EXPERT Q&A — President Donald Trump has offered a strong hand of support to Ukraine in recent days, pledging new weapons and threatening Russia with tariffs and sanctions if it does not end the war. It’s a reversal from previous engagement with Moscow, which has failed to result in any substantial progress to peace.
The Cipher Brief spoke with former senior CIA officer and 6-time station chief Ralph Goff - who has traveled to Ukraine and the region multiple times since the Russian war in Ukraine began - about why he believes Putin has pushed too far this time and about how Europe sees the Russian threat beyond Ukraine. This interview - which you'll only find in The Cipher Brief - has been edited for length and clarity.
The Cipher Brief: You were in Lithuania during the NATO summit. What was your sense there about the threat that Russia really poses to Europe today?
Goff: Unlike the United States, where most people probably followed the NATO summit tangentially, the summit was pretty much front and center in the news in Lithuania. The Baltic States, being frontline states, the NATO border with the Russian Federation, the people there, not just the politicians, but the people, the public, tend to follow these security issues such as NATO quite closely because they see the threat literally every day across the border.
It was interesting because the summit was pretty much a victory lap by President Trump. In his first administration, he pressured Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the others to increase their military spending. And he had some success there. But then of course, there was some backsliding in the intervening years. And now, once again, he's been pressuring our European allies to step up their defense spending, seeking this 5% commitment from the member states, which he by and large got. The summit was interesting because he got what he wanted.
The Cipher Brief: Trump may be getting what he wants from NATO, but he's certainly not getting what he wants from Russian President Vladimir Putin — which is to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine. His frustration seems to be growing over the last few weeks as he's realized that Putin is not really making any significant progress toward a ceasefire deal.
Goff: I think Putin has drastically overplayed his hand with President Trump. I think Putin, the old KGB case officer, was rather condescending to the president. I think he overestimated his skills as a case officer, where he thought he could manipulate and flatter the president into performing the way he wanted — and that didn't happen.
President Trump likes President Putin; they're both very transactional people. From President Vladimir Putin’s side, all he had to do was behave himself. And he didn't. He had President Trump bludgeoning Kyiv into a position to accept some sort of peace negotiations. And the Ukrainians were in line. Meanwhile in Russia, they did nothing. Vladimir Putin, in fact, doubled down. In the last week, the air attacks on Ukraine have been unprecedented. Before, the norm was 30 to 40, maybe 80 drones at night attacking various Ukrainian cities. Now they're firing hundreds of them at night, along with scores of cruise missiles, hypersonic missiles, air-to-air missiles, the S-300s used in ground attack mode.
Putin has doubled down looking to break the Ukrainian will with his attacks, and it hasn't worked. The exact opposite has happened. Now he's got President Trump upset with him. President Trump feels that he’s done everything he could to mollify Putin and kind of see things his way, and it hasn't worked. So now it's time to try something else. That had a lot to do with how he changed his mind on NATO as well.
When Putin invaded Ukraine, he gave them one one bloody gift: he gave them their national identity. After the attack, it was clear to Ukrainians they were Ukrainians. Their national identity was firm. And Donald Trump kind of did the same thing where he kind of turned his back on NATO. He expressed his skepticism, he kind of made them think that perhaps at some point the United States wouldn't not take a leading role in NATO and force the Europeans to grow up to suddenly not just talk about playing a more active role in NATO but actually do it as well. So now instead of just meetings where they issue polite statements, you have NATO where they're spending more money and they're rebuilding their defense industrial complex. So it's a big change, and I would say Vladimir Putin has no one to blame but himself.
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The Cipher Brief: As of Monday, July 14, President Trump was giving Vladimir Putin another 50 days to come to an agreement to cease fire. From a non-expert perspective, I would think that the Russian President would use that 50 days to pound Ukraine even harder to try to create as much devastation as he can. How likely do you think that President Putin is going to change any part of his behavior in this 50-day window that President Trump has offered?
Goff: One thing Vladimir Putin is very consistent about is that he does not respond to pressure. It takes a lot to get Putin to move and it's going to take a lot more than a 50 day deadline, right? President Trump has become very fond of deadlines such as the deadline imposed on Iran before striking them. I guess that's a tool that he sees some usefulness for.
But with Vladimir Putin, I don't really think deadlines are gonna have any impact. What will matter is the actions that come through. You've got a very robust set of sanctions that the Senate has prepared under the leadership of Senator Lindsey Graham. He says something like 84 senators are in support of what is supposedly a more robust package of sanctions than the White House had developed. So we'll see where that goes.
And then there’s also getting the Europeans to crack down. Getting the Europeans not just to commit to spending more money, but to also commit to providing that aid immediately to the Ukrainians. Then there's things like getting Europe fully off of Russian oil. They're still buying oil and gas from Russia. Although they say by the end of 2027, I think they're supposed to be off of it. And in the meantime, things like cracking down on the so-called shadow fleet that the Russians have. There's a lot that can be done there to stem the flow of oil out of Russia and the money that goes back in for that oil.
And then things like when you see provocations in the Baltic Sea — sabotage of underwater internet cables or other type of infrastructure between the Nordic states and the Baltics — that there’s a response. Maybe we're seeing a hint of that with what triggered some remarks from Russia, where the Estonians did a test firing of their HIMARS batteries out to sea. It shows that they can cover a good chunk of the Baltic Sea from the shores of Estonia. So, there's a lot that the NATO countries and the United States can do to put pressure on Putin within that 50-day window. The trick is not to wait until the end of it, but to start ratcheting out now.
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The Cipher Brief: What would you be looking for next that might signal that things are getting worse when it comes to Russian's actions in Ukraine and vis-a-vis Europe?
Goff: The Baltics in particular come to mind. You've got sizable Russian minorities in the Baltic regions. For instance, Estonia is a country of about 1.4 million people and they have about 300,000 Russians, the bulk of whom live in one area kind of in the northeast, the town of Narva. One could see a situation where little green men show up in Narva to protect the Russian population from some sort of perceived Estonian nationalists. Then you know what we're looking at is not just the Crimea where russia successfully annexed a part of the Ukraine, but an incursion into a NATO country which is protected under Article Five. I would say any kind of information operations against Estonia and the other Baltic countries, Latvia and Lithuania, any kind of increased sabotage activity, gray zone activity in the Baltics, that would be signs that maybe there's worse to come. So we really have to be vigilant there.
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