Sabotage in Germany, drones over airports, and the Baltic question: what is actually holding Russia back, and what would change if it were not.
Russia's pressure on NATO states is not a future scenario. Drones over German airports, sabotage across Europe, cut cables and a consulate closed in Bonn are the current baseline.
The argument running through these pieces is about what that pressure is for and whether it is working. One reading is escalation as leverage, applied harder as other leverage runs out. Another is that the sabotage campaign has largely failed on its own terms, because it hardened the states it was meant to split.
The Baltic question sits at the end of it. The useful version is not whether Russia would like to test NATO, but what is currently preventing it, and which of those constraints is load-bearing.
Drawn from Episode 17
Francis Farrell argues the thing preventing Russia testing the Baltics is Ukraine holding at Sloviansk, and that Europe is signalling to Putin that it will not come. Plus the miscalculation that worries Samuel Cook.
Rob Lee and Francis Farrell on why Russia's campaign in Europe has failed by its own measure, why the escalation lines kept being drawn too conservatively, and what NATO is still not learning.
Rob Lee on why Russia sabotages Europe while losing in Ukraine, why the Baltic Fleet being committed matters, and why sanctions removed the restraint that used to hold.
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Ukraine Military History Institute