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A previously unreported internal US military analysis suggests the invasion of Ukraine is a culmination of Putin’s 15-year plan to dominate Eurasia, in revenge against NATO expansion
A secret draft US military document reveals that a decade ago, US Army analysts expected Vladimir Putin to spearhead an acceleration of Russian aggression in Eastern Europe and beyond as part of a 15-year plan to consolidate control of former Soviet states.
The internal US military analysis, which was never meant for public consumption, throws new light on how some of the Pentagon’s top military experts anticipated a dramatic intensification of hostilities between Russia and NATO, with Putin planning to subvert Europe through a series of regional military offensives of which hostilities in Ukraine are merely a launching point. The wider goal, the document claimed, is to extend Russian power back across Eastern and ultimately Central Europe.
Putin has not simply bided his time but actively prepared the ground for the reconquest of Ukraine as part of a wider strategy to reassert Russian power in Eurasia
According to the draft military document obtained by Byline Times via the Wikileaks archive, US military analysts have been well-aware as far back as September 2011 of Putin’s longstanding plans for a series of strategic offensives in Europe, the Caucasus and the Baltic to expand Russian influence in revenge against NATO expansionism – a strategy quietly launched by Putin as early as 2005.
The document, reported here for the first time, is the draft of an internal US Marine Corps’ (USMC) Intelligence Department forecasting paper, produced jointly by senior USMC officials and analysts at the private intelligence firm Stratfor, and overseen by then Lieutenant Colonel Drew E. Cukor, Analysis and Futures Chief at USMC’s Intelligence Department. Cukor would go on to become head of the US Department of Defense’s Project Maven to develop deep learning AI technologies for military combat.
The document concluded that little over 15 years ago, Putin had embarked on a long-term strategy to roll back Western influence, which had “pushed the line of its influence up to the Russian border” in the mid-2000s.
“Russia has successfully launched a series of moves since approximately 2005 in which to reverse Western influence in the former Soviet states,” the document said.
“This will lead to an escalation of hostilities between US and Russia – playing out in the Baltic region, Central Europe and the Caucasus. It will also lead to a further fracturing of NATO as its members struggle over what the alliance’s focus should be.”
The document provides important corroboration and deeper context for the controversial analysis of journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who described Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine as an escalation in the ‘first Great Information War’ that began in 2014.
According to the US Marine Corps intelligence analysis, Putin’s long war was already unfolding since 2005 across four key theatres: a group of countries in Eastern and Central Europe; a group of peripheral former Soviet states in Central Asia; a group of states in the Baltics; and, last but not least, a number of countries in the heart of Europe.
Prepared in September 2011 as part of a series of USMC intelligence briefs drafted with Stratfor’s support, the document was buried in the 5 million strong corpus of Stratfor emails that were originally leaked and published by Wikileaks from 2012 to 2014.
Within that corpus is a body of email correspondence in 2011 between senior US Marine Corps officers and Stratfor analysts. The emails show that the USMC Intelligence Department had commissioned Stratfor to work with USMC officials in drafting this intelligence forecasting paper, along with several other briefs. Other USMC officials involved in establishing the Stratfor partnership included Major William Osborne, then of USMC’s Future Assessments Branch, and USMC Director of Intelligence, Brigadier General Vincent Stewart, who later went on to become Director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
The USMC Intelligence Department, for which the forecasting assessment was drafted, is a highly influential agency which, according to its mission statement, “supports the Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC) in his role as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), represents the service in Joint and Intelligence Community matters, and exercises supervision over the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity (MCIA)”.
Although the document is in draft form, the USMC-Stratfor drafting process can be traced through the leaked correspondence and the version cited by Byline Times appears to be a near-final version. While it cannot be assumed to reflect US Government policy, it provides a powerful insight into Putin’s plans as internally assessed by senior US military intelligence officers.
Securing the Buffer
According to the USMC intelligence forecasting paper, the first group of countries Putin planned to control are “Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Georgia”. These countries became “a major focus” of Russian efforts “even before the Kremlin was done consolidating power at home” because they are “the most critical to Moscow’s overall plan to return as a Eurasian power”.
Together, these countries give Russia “access to the Black and Caspian seas and serve as a buffer between Russia and Asia, Europe and the Islamic world”, the document observed. “So far, Russia has consolidated its influence in three of the four countries; Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine all have pro-Russian leaders.”
At this time, Ukraine was increasing its cooperation with a proposed new Russia-dominated military alliance structure and had signed a deal for the Russian Black Sea Fleet to remain in the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol until 2047.
The Russian grand strategy was, however, rudely interrupted in 2014 when anti-government protestors in Ukraine toppled the Russian-backed regime. This led to the emergence of a Western-friendly government and prompted Putin to launch an invasion of eastern Ukraine. Russia of course still controls Sevastopol, where it operates a naval base, as part of its 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Crucially, USMC analysts in 2011 appeared to have no idea that Russia would lose control of Ukraine despite continuing US government support for Ukrainian opposition and civil society groups. The document argued – wrongly in hindsight – that Russia had “a secure grasp” of the buffer state.
US military analysts had thus expected Putin to use its control of Ukraine as a springboard to extend Russian influence back into Central Europe. That’s why the document assessed that the first major flashpoint between Russia and the West would begin on “the Central European chessboard”, starting from around mid-decade:
“Traditionally, when Russia is threatened, it lashes out. Although Moscow is currently acting cooperatively – while concurrently creating chaos across the Continent – it can easily resume using more aggressive tactics.”
In other words, the fall of Ukraine to the West in 2014 was seen by Putin as a major setback to a far wider strategy of regional Russian military and economic resurgence – a long war in which the recapture of Ukraine today is therefore just one step.
The Asian frontier
The document describes a second group of former Soviet states where Russia has successfully consolidated control, and will work to minimise Western influence:
“These countries – Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Armenia – are not geographically, politically or economically important, but their natural instability and weakness does on occasion make them more trouble than they are worth.”
Other Central Asian republics Putin wants to control, it continued, are Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. Control of the former is about “preventing other powers from gaining a foothold in the Caucasus. Azerbaijan also has access to vast amounts of energy wealth, something that the West and Turkey have been trying to tap more heavily in to and something Russia wants to prevent.”
As for Uzbekistan, Russia’s main concern is that it could become “a regional leader in its own right, commanding the other Central Asian states,” thus shifting the whole of Central Asia out of Russian influence:
“Losing Uzbekistan would mean losing half of Kazakhstan (including the critical southern region around Almaty), Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and half of Kyrgyzstan. So Russia has currently surrounded the country militarily with troops on the Uzbek border with Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Russia has also been tampering with the anti-regime movements in the eastern part of the country.”
Controlling the Baltics
A third group of former Soviet states where Russia is planning to consolidate control include Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania: “These countries have either strategic geographic locations, links to Russia or valuable assets.”
The Baltics, the document concluded, “are the most critical to Russia’s plan” as they lie on the North European Plain, Europe’s easiest route for marching into Russia:
“Whoever controls Estonia also controls the approach to the Gulf of Finland, Russia’s main access to the Baltic Sea. Lithuania is different from its Baltic brothers since it does not border Russia proper, although it does border Kaliningrad, Russia’s exclave, which is home to half of Russia’s Baltic Fleet and more than 23,000 troops.”
The Baltic states joined the EU and NATO in 2004, putting the Western alliances “right on Russia’s doorstep”. Russia’s response to this will be to increase its military presence on their borders, “essentially encircling them”, the document warned.
Putin’s next move is then “to create influence among the Baltic populations with concerted propaganda programs among their youths and political parties”. The document also noted that Russian military exercises in Belarus were “based on scenarios to ‘invade’ the Baltics”.