Last week, CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a secret trip to Moscow, the first known visit by a CIA director to Russia since before the outbreak of the Ukraine war.
CNN reported that Ratcliffe delivered a “warning to Russia not to stage an attack in NATO territory.” The ominous conclusion to be drawn is that Washington believes that there is an imminent danger of open warfare between NATO and Russia.
The conditions for a disastrous escalation have been created by a series of Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia, financed and armed by the US and major European NATO powers. In one of its heaviest air raids of the war, Ukraine put roughly 600 drones over the Moscow region overnight on August 15-16, and at least six people were killed across Russia that night.
In the past week Ukraine staged drone attacks that set fire to the Lukoil refinery at Kstovo, 500 miles inside Russia, which produces up to 11 percent of the country’s gasoline, and burned down a Wildberries warehouse in the Tambov region, part of a campaign against logistics hubs Ukraine says supply the war effort. The refinery strikes, the Financial Times reported in July, are guided by American and French targeting intelligence.
At this point the European NATO forces, with Britain, France and Germany in the lead, are hardly attempting to conceal their direct involvement in military operations against Russia.
- On August 24, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, in Kiev, released to Ukraine the secret specifications for the British parts of the Storm Shadow, a long-range missile Ukraine has already fired into Russia, so that Ukraine and France can set up production there.
- The same day, Burnham and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed an agreement making Britain the first foreign country with access to the combat data that trains Ukraine’s strike-guiding artificial intelligence, the Financial Timesreported Monday.
- Also on August 24, the European Commission approved €6.1 billion for Ukrainian purchases of missiles and air defense systems, an installment of the €90 billion war loan it agreed in December.
- These transfers follow the decision of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in May 2025 to lift all range restrictions on German weapons supplied to Ukraine. Germany, second only to the United States in funding the war, has made available nearly €100 billion in aid, has trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers on German soil and, the German weekly Die Zeit reported, has supplied Kiev with satellite imagery and intercepts locating Russian troops, depots and airfields.
- On Thursday, the Financial Times reported that Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain and Poland asked the European Commission to restart work on using some €200 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets, held at the Euroclear depository in Brussels, to fund the war.
There are significant divisions among the European powers over this action. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever told the other European powers at the World Economic Forum in January: “You cannot simply confiscate money. That is an act of war.” This statement reflects concerns not only over the massively provocative character of this action but also its impact on the global financial system.
