The likelihood that Russia would resort to using a nuclear weapon in its war on Ukraine was “higher than a couple of months ago” and “requires full attention”, a top European spy chief has warned.
Mikk Marran, head of Estonia’s foreign intelligence service, said the use of a nuclear weapon was one of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “potential scenarios for escalation”. The recent series of calls from Moscow officials alleging Ukraine was preparing a “dirty bomb” — a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material — for use on the battlefield was “out of pattern”, he warned.
“The likelihood of [Russia] going nuclear is certainly more than zero and higher than a couple of months ago,” Marran said in an interview with a small group of journalists.
“It’s a priority issue . . . The intensity of [Russia’s] rhetoric is strange,” he said of Moscow’s dirty bomb claim. “Whether [the Russians] are actually planning a false flag or [something else], we don’t know. But certainly this is out of pattern and requires full attention.”
The comments underline the nervousness in western capitals following a flurry of calls over the weekend initiated by Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu with counterparts in UK, France, the US and Turkey about the Russian allegations.
Washington, Paris and London, the three Nato nuclear powers, issued a statement on Monday to reject Moscow’s accusations that Kyiv was making a bomb as “transparently false”. They have warned Russia against using them as a pretext for escalating its aggression on Ukraine.
Marran, who is known among his western peers for his frontline understanding of Russia, said the aim of Moscow’s nuclear sabre-rattling was to deter the West from aiding Ukraine, but that “giving in to Russian nuclear rhetoric would only increase Russian demands [which] would never stop”.
He said Estonia’s security services had not seen any increased “preparedness from the Russian side to go nuclear, but obviously some of our western partners have more capabilities on that front”.
But he also cautioned that “when analysing Russia and the activities of the Russian leadership, we tend to do it in a very pragmatic western way of thinking and in case of Russia, we can’t exclude that they will do it anyway”.
Marran, who steps down next week after seven years leading Estonia’s foreign intelligence service, also said the risk of Russian attacks on European energy infrastructure had “increased considerably”.
European countries have stepped up military patrols to protect energy supplies in the North Sea in the wake of the apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
Marran said that although the cause and perpetrators of the pipeline explosions were being investigated, “we’re in a new reality where we can’t exclude similar attacks in future”.
The Estonian intelligence chief said he remained confident Ukraine would win the conflict, although Russia remained a threat to European security as long as it “retained its imperialistic ambitions”.
“Putin’s plans in Ukraine haven’t changed,” he said. “He’s still on a kind of a religious or messianic mission. And we see that Putin is preparing his country and its army to continue fighting for a long, long time.”
That includes drafting thousands of fresh troops to fight in Ukraine. Some of them have been moved to neighbouring Belarus, although Estonia’s assessment was that it was for more of a training mission than to launch an attack on Ukraine.
“Russia lacks officers . . . so they’re using Belarusian instructors to prepare the mobilised manpower,” Marran said. “Of course, Russians being in Belarus also keeps Ukrainian forces alert . . . and will continue taking some of the resources from the Ukrainian army.”
Of the Russian troops who have received rudimentary training and been deployed to Ukraine, Marran said most of them would probably be killed or wounded in the coming weeks and months.
However, Russia uses what Marran called “Darwinian principles” to train its armed forces. As a result, some of the newly mobilised soldiers would “survive, learn how to fight and they’re going to be probably a problem for Ukraine,” he said.