Chapter 37

CHAPTER 37

"Russia isn't going to stop," she stated flatly, as Conroy closed the door to her office and returned to his seat. "They might enter into a ceasefire at some point, but only for the purposes of regrouping and resupplying before launching fresh attacks."

Her voice held a chilling certainty that sent a shiver down his spine. "Is this just… intuition?" he asked. "Or something more?"

"It's the truth, Andy. Russia believes it's facing an existential crisis."

"Existential?"

Sitting back down, Maggie pointed toward the map. "Look at it. Russia's a vast expanse of flat plains. A dream target for any invader, a nightmare to defend. They need geographic choke points, physical bottlenecks where they can funnel enemy forces and crush them with concentrated firepower. If you can plug those gaps, you've got a chance at preserving your territory. Russia knows this intimately.

"Every time they've been invaded, the attackers have come through one of nine key gateway territories. This is why their history is so expansionist. They needed a solid, outer perimeter. And after World War Two, they finally had it. The Soviets controlled all nine choke points. But with the USSR's collapse in 1992, they lost all but two. Ever since, they've been fighting to reclaim them."

Conroy absorbed the information, the weight of it settling on him. "So Peshkov's not just playing Cold War nostalgia. This is bigger."

"Much," Maggie stated, her voice grim. "This is about their very survival."

"Who's next on their potential hit list?"

"Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. It's anyone's guess. They need to plug every single gap. That includes Moldova, Romania, Poland, the Caucasus region, even Central Asia. Without controlling those gateways, Russia will remain vulnerable, and their fear of invasion will never die."

"But why now?" Conroy asked. "Is it Peshkov's health? Is he in some demented race with the Grim Reaper?"

"Sure, some of it is ego," she agreed. "But the primary force driving Peshkov and the Kremlin is demography. In plain English, Russia is dying."

"Because of the numbers of men being fed into the meat grinder in Ukraine?"

Maggie shook her head. "This started well before Ukraine. Back in the 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed, the death rate doubled and the birth rate was cut in half. Fast-forward to the war in Ukraine and about a million and a half Russians under age thirty-five have fled the country—most of them young men escaping the draft—two to three times as many as those who agreed to go fight.

"The pool of fighting-age men who are still in Russia is much smaller than what the Soviet Union had at its disposal. So, for the Kremlin, it's now or never. This is the last generation of soldiers that they'll be able to effectively field. If they don't get a hold of those choke points now, it's over. The next time they're invaded, they won't be able to put enough troops on the battlefield to effectively fight.

"On top of this, their economy is crumbling. Their education system collapsed shortly before the USSR did. The last generation with any decent technical training just turned sixty. They're quickly running out of competent people to maintain their railways, their nukes, their airplanes, their military equipment; you name it.

"The worse life gets, the less people want to have babies and the worse the demographic situation becomes. There's no other way to say it, they're in a nosedive and about to reach terminal velocity.

"That's why Peshkov isn't going to stop. He and the Kremlin can read the writing on the wall. It's over for them. If they don't push, and push hard, Russia is finished. Worse still, it will have happened on their watch."

Conroy could feel the knot tightening in his stomach. "Making it all the more likely that they'll employ nuclear weapons to forestall that outcome."

Slowly, Maggie nodded. "That's the lens we need to be looking at all of this through. It's also why we need to be so damn careful. The Russians' backs are against the wall. One wrong move, and they'll take us right down with them."