OPINION:
In March 2018, it is useful now to remember, Russian GRU military intelligence operatives traveled to Salisbury, England, where they poisoned defector Sergei Skripal with the banned Soviet chemical nerve agent Novichok.
Mr. Skripal was the first British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) penetration of the GRU since Col. Oleg Penkovsky, whose reporting on Soviet nuclear capabilities was crucial to a peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis. He had been resettled in the U.K. following a 2010 swap, when the Obama administration’s Justice Department traded Russian foreign intelligence operatives held in the U.S. to secure his freedom.
Russian President Vladimir Putin could have ordered a quiet, untraceable, clandestine assassination of Mr. Skripal, but he instead chose to leave a hard-to-miss trail of breadcrumbs to Moscow because the former KGB operative now running the Kremlin was conducting a sophisticated influence operation against both his inner circle and his foreign adversaries.
First, Mr. Putin wanted to ensure that Russian military and intelligence services got the message: They would risk their lives if they betrayed him.
Second, having sparked Prime Minister Theresa May’s predictable retaliatory expulsions of Russian officials and diplomatic protests, Mr. Putin whipped up his electorate with allegations of “Russophobia” and anti-Western diatribes. Mr. Putin went on to win another landslide election victory two weeks later, after a campaign in which he portrayed Russia as a besieged fortress that only he could defend.
There is, as the Russians are fond of saying, “no such thing as a former spy.” And nowhere has Mr. Putin, who began his career in the KGB and later served as director of Russia’s ruthless Security Police (FSB), relied more on a Potemkin village of lies and propaganda than in his efforts to justify the Ukraine “special military operation” — the most destructive war in Europe since World War II.
Now, reeling from a blistering Ukrainian military counteroffensive and with few options to compensate for Russia’s corrupt military culture, severe shortages of equipment and ineffectual strategy, Mr. Putin is framing his wartime narrative with the most menacing threats of nuclear strikes, while increasing the lethality of the Kremlin’s indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians and basic infrastructure in Ukraine.
Mr. Putin wants the world to accept his twisted, fact-free narrative about enemy Ukrainian “Nazis” at the gates, when in fact it is Russia’s unprovoked war that has caused a humanitarian catastrophe. Ukraine is the victim, worthy of all support it can get from the international community to defend its territorial integrity and vulnerable population.
Just prior to ordering Russian troops over the border into Ukraine, Mr. Putin darkly warned that any country that interfered in the fight would “face consequences greater than any of you have faced in history.” He boasted about Russia’s nuclear capability and raised his nuclear forces to a higher alert in an effort to deter the West from serving as Ukraine’s arsenal for democracy.
NATO has provided Kyiv with significant military and humanitarian assistance, but Mr. Putin’s nuclear threats have effectively deterred the delivery to Ukraine of much-needed fighter aircraft, air defense and long-range artillery assets. Engaging in nuclear blackmail in his address on Sept. 30 to Parliament, Mr. Putin vowed that Russia would use “all the means” at its disposal to “protect itself.”
Mr. Putin knew the specter of a modern Cuban missile crisis would strike a chord with President Biden, who was just short of 20 when the U.S. and Soviet Union came ever so close to nuclear war. Mr. Putin’s coldblooded grip on the Kremlin might be at risk, but the “motherland” is not under threat and Russia has no legitimate justification for using nuclear weapons. Ukraine is in a fight for its very existence and to recapture its rightful territory, which Russia illegally annexed by force.
Of course, China and Taiwan are both watching carefully to see whether Russia will create a precedent for using the threat of nuclear attack to violate another nation’s territorial integrity.
Since Mr. Putin’s KGB past makes him a natural-born hypocrite and purveyor of lies, the Biden administration must now counter the Kremlin’s approach with a three-pronged public relations strategy.
First, recapture the public narrative from Mr. Putin. NATO will support Ukraine’s fight until Russia stops raining down hell on innocent civilians and withdraws from Ukrainian territory. Refrain from references to “World War Three” or the “risk of Armageddon” — they just add rhetorical throw weight to Mr. Putin’s brinkmanship.
Second, press the truth publicly and in back-channel discussions with Mr. Putin’s military and inner circle that their president is recklessly spilling his country’s blood and treasure solely to retain his hold on power. Emphasize that Ukraine is no threat to Russia’s sovereignty, but NATO will respond forcefully if Russia uses nuclear weapons.
Third, without engaging in appeasement, which only delays rather than deters dictators, empower Ukraine to determine the diplomatic offramp for ending Mr. Putin’s war, whereby Russia casts aside its status as a violent rogue state and rejoins the community of nations.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. Follow him on Twitter @DanielHoffmanDC.
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