfare, state-sponsored terrorism, a ‘false flag’ attack, lawfare or even spreading hostile disinformation intended to weaken European alliances.
In the short term, such hybrid escalations seem the most likely.
After all – and thank God –Putin knows he cannot currently sustain all-out war with Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to at least 1.4 million casualties on its own side, including almost half a million dead.
And while Putin, like Stalin before him, no doubt sees such a toll as a ‘statistic not a tragedy’, he surely calculates it will be easier to weaken Nato’s resolve first, then take what he wants.
There is already evidence he is succeeding in this.
A decisive victory for the hard-Right and grotesquely Russophile AfD party in east German local elections last week marked a major coup for Putin – and proved that western Europeans are not entirely united against the Kremlin.
Vladimir Putin is a risk taker. After four years’ stalemate in Ukraine, the ageing President is planning his next move. Only time will tell whether he could spark a conflagration that would soon engulf the continent.
- Mark Almond is director of the Crisis Research Institute in Oxford.