Putin’s Shadow War and the West’s Moment of Truth

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From cyber sabotage to drones over airports, the West is already under attack—just below the threshold of war.

By TRH Foreign Affairs Desk

New Delhi, December 17, 2025 — Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service has delivered a stark warning that deserves far more attention than it will likely receive. Speaking with unusual bluntness, senior SIS official Blaise Metreweli described a Russia that is no longer merely fighting a conventional war in Ukraine, but systematically expanding conflict into the “gray zone”—the dangerous space between peace and open war.

The message was unmistakable: the war is no longer confined to Ukraine’s borders. It is already touching all of us.

Metreweli spoke of an “aggressive, expansionist and revisionist Russia” seeking to subjugate Ukraine while harassing NATO. The language was severe, but the evidence is harder still. Hundreds of thousands are dead, the toll rising daily, driven—she said—by Vladimir Putin’s historical distortions and his deeply compromised hunger for respect. It is a war prolonged not by necessity, but by obsession.

Crucially, Britain’s intelligence assessment rejects the illusion that Moscow is negotiating in good faith. Putin, Metreweli warned, is deliberately dragging out negotiations while shifting the cost of war onto his own population—economically, socially, and demographically. This is not a leader searching for an off-ramp; it is one testing how much pain his society can absorb before it fractures.

Yet the most unsettling part of the warning lay beyond the battlefield. Russia, Metreweli said, is probing Western resolve through tactics calibrated to stay just below the threshold of formal war. Cyber attacks on critical infrastructure. Drones buzzing airports and military bases. Aggressive manoeuvres at sea, both above and below the waves. State-sponsored arson and sabotage. Propaganda and influence operations designed to crack open social fault lines and exploit internal divisions.

This is not accidental escalation. It is strategy.

The genius—and danger—of gray zone warfare is that it thrives on hesitation. Each incident, viewed in isolation, appears deniable, ambiguous, or insufficient to justify retaliation. Taken together, they form a sustained campaign of intimidation and erosion. Democracies debate thresholds; authoritarians exploit them.

Metreweli’s warning matters because it reframes the question confronting Europe and NATO. The issue is no longer whether the West will continue supporting Ukraine—Britain insists that support is “enduring.” The real test is whether democratic societies can recognise that they are already engaged in a form of conflict, even if tanks have not crossed their borders.

Russia’s objective is not immediate victory, but exhaustion: to normalise disruption, desensitise publics, and convince voters that resistance is futile or too costly. Energy grids flicker. Airports halt. Social media fills with rage and suspicion. Trust—once broken—is far harder to repair than infrastructure.

History offers a grim lesson. Wars rarely begin with declarations; they begin with probing acts that test willpower. Putin is testing whether NATO sees the pattern—or keeps treating each incident as an unfortunate anomaly.

Britain’s intelligence message is therefore not alarmist. It is preventive. Understanding how Russia bullies, fearmongers and manipulates is not an abstract security exercise; it is central to protecting democratic life itself. Gray zone warfare works only when societies fail to recognise it as warfare.