Ukraine Is Just the Beginning: Inside Putin’s Plan to Rebuild the Soviet Union

After Ukraine, Who's Next? Putin's Dangerous Push to Redraw Europe's Map

      More and more people are starting to see it the same way, whether they work in intelligence or write spy novels: Putin isn’t just fighting over Ukraine. He’s fighting the past.

     And that’s what makes this whole thing so dangerous. In Putin’s mind, the collapse of the Soviet Union wasn’t some great moment of freedom. It was a disaster. An embarrassment. Everything that came after 1991, all those new borders and independent countries, he doesn’t see them as real. He sees them as something forced on Russia while it was weak. Ukraine, especially, has always been personal for him. It’s not just another country next door. To Putin, it’s a loose end that was never supposed to exist.

     That’s why a lot of Western intelligence officials believe Ukraine isn’t a bargaining chip or a buffer zone in his eyes. It’s the centerpiece. The key piece on the board. If Ukraine falls, the rest of the old Soviet neighborhood suddenly looks exposed. Moldova. Georgia. The Baltic states. Parts of Central Asia. The thinking is that it wouldn’t happen all at once. First comes pressure. Then political chaos. Then “peacekeepers” or influence campaigns. And eventually, control. One country at a time.

     That chilling logic plays out vividly in Shadow War, a spy thriller that almost feels less like fiction the longer the real war drags on.

     In one pivotal scene, CIA spymaster Corey Pearson sits across from a captured Russian soldier, Nickolay Ivanov, inside a safe house in Key West. The room is quiet, tense, the kind of quiet that makes every word matter. Nickolay isn’t some grand strategist. He’s a foot soldier. But he’s been close enough to hear the whispers.

     He tells Pearson that Putin didn’t act alone. That the real drivers are a tight inner circle of former KGB hardliners who never accepted the Soviet collapse. Men who bonded in bitterness when the old system fell apart. Men who believe the United States robbed them of their empire. To them, Ukraine is only the opening move.

     Nickolay describes a long game already in motion. Sleeper networks seeded years ago. Militias and intelligence assets planted quietly across former Soviet states. Influence campaigns that don’t look like invasions until it’s too late. No tanks needed at first. Just chaos, fear, and division.

     That’s where the novel leans into its darkest territory. Nickolay claims the plan doesn’t stop at Europe. He tells Pearson that Russia intends to bring the fight directly to American soil. Not with armies, but with shock. A single, deniable act of nuclear terror meant to fracture the United States right before a presidential election. Enough panic to paralyze the country. Enough confusion to tilt power toward a candidate willing to look the other way while Russia moves west.

     It’s a fictional scenario, but it mirrors a real and unsettling truth about modern warfare. Power isn’t just seized with missiles and soldiers anymore. It’s seized by destabilizing societies, breaking alliances, and convincing people that democracy itself can’t protect them.

     Back in the real world, Putin hasn’t exactly been subtle about how he views Ukraine. He flat-out denies it’s a real, independent country. When he talks about the invasion, he doesn’t describe it as a land grab. He talks like he’s taking something back. That choice of words isn’t accidental. Leaders don’t spend years saying the same things by mistake. They say them because that’s how they actually see the world.

     What really keeps analysts up at night isn’t just what Russian forces are doing right now on the battlefield. It’s what happens if they get their way. If Ukraine falls, it tells the world that borders don’t mean much anymore, that they can be wiped away with tanks and missiles. It suggests NATO’s promises might be tested, bent, or ignored. And it sends a clear warning to every former Soviet country that their independence only lasts as long as Moscow allows it.

     In Shadow War, Pearson listens as Nickolay lays it all out. The old Soviet dream never died. It went underground. It adapted. And now, in the chaos of modern geopolitics, it’s trying to resurface.

     That’s what makes the story resonate. Because beneath the fiction is a question the real world still hasn’t answered: if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, where does it stop?

     History suggests it doesn’t.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His thrillers reveal the shadowy world of covert missions and betrayal with striking realism.