CIA Director Warns Putin as Drone Attacks Raise Fears of Wider War

Concern is growing across Western capitals that Vladimir Putin may be preparing a fresh escalation beyond Ukraine, with officials fearing Russia could turn to drone attacks in Europe after the CIA chief’s unexpected visit to Moscow.

CIA director John Ratcliffe reportedly travelled to the Russian capital without advance public notice, where he is said to have delivered a blunt message to the Kremlin: do not widen the war in Ukraine, whether through the use of a nuclear weapon or by striking Kyiv’s Western partners.

The warning, described as a “just don’t do it” message, was reportedly driven by US intelligence suggesting Moscow is ready to respond swiftly and aggressively after its battlefield push once again lost momentum.

In the wake of Ratcliffe’s trip, the Kremlin offered little sign that it was seeking a thaw with the West, cautioning that “it is too early to say if the deep crisis in US-Russia relations can be overcome” while also claiming that “Ukraine is definitely losing the war.”

The developments come at an especially tense time for Nato, with Russian drones repeatedly probing air defences along the alliance’s eastern flank. Increasingly, however, the sense of vulnerability is spreading to other parts of Europe as well.

Germany has already been rattled this month by a string of unexplained drone incidents. Leipzig-Halle airport — a key Nato logistics centre and the European base for Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines — briefly halted flights after an armed drone was found near a Ukrainian aircraft.

Soon afterward, a cargo plane struck a small unidentified object, and the next day drones were reported above an important military site in western Germany, deepening anxiety over possible Russian-linked surveillance or sabotage activity.

Western intelligence warnings have also become sharper, with US officials reportedly concerned that, if Moscow chose to act, it could move to grab Nato territory within weeks of making that decision.

Potential scenarios range from a major cyber-attack and armed groups occupying territory to an incursion along Nato’s eastern flank.

Moscow has already been accused of waging a shadow war across the continent through sabotage, cyberattacks, drones, disinformation and intimidation, tactics designed to cause disruption while staying below the threshold for a military response.

British spy chief Anne Keast-Butler has warned that the UK and its allies now occupy ‘a space between peace and war’, with Russian activity stretching ‘from the seabed to cyberspace’. 

Security experts told Prime Minister Andy Burnham to be prepared for a ‘direct response’ from Vladimir Putin

The Kremlin is set to target the UK, sources said, after miscalculating Mr Burnham’s commitment to Kyiv.

Former Russian deputy foreign minister Andrei Fedorov said he could not ‘100 per cent exclude’ the prospect of ‘semi-military’ action against Britain following Mr Burnham’s visit to Kyiv on Monday.

During the trip, which was the Prime Minister’s first overseas since entering No10, the UK reiterated its ‘unwavering’ support for Ukraine, which in turn handed over what officials have called a ‘goldmine’ of battlefield data to help bolster British security.

Mr Fedorov said ‘sooner or later, there might be not only verbal but maybe some visible reaction from Russia towards the UK’.

Asked to elaborate on what this might look like, he said: ‘It might be so-called technical reaction, maybe some hackers attack from [an] unknown source.

‘There might be different political steps and I cannot exclude 100 per cent that there might be some semi-military [action].’

Russian drones are already testing European airspace and defences, posing a major threat to the continent’s safety.

Western fighter jets have been scrambled numerous times in recent weeks to shoot down drones, while Ukraine recently intercepted a drone that had earlier crossed into Romanian airspace.

And fighter jets were scrambled over 250 per cent more in July compared with a year ago as Russia continues to probe the West’s defences. 

The incidents are particularly concerning in the Baltic region, where Russia has repeatedly been accused of probing Nato’s defences.

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has warned of the possibility of targeted Russian kinetic operations against critical infrastructure.

‘I cannot deny that we have such information and that it concerns kinetic operations. Not on a large scale, but targeted kinetic operations that are very likely to be directed against critical infrastructure.’

Russian opposition politician Garry Kasparov has also warned that Putin could attempt a small incursion using drones.

‘I think the chances [are] that he’ll cross NATO borders – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, just a small incursion using drones.

‘I think the chances are growing because Putin needs a winning narrative and Ukraine doesn’t offer it.’

And Lithuania’s defence minister has warned that Moscow could use captured Ukrainian drones in a false-flag attack against critical infrastructure in the Baltics.

One potential purpose of the drones could be intimidation, said Lieutenant Colonel Thilo Geiger, a hybrid warfare researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy in Hamburg.

‘One of the possible messages or effects they want to achieve with such a thing is don’t mess with us,’ he said. ‘Care about your German national interests and stop caring about your neighbors.’

In recent weeks, Russia has also launched a new wave of attacks targeting European defence manufacturers, using local criminals to carry out acts of sabotage, according to Western intelligence sources.

The Kremlin is believed to be recruiting gang members to target defence companies as part of an effort to test Nato’s resolve.

Intelligence officials believe the attacks have been carefully calibrated to stop short of triggering Article 5, Nato’s mutual defence clause.

This week, Latvia detained three of its own nationals over a suspected arson attack on a drone manufacturer in Estonia.

A building belonging to Tallinn-based Milrem Robotics, which supplies weapons to Ukraine, was set on fire on August 15.

In August alone, there have been explosions at major arms manufacturers in Italy and Bulgaria.

And earlier this year, four people were detained after a fire almost destroyed a Czech plant making drones and thermal optics for Ukraine. 

Drone threats also extend to Britain’s critical infrastructure. 

In an article for The Telegraph, former defence minister Tom Tugendhat said: ‘We need urgent improvements to our drone defence: attacks could be launched from unmarked containers on ships in the North Sea, or unwittingly by a truck driver in northern France and still target our critical national infrastructure.’

Writing for Our News Outlet, historian Mark Galeotti added: ‘Russia is operating against us on multiple levels, and the need for the public to be on guard has never been more urgent.’

One extremely dangerous scenario would be for Russia to move from covert operations to a direct military confrontation with Nato.

US intelligence assessments suggest that possibility can no longer be dismissed.

Until now, US intelligence believed the Kremlin dictator would not risk provoking Nato while fighting in Ukraine.

But this assessment changed this year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

One scenario could see an armed group occupying Nato territory or a limited incursion along the alliance’s eastern flank.

One theory is that Russia could attempt to seize a city or region in Poland or one of the three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania.

All three were formerly part of the Russian Empire and have ethnic Russian minorities that Moscow has used in its propaganda.

They also sit between Russia and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, home to the Russian Baltic Fleet.

The Atlantic Council describes the Baltic states as a high priority for Russian disinformation and subversion, as well as potential outright aggression.

Last month, Washington warned that the Kremlin could be planning an armed incursion on Polish land to test Nato’s response.

Polish security experts also warned that Russia and Belarus might send a small number of troops across the Nato border.

Power stations could also be targeted in the incursion, through air strikes that would force Poland to activate its air defence systems.

According to Polish sources cited by Onet, Russia could frame a territorial incursion as either a GPS navigation error or an emergency helicopter recovery.

Moscow’s strategy relies on the assumption that the US would compel Poland to negotiate rather than engage militarily.

According to sources, a ground-based attack could come from Kaliningrad – which borders northern Poland – or from Belarus to the east.

Finland and Sweden are also considered targets of Russian hostility following their decisions to join Nato. 

Norway, meanwhile, shares a border with Russia and has strongly supported Ukraine and Western sanctions.

There are also fears that Russia could potentially seize a small island in the Baltic Sea to test Nato’s political unity and military response

There are thousands of islands in the Baltic Sea of varying size, many of them strategically located near Nato territory and critical maritime routes. 

The Svalbard archipelago, a lightly populated Norwegian territory near the North Pole, could be a target of Russian occupation, as could the Aland Islands, a demilitarised, sovereign Finnish territory. 

The Atlantic Council warns that the most likely scenarios for aggression from Moscow share several characteristics: they are close to Russian territory, could face a weak Nato response and involve countries with relatively limited defending forces.

As one senior Nordic officer told the organisation: ‘What Putin says he will do, he does.’

However, Russia would be taking a huge risk by attacking Nato directly. The alliance still possesses vastly greater military resources than Russia, including over three million active personnel, thousands of aircraft and more than 1,000 military ships.

Perhaps the most immediate threat, however, is not Russian troops crossing Nato’s border, but explosions, vandalism, fires and covert operations carried out from within Europe.

European intelligence officials have warned that Russian intelligence and security services are examining hybrid warfare operations that could include infrastructure sabotage and false-flag attacks.

‘The biggest concern right now is a series of sabotage operations’, said Seth Jones, a former Pentagon official.

‘From assassinations to accidental drones or missiles, little green men – operating in or around the Baltic countries – to explosions in various facilities.’

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, Western officials have linked Moscow to 191 acts of sabotage, arson and disruption across Europe, according to the Atlantic Council.

Meanwhile, documented Russian attacks nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024.

A Financial Times report cited by the Atlantic Council found that teenagers across Europe were being recruited through messaging apps such as Telegram to conduct sabotage, sometimes for relatively small payments.

In the last year alone, teenagers from Poland, the Netherlands, and the UK have been arrested after being recruited by Russian hackers to spy and vandalise.

And Germany is now investigating a suspected Russian intelligence weapons cache discovered in a forest near Berlin.

Authorities found two handguns and ammunition after receiving a tip, and left the weapons in place after rendering them unusable in the hope that electronic surveillance would identify whoever attempted to retrieve them.

German domestic intelligence officials have warned of increasingly aggressive Russian secret service tactics, including possible targeted attacks against people on German soil.

The suspected targets are believed to include defence industry executives, opposition figures and prominent supporters of Ukraine.

The warning comes after reports that Russian intelligence had plotted to assassinate Rheinmetall chief executive Armin Papperger, whose company supplies weapons to Ukraine.

And earlier this month, German newspaper Die Zeit reported that Russia was plotting an attack against Stefan Thumann, the head of German drone manufacturer Donaustahl.

Across Europe, suspected Russian-linked arson attacks have also targeted commercial and strategic sites, including an IKEA store in Vilnius and Warsaw’s Marywilska 44 shopping centre.

In Britain, a factory and warehouse complex belonging to a Ukrainian business leader was set on fire in March 2024.

British police said the ringleader had been recruited online and directed by people linked to the Russian mercenary Wagner Group.

European countries have faced what the Atlantic Council describes as a growing campaign of cyberattacks, disinformation and other forms of digital disruption orchestrated by Russia.

One European diplomat said that while Moscow may not have sufficient troops to launch a direct military assault on a Nato country because of the bombardment of Ukraine, ‘there is room for other types of escalation’.

They added that Putin could employ hybrid-warfare tactics, with many countries in the EU already being pummelled with ‘constant cyber-attacks, constant disinformation’.

Russian cyber units have targeted critical systems including power plants since at least the mid-2010s.

On the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a cyber-attack against the Viasat satellite internet system caused outages across central and eastern Europe. The EU, US and UK later condemned the attack as Russian.

Russia has also been accused of using electronic warfare to interfere with civilian communications and navigation.

Nordic and Baltic countries have reported increased GPS jamming and spoofing since 2022, affecting civilian aircraft, ships and drones.

One case saw Finland’s national airline Finnair suspend flights to Tartu in Estonia after passenger planes repeatedly lost GPS signals during their approaches.

The interference has also affected military exercises and civilian air traffic in northern Norway and Sweden, with signals reportedly originating from the Kola Peninsula, where Russia has several military bases.

The Kremlin has argued that GPS interference is a legitimate defensive measure intended to protect Russian territory from Ukrainian drones.

Baltic officials dispute this, saying some incidents have taken place far from Russia’s border.

Some of Europe’s most vulnerable infrastructure lies not on land, but hundreds of metres beneath the sea, seemingly beyond the reach of attack. 

Yet even these remote assets are not beyond the Kremlin’s reach.

The destruction of sections of the Nord Stream one and two gas pipelines in September 2022 exposed the vulnerability of Europe’s seabed infrastructure to sabotage.

The perpetrators remain disputed, but since then, a series of incidents involving undersea cables and pipelines in the Baltic Sea has intensified concerns about Russian activity.

In October 2023, the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was ruptured at the same time as a data cable. 

Finland described the incident as deliberate, although investigators also examined whether a ship’s anchor had caused the damage.

In November 2024, two fibre-optic internet cables in the Baltic were severed within two days. One connected Finland with Germany, while another connected Sweden to Lithuania’s network.

And in December of that same year, the Estlink two power cable between Finland and Estonia was cut along with several nearby telecommunications cables.

The pattern has raised alarm among regional governments, particularly because undersea infrastructure carries huge amounts of Europe’s energy and communications.

Russia’s pressure campaign against Europe also extends to the continent’s borders, where it has increasingly weaponised migration with the help of its ally Belarus. 

The Atlantic Council says Moscow has deliberately used migration as part of its wider hybrid warfare campaign.

Thousands of migrants have been sent across Poland’s eastern frontier in recent months, as Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko is playing a strong role in attempting to destabilise the West.

Speaking to The Telegraph earlier this year, Lt Col Katarzyna Zdanowicz from the Polish border force said that in 2025, officers uncovered four tunnels under the border with Belarus.

He added: ‘Physical and electronic security measures at the border, such as thermal imaging cameras and detection systems, allow us to immediately respond to any attempted violations of the state border, even underground ones.’

A total of 180 migrants mainly from Pakistan and Afghanistan used the tunnel to cross the border, and the majority were arrested upon emergence. 

The Belarusian dictator used specialists from the Middle East to design the tunnels, with Polish officials claiming these people had a ‘high level of expertise’.

Although it is difficult to prove which groups participated, it is thought that Islamic State, Hamas, Hezbollah and Kurdish fighters could be involved.