March 19, 2025: Russia is conducting a disruptive clandestine operation against NATO countries in an effort to create disunity and eliminate any willingness to continue supporting Ukraine. This effort included the use of Russian sleeper agents that had been in Ukraine and Western Europe since the 1990s. Ukraine became an independent state in 1991 and Russian leaders resolved to get it back, using any means it had available. This led to the 2022 invasion when Russia concluded that stern measures were needed to, as Russian propaganda described it, prevent NATO from adding Ukraine to its list of nations that would eventually overwhelm and destroy Russia.

Russia’s European NATO sleepers were not fully activated until Russia realized their 2022 invasion was faltering. There was no public announcement of this but, by 2024, the Ukrainian security service, or SSU, detected several Russian agents operating in Kherson, which is near the Black Sea northwest of Crimea. Three Russian spies were arrested and apparently none of these men admitted to being sleepers or knowing anything about sleepers. That was not unusual, as sleepers and the agents they hire locally know that as long as they disclose nothing. In a revealing move, Russia proceeded to whatever it could to free these loyal agents. The agents were described as innocent Russian citizens being persecuted by NATO for mysterious and nefarious reasons. Russia never explained what those reasons were.

Russia believes that conventional warfare waged in Ukraine plus unconventional warfare carried out worldwide complement each other. Russian efforts to destabilize Africa are supposed to divert attention and resources headed to Ukraine. To make this happen, Russian spies, assassins, and propagandists continue their efforts.

The reality was that revolution and subversion efforts worldwide have long been used by the Soviet Union and later Russia to exploit whatever opportunities were available to disrupt and diminish support for groups hostile to Russia, while encouraging local leaders that support Russian objectives. For example, in 2016, Russian operatives recruited criminal gangs to cause trouble in the tiny Balkan state of Montenegro and disrupt efforts by that country to join NATO. That attempt failed when several foreign agents and pro-coup Montenegrin politicians were detected, arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned.

In February 2022, Russian agents tried to organize widespread protests that would justify imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine. This effort would be aided by pro-Russian factions in the Ukrainian government. These factions were supposed to make it possible for pro-Russian groups belonging to the Ukrainian parliament and government to seize power. That effort failed because the Russians overestimated the number of pro-Russian officials in the Ukrainian government and the Russian invasion did not immediately succeed, as the Russians expected. There were too many Ukrainians willing and able to fight and defeat the Russian invaders.

Since 1949, NATO has been preparing to defend Western Europe from a Russian attack. Until 1989 Russia had massed several hundred thousand troops in East Germany along with several thousand tanks, most of them T-72s. There were thousands more tanks waiting in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. Starting in 1989, when the wall dividing Russian controlled east Berlin from the NATO controlled west Berlin came down, the situation changed in a radical and unexpected way.

Back then Russia was called the Soviet Union because it had more territory and twice as many people as the current Russian Federation. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed into 14 independent nations. The two largest were the Russian Federation and Ukraine. The current Russian leader Vladimir Putin always wanted to put the Soviet Union back together and he began to do that in 2014, grabbing several Ukrainian provinces. Then he invaded Ukraine in early 2022. Ukraine was seeking to join NATO and their application was being processed. To be a NATO member Ukraine had to acquire Western tanks and warplanes because NATO is about all members using similar weapons, not Russian ones. The Ukrainians were in the process of converting when Russia attacked. That was because Russia wanted Ukraine to be part of the new Russian Empire, not the NATO alliance that defended members from Russian aggression.

The Russian attack did not go well, with their initial attack force losing most of their tanks and more than half a million soldiers dead, wounded, missing or taken prisoner. This was a startling revelation to NATO and a major disappointment to Russia. NATO amassed substantial forces to defeat a Russian attack and that attack eventually came, in early 2022, against NATO applicant Ukraine. This clarified the long unanswered question of what would have happened if Russia had attacked NATO forces during the 1949-1991 Cold War. The Russian attack against Ukraine was not as massive as the one the Soviet Union forces in Eastern Europe were prepared to make against NATO forces in West Germany and beyond.

The Ukrainians halted the Russian attack and inflicted heavy casualties on the Russians while doing so. After a year of fighting the Russians had lost most of their modern tanks along with nearly half a million troops killed, wounded or missing. A growing number of Russian soldiers preferred desertion or surrendering to Ukrainian forces to dying in Ukraine. Over a million military age Russian men left the country legally or otherwise to escape military service and the possibility of death or disabling wounds in Ukraine.

Russian tank losses were so heavy that Russia eventually used Cold War era T-55, T-62 and T-64 tanks taken out of storage, refurbished and sent to fight and get destroyed in Ukraine. Ukrainians are finding dead Russian soldiers armed with World War 1 era Mosin-Nagant rifles. Some 39 million of these rifles were produced between the 1890s and 1973 and Russia had a lot of them in storage for an emergency. That emergency was supposed to be someone else invading Russia, not Russia invading Ukraine, a former part of Russia that does not want to become part of Russia again.

For both NATO and Russia this answers the question of what would have happened if Russia attacked NATO forces during the Cold War. Since Ukraine was not yet a NATO member, NATO could not send troops to assist Ukraine but NATO has sent over $200 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine. Eventually some NATO members suggested that NATO soldiers be sent to Ukraine, as advisors and trainers for Ukrainian forces. Currently some NATO members send some of their troops to neighboring Poland, a NATO member, to train Ukrainians on how to use and maintain all the weapons and equipment NATO has sent to Ukraine. Most NATO members just train Ukrainians in their home countries. NATO aid played a major role in stopping the Russian invasion and pushing the Russians back.