It is becoming increasingly clear why CIA Director John Ratcliffe made his extraordinary dash to Moscow on Tuesday. Credible intelligence, I am reliably informed, points to an increasingly desperate Vladimir Putin contemplating an attack on a European Nato country and, if that fails to frighten Europe into abandoning Ukraine, potentially the use of a tactical nuclear weapon against Ukraine itself.

For those who have watched this war from a distance, this may sound like a heart-stopping escalation. For those of us who have followed it closely, and particularly for Nato’s intelligence services, it is the grim reality of where Putin’s war has brought us after four and a half years of Western hesitation and Ukrainian battlefield innovation.

The extraordinary irony is that Russia, the supposed military giant, is increasingly being squeezed by the Ukrainian David. Ukraine has become the world leader in drone warfare, the alchemy of the modern battlefield, while the Russian Goliath is bleeding men, equipment and wealth.

There is growing concern among Western intelligence agencies that the Russian economy is approaching a dangerous tipping point. Ukrainian strikes on critical infrastructure, including elements of Russia’s oil and petrol industries, are having their effect. Valuable exports have been disrupted and Russians are having to queue for hours at the petrol stations. Disruption to major online retail networks is another reminder that modern economies depend upon complex systems which can be surprisingly fragile when attacked.

Imagine Britain without fuel and with online commerce halted. The result would not merely be inconvenience. It would be economic paralysis followed rapidly by political crisis. Russia is not Britain, of course. But Putin’s regime depends upon the Russian population continuing to accept sacrifice in return for the promise of victory. That contract is under strain.

More worrying still is the condition of the Russian army. After enormous casualties, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find willing volunteers. My own assessment is that the army could ultimately become the weakest link in the Russian system. Russia still has plenty of men left, but the ones willing to fight seem to have been largely used up, despite soldiers’ pay being generous in Russian terms. It is probably getting harder to find recruits overseas, too.

The option of mobilisation – which would allow unwilling conscripts to be sent to the war – could supply fresh manpower for the meat grinder, but this would have political risks, as those who remember the Soviet war in Afghanistan will know.

Russia’s middle classes have tolerated Putin’s war while the costs have largely been borne by others. Start putting their sons in uniform and sending them to Ukraine, and the political calculation will change rapidly. Nonetheless, western officials believe that preparations for a mobilisation are under way. This would potentially give Putin enough troops to do more than simply fight the war in Ukraine.

This is why an attack on the Baltic States or, God forbid, the use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, can no longer simply be dismissed as Kremlin bluster. Putin is not merely fighting for his political career. He may increasingly believe he is fighting for his survival, and certainly for the legacy he imagines history will give him.

There is another extraordinary card on the table: Donald Trump. Putin will have watched carefully as the Iranian leadership has put pressure on the American President. With the US midterm elections approaching, Washington has plenty of domestic political distractions. A Russian offer to help Trump resolve his Iranian problem could potentially be enormously attractive to the Kremlin and the White House.

Putin will also have been extremely pleased at the way in which the US has shot away much of its arsenal of long-range precision weaponry at Iran. During a previous episode of sabre-rattling, the Biden administration promised “catastrophic” consequences for Russia following any use of nuclear weapons: consequences which it could easily deliver without going nuclear itself and without much risk to American lives.

The US still has enough advanced weaponry to suppress Russian air defences and inflict a devastating battlefield defeat on Putin’s troops in Ukraine, but such an effort on top of the Iranian campaign would now leave America’s magazines perilously close to empty.

Nonetheless, if Trump can prevent Russian aggression against Nato, prevent nuclear escalation in Ukraine and help bring the war to a just conclusion, the political dividends at home could be substantial. But there is a dangerous number of “ifs” in that calculation.

Putin is fighting for his life. He is not simply looking for a good day at the polls.

We are therefore living through an extraordinary and deeply dangerous moment: an unpredictable American President, an autocratic ideologue in the Kremlin and an opaque revolutionary regime in Tehran.

What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot.

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Our destiny is now firmly in the hands of the European Nato nations. The time for carefully calibrated ambiguity is over. Putin needs to understand, beyond any doubt, that an attack on Nato will trigger an overwhelming conventional response. And Europe has the means to deliver it. Russia’s conventional military power has been comprehensively attrited by its war in Ukraine. European Nato, if properly mobilised, possesses vastly greater economic, technological and military potential. The Kremlin must understand one simple equation: aggression against Nato would not save Putin’s regime. It would finish it.

Meanwhile ordinary Russians, and certainly ordinary Ukrainians, have every reason to want this nightmare to end. Ukraine deserves a just peace, not a settlement that rewards aggression and leaves Putin time to reload. Putin may never stand in the dock for the crimes committed in Ukraine. That is a matter for history. What matters now is that Ukraine emerges secure, sovereign and free.

Col Hamish de Bretton-Gordon commanded the 1^st Royal Tank Regiment. His new book ‘Tank Command’ is now in print