NO SLEEP 'TIL MOSCOW:

[T]he West is "more united than it has ever been in the last 30 years or so." And the man to thank for that resides in the Kremlin. "Putin has helped us by coming up with new incentives or ideas that are totally crazy from the European point of view," Marran says.

This is certainly true up to a point, but Putin still curries influence with far-right ideologues in Europe, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. And Europe is still widely dependent on Russian oil and gas. Putin aims to whittle away at European consensus on sanctions and his own geopolitical isolation by exacting prohibitively high costs for them. It's the one war of attrition he may still be capable of winning. Energy prices are set to rise even higher this winter, now that OPEC has joined with Russia in agreeing to cut its daily production levels by 2 million barrels.

Marran, though, is sanguine. He believes Europe can and will weather an especially cold winter. "Our populations have been warned already that it's going to be difficult and expensive, but we need to survive because it's a war situation." He is fond of the refrain used to justify Estonia's outsize military assistance to Ukraine that every Russian tank destroyed in Ukraine is one less Russian tank that could someday invade Estonia. Välisluureamet also provides real-time actionable intelligence on Russia's war machine with seemingly less hesitation than other Western services. "Every bit and piece we collect that might help Ukraine, we just give it to them."

Behind this reflexive assistance lies moral obligation wedded to utilitarianism wedded to a unique form of survivor's guilt: Ukraine's profound misfortune, and dramatic battlefield success, has unintentionally bolstered Estonia's security. Putin's war is flailing so badly that few observers think he could invade another neighbor anytime soon, let alone a NATO member. He recently yanked as many as 24,000 of the 30,000 soldiers formerly stationed along Russia's western flank to replenish crippling personnel losses in Ukraine, losses that Kyiv estimates to be in excess of 60,000. Furthermore, NATO is far more alive to the day-one requirements of any invocation of its Article V collective security clause than it has been in the past. President Biden recently reiterated that the U.S. military would defend "every inch" of NATO land. This includes Estonia, a member since 2004, and long considered a "tripwire" state in any hypothetical Russian attack, given its proximity to Russia.

The world's largest military alliance is "in good shape in the region," Marran affirms, noting that Western troops now train daily with Baltic ones. NATO is also set to expand, again thanks to Putin, with the anticipated accession of Sweden and Finland. This twinned membership will transform the Gulf of Finland into what he calls "an internal NATO lake." The broader Baltic Sea, which houses some of Russia's most strategic sealanes and ports, is set to be fully ringed by NATO members.

Välisluureamet publishes a yearly unclassified report filled with insights on Russian military maneuvers, intelligence services and cybersecurity operations, an Estonian bailiwick ever since a crippling 2007 cyberattack that was widely attributed to Russian hackers. These reviews are said to be "read religiously at CIA." Chapter one of the 2022 edition, published on Feb. 15, less than two weeks before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, was titled "Russia is Ready for War."

On Ukraine, Välisluureamet has been more bullish from the outset on Kyiv's chances to withstand a Russian war of conquest than were many other intelligence services in NATO, which anticipated the collapse of Ukraine's conventional army, the loss of its air force and a recourse to partisan warfare. That assessment fed directly into policymaking -- namely, the reluctance of the Biden administration to equip Ukraine with the heavy offensive Western firepower it now sends in waves of billion-dollar security assistance packages. But even now the White House has its limits; it has refused to directly dispatch long-range artillery missiles out of fear that they might be used to hit targets inside Russian territory and escalate the war.

Marran believes this U.S. barrier is misguided. "I think the West should kind of get over this self-limitation that we should limit the weapons systems or ammunition to 80 kilometers or 40 kilometers. Keep in mind, all the NATO arms sent there are now being tested in wartime. So we have a self-interest in giving Ukraine what they ask for. But I'm convinced we'll get there, eventually. We are light years from where we were on Feb. 24."

Estonia has been closely advising Ukraine's intelligence services since 2014, the year of Russia's initial invasion and occupation, and the dividends of that advice are now demonstrable on the battlefield. In the past several weeks Ukraine has recaptured more than 4,000 square miles of terrain, not only in the northeast of the country but now also in the south. Russian frontlines are collapsing in Kherson, whose provincial capital was the first major population center to fall to Moscow in the opening days of the war. And despite Putin's heralded "annexation" of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, his army is losing ground in all four districts to simultaneous Ukrainian combined-arms offensives. Just yesterday, Ukraine somehow partially collapsed the Kerch Bridge -- one of Putin's prize projects -- which connects Russia to occupied Crimea.

The more Russia is defeated, the louder the chorus of voices grows advocating Ukraine negotiate the terms of its conditional surrender. Everyone from Elon Musk to Pope Francis has lately urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to enter into negotiations with Moscow. But the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians are against any ceasefire that entails giving their land to an invading force that they're pushing farther back every day.

Marran cautions that advising Ukraine to enter peace negotiations is strategically backward. "It is our job as intel services to give correct information assessments to our leadership. And our assessment is that we shouldn't push Ukraine to any negotiations because that will send a message to Putin that things will go his way, and he will start slicing the sausage."

But what of the worst-case scenarios now being advanced in the West, such as Putin's potential use of a tactical nuclear weapon or some other nonconventional means of halting or reversing Ukraine's advances? Biden recently told the crowd at a New York Democratic fundraiser, "We have not faced the prospect of armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis." The cliche in U.S. foreign policy discourse that a "cornered" Putin is a more dangerous Putin. Marran sees it in reverse. "I would say that it is better for us to see him in the corner than outside of it, where he'll have more options to deal with the West. I think that's what he's hoping for. I would let him stay in the corner."

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