Russia drops hints that go beyond a Ukraine invasion

VIENNA • No one expected much progress from this past week's diplomatic marathon to defuse the security crisis that Russia has ignited in Eastern Europe by surrounding Ukraine on three sides with 100,000 troops and then, by the White House's accounting, sending in saboteurs to create a pretext for invasion.

But as the Biden administration and Nato conduct tabletop simulations about how the next few months could unfold, they are increasingly wary of another set of options for President Vladimir Putin, steps that are more far-reaching than simply rolling his troops and armour over Ukraine's border.

Mr Putin wants to extend Russia's sphere of influence to Eastern Europe and secure written commitments that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) will never again enlarge.

If he is frustrated in reaching that goal, his aides suggested on the sidelines of the negotiations last week, then he would pursue Russia's security interests with results that would be felt acutely in Europe and the United States.

There were hints, never quite spelt out, that nuclear weapons could be shifted to places - perhaps not far from the US coastline - that would reduce warning times after a launch to as little as five minutes.

"A hypothetical Russian invasion of Ukraine would not undermine the security of the United States," said Mr Dmitry Suslov, an analyst in Moscow who gave a closed-door presentation on the stand-off to Russian lawmakers last month. "The overall logic of Russian actions is that it is the US and Nato that must pay a high price."

And as Ukrainians were reminded last Friday as the websites of the country's ministries were defaced in an amateurish attack, Russia's army of hackers can wreak havoc in Ukraine and also in power grids from Munich to Michigan.

It could all be bluster, part of a Kremlin campaign of intimidation and a way of reminding President Joe Biden that while he wants to focus the US' attention on competing and dealing with China, Mr Putin is still capable of causing enormous disruption.

The Russian leader telegraphed that approach himself by warning repeatedly in the past year that if the West crossed the ever-shifting "red line" that, in his mind, threatens Russia's security, he would order an unexpected response.

"Russia's response will be asymmetrical, fast and tough," Mr Putin said last April, referring to the kinds of unconventional military action that Russia could take if adversaries threatened "our fundamental security interests".

American officials say that for all the talk about moving nuclear weapons or using asymmetrical attacks, so far the US has seen little evidence.

Of course, the most obvious scenario, given the scale of troop movements on the ground, is a Russian invasion of Ukraine - maybe not to take over the entire country but to send troops into the breakaway regions around the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, or to roll all the way to the Dnieper River.

In Geneva, Russian diplomats insisted there were no plans to invade Ukraine. But there were hints of other steps.

In one little-noticed remark, a senior Russian diplomat said Moscow was prepared to place unspecified weapons systems in unspecified places. That merged with US intelligence assessments that Russia could be considering new nuclear deployments, perhaps tactical nuclear weapons or a powerful emerging arsenal of hypersonic missiles.

In November, Mr Putin himself suggested Russia could deploy submarine-based hypersonic missiles within close striking distance of Washington.

"From the beginning of the year, we will have in our arsenal a new sea-based missile, a hypersonic one," Mr Putin said, referring to a weapon that travels at more than five times the speed of sound and could likely evade existing missile defences.

In an apparent reference to the US capital, he added: "The flight time to reach those who give the orders will also be five minutes."

Russian officials hinted again in recent days about new missile deployments, and Washington repeated that it has seen no moves in that direction.

Moving missiles, however, is obvious to the world. And that is why, if the conflict escalates further, American officials believe that Mr Putin could be drawn to cyber attacks - easy to deny, superbly tailored for disruption and amenable to being ramped up or down, depending on the political temperature.

Mr Putin does not need to do much to insert computer code, or malware, into US infrastructure; the Department of Homeland Security has long warned that the Russians have already placed malware inside many US power grids.

NYTIMES