Re-Decoupling: Russia’s Next Aggression Strategy

 “The Russian foreign ministry’s statement on the withdrawal on the deployment of medium and short-range missiles is the result of NATO countries anti-Russian policy. This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps”.

Dmitri Medvedev, August 2025

The Ides of August

August 19^th. The second Alaska Purchase is a deal in the making. Last Friday, and behind closed doors, Trump and Putin almost certainly agreed that Russia can have Ukraine’s entire Donbas region as reward for its aggression, in addition to Crimea. What will doubtless come to be known as the ‘Secret Protocol’ will once again demonstrate that democracies all too often abandon the long-term for the short-term. In Washington the European allies blustered and postured but my bet is the deal is done.  It is now a question of how to sell it.

It is hardly surprising. The ides of August is traditionally the period when the mad, bad and dangerous do dangerous things to the sad, weak and absent on holiday. As the French say. “Les absents sont toujours torts”. In August 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II invaded Belgium and started World War 1.  In August 1939, in another infamous ‘secret protocol’ to the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact Hitler and Stalin agreed the division of Poland and thus paved the way for World War 2.  Now, the ground is set for Putin’s ‘victory’ in Ukraine due to an unwilling America and an incapable Europe.  What’s next in Putin’s mind for Ukraine and Europe? 

Re-Decoupling! 

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s there was one word that haunted Western European chancelleries - decoupling. Decoupling was a gambit by the Soviet Union to separate the US nuclear arsenal from NATO and the defence of Europe. They did this by presenting the Americans with a dilemma. In 1977, Moscow deployed the triple nuclear warheaded SS20 into Eastern Europe.  The SS20 had a range that could strike Western Europe, but not continental North America.  The dilemma the SS20 posed by the Soviets to the Americans was a simple one: ‘would you, Mr President, commit nuclear suicide to defend Europe from the Red Army?’ 

The Soviets had observed growing political tensions within the Alliance and believed the time was apposite for such a gambit. It was precisely for just such a moment the British and French had their own nuclear deterrents. But what if the Red Army had only seized the Federal Republic of Germany and stopped?  Would the British and French also been willing to commit nuclear suicide for the Germans? Putin believes both the American defence of Europe and the Western European defence of Eastern Europe are now weaker than at any time since the Cold War. It is Moscow’s sense of Western division and weakness that is fuelling the Kremlin’s ambitions in Eastern Europe. Ambition that was neatly if unsubtly captured in Alaska by Foreign Minister Lavrov wearing a shirt with ‘CCCP’ emblazoned across it.

The struggle over Ukraine is a systemic and historic struggle between two completely opposing views of power and its purpose: Europeans believe in self-determination, whilst Russians believe in spheres of influence.   Lavrov’s less than subtle message was clear: Russia wants to re-establish a new sphere of influence over Eastern Europe using coercion, intimidation and if needs be occupation.  This is why what happens to Ukraine is so important to Europe and why Putin has of late been cultivating the cult of Stalin.

Paper Tigers

Therefore, the real test of ‘peace’ in Ukraine and thus future deterrence would be the credibility of the “Article 5 style security guarantees” Trump is reportedly offering to Ukraine. They would need to be more credible than the Anglo-Polish Military Alliance of August 1939 or the 1994 Budapest Memorandum?  Moreover, Article 5 of the Washington Treaty is not an automatic armed assistance commitment, it is just assumed to be. At the very least, the Americans would need to engage in formal treaty assurances to preserve the territorial integrity of what will inevitably be called ‘rump Ukraine’, as will the European members of any coalition of the willing.  They would also need to be willing to put American and European boots on the ground in Ukraine, something that only this week the Russian Foreign Ministry again ruled out.   Above all, there would need to be an explicit nuclear guarantee which is at the very heart of Article 5. However, in Alaska, like the good KGB officer he is, Putin tested Trump’s willingness to use the US nuclear arsenal to deter Russia in Europe. Trump’s flexibility over land for peace convinced Putin that the US nuclear guarantee to Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, is dead. Ukraine?

Back in the 1980s, and at European request, the Americans countered the SS20 threat by eventually deploying Cruise and Pershing missiles to Europe. However, to prevent the deployment Moscow activated its many sleeper cells and useful idiots in Europe to create civil unrest. It what hybrid warfare against Western European governments and came close to succeeding. Time was pressing. In the early 1980s, the Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GFSG) sat on the inner-German border, whilst Solidarnosc and other liberation movements were threatening Soviet control in Poland and across Central and Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union began its descent into the abyss. By 1987, the West had seen off the threat not least because in March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev had become the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.  In December 1987, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed which led to the removal of SS20s, Cruise and Pershing missiles from Europe. That was then, this is now. In 2019, the first Trump administration abrogated the treaty amidst claims of Russian cheating. Now, the Russians are moving to a new cycle of aggression by implying that such weapons will once again be deployed forward to threaten Western Europeans with a new form of nuclear blackmail.

Der Tag 

‘Der Tag’ is a German expression meaning ‘when the inevitable battle comes’.  Today, Russian forces are far to the east of Germany.  However, should ‘Der Tag’ come will weak and divided Britain, France and Germany, let alone the US, really care enough about Ukraine to fulfil their obligations?  What about the Arctic, the re-Finlandization of Finland, the Black Sea Region, but above all Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?  To blunt Russian ambitions the West would not only threaten war with Russia, but mean it. They will need to. Medvedev’s statement suggests the Russians believe not and whilst they might accept a temporary tactical peace the strategic ambition to force free states into Moscow’s orb remains.

That is why should there be a ‘peace’ in Ukraine the West must not only demonstrate resolve in the face of Putin’s games, but also military and security capacity and capability across the full spectrum of hybrid, cyber and hyperwar so that the Kremlin never thinks crossing the Rubicon is again worth the risk. That is the essence of the new deterrence posture NATO will need to forge with the EU and which will demand a much more offensive European posture than hitherto and a real re-commitment by the Americans to the defence of Europe.  

Tragic paradox of Ukraine is that this terrible deal is probably the most Ukraine can expect today.  The simple truth is that eastern Ukraine matters far less to Western Europeans and North Americans than it does to Putin and they have clearly gone as far as they are willing to go. What matters now is they rebuild their own deterrence and defence.  Rather, Western leaders will hope, a la Chamberlain and Daladier in 1938, that by making Zelensky a latter-day Edvard Benes, Putin’s expansionist impulse will be sated.  That will only be the case if Western deterrence demonstrates both the capability and intent to defend the Baltic States and everywhere else Putin deems to be part of his ‘New CCCP’.  As Otto von Bismarck once said, “Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided…but by iron and blood”.   

Europe is thus at the start of a new Twenty Year Crisis because any peace in Ukraine will not hold. Moreover, when Der Tag comes, it will come in August…and with Putin and the ultra-nationalists in power it will come. This is because Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was never about territory; it was about the subjugation of Ukraine and the balance of power in Europe.  

Julian Lindley-French