Putin will be properly conscious of Donald Trump’s periodic disdain for Nato and he may have calculated that a low-key attack on say, Lithuania, is not going to set off Nato’s mutual self-defence clause – Article 5 – and that the US will not reply.
In which case it would make sense for half of the CIA chief’s unexplained mission to Moscow was to remind Russia that the US is still absolutely dedicated to Article 5.
Lithuania is of particular curiosity to the Kremlin as it has a common border with Poland recognized as the “Suwalki Gap”. Just 60 miles long, this strip of land is all that separates Russia’s shopper state Belarus from its nuclear-armed exclave of Kaliningrad, which is separated from mainland Russia.
If Russia were to seize that it would successfully cut off those three Baltic states by land from their Nato neighbours.
Then there is the query of tactical nuclear warheads. It has long been said that Russian navy doctrine views these small but extremely damaging weapons as an integral half of its order of battle.
Moscow has been warned off, by buddy and foe alike, not to break the 81-year long taboo on utilizing nuclear weapons in anger.
Yet this could still be a tempting option for Vladimir Putin to “escalate to de-escalate” by demonstrating to Ukraine that it has such catastrophic weapons at its disposal it would be higher for Kyiv to capitulate to Moscow’s phrases now or face annihilation.
Of course, in the absence of any clear, attributable, official affirmation from the US as to what this sudden CIA sprint to Moscow was all about then it is always doable it was about something else.
That could be attempting to persuade Russia to finish its navy cooperation with Iran, for instance, or perhaps about more prisoner swaps or the prospect of a mass mobilisation of Russian troops.
But make no mistake, this journey was extremely uncommon and it came at a time of rising rigidity between Moscow and the West. Something is virtually definitely up.
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