“What is more, he is at loggerheads with many of his senior military, because he succeeded magnificently in his cost-cutting task. He slashed their regular army manpower by nearly twenty percent and said he would replace them with reserves. His generals told him they could never be adequately recruited or trained and he ignored them. The generals turned out to be right. Only a man focused on saving money at almost any cost, and with no understanding of the strategic consequences, would have taken such a risky gamble.” Merkulov paused, unsure what level of detail the President wanted him to go into.

But Komarov knew the President was loving this.

“Go on.”

“Their Prime Minister needed to save money quickly to reduce the deficit and he appointed this businessman to do it. He did as he was asked and certainly, their Prime Minister thinks he was a success. But now they are about to receive their dividend: bad decisions, taken in haste, for which they will pay the blood price.”

“And the money price,” the President interjected.

“That is the true genius of your plan, Vladimir Vladimirovich. NATO and the West will think this is all about protecting Russian speakers, but it is also about the balance of power in Europe. When NATO fails to react to our seizure of the Baltic states it will have failed, been defeated, and probably collapse. At that moment it will cease to pose a threat to Russia. Without NATO, Europe will be forced to beg us not to go any further. And apart from eastern Poland, which has historically been part of Russia, we probably won’t. We’d all be happy to visit Paris as a tourist. But there will be a price to pay for our forbearance. We will demand that these criminal sanctions are lifted immediately, and with our victorious armies on their borders and our nuclear missiles pointed at them, will they refuse? I think not.

“The G7 will become the G8 once again and Russia will again be a leading player. Will the International Monetary Fund dare not grant us soft loans? I doubt it. And here’s an amusing thought one of my staffers came up with. As we will once again own the Baltics and all three are members of the European Union, surely that will make us members of the EU? With three votes even . . .”

There were loud guffaws of laughter from the others at the joke but, behind his wintry smile, Komarov could see that Merkulov was deadly serious.

He waited for the conversation to die down before continuing. “Because Russia has always been part of Europe and as EU members, we would be entitled to receive massive EU Structural and Investment Funds. Refuse and they will risk our missiles. And there will be no NATO to resist us.”