August 28, 2026

A Surprise Moscow Visit and Russia vs. the West with Hanna Notte

By: Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Jim Townsend

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe made a highly unusual visit to Moscow this week. Although we don’t know with certainty everything that was discussed, multiple reports now confirm that Ratcliffe went in part to warn Russia against attacking a NATO member or taking steps that could escalate tensions with the alliance.

The trip to Moscow comes in the context of increasingly brazen Russian attacks on NATO member states. We've seen arson attacks, assassination attempts, and explosive-laden drones in and around German airports. NATO itself has been on high alert, with a significant increase in surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft operating along the eastern flank. And for the last several months, European intelligence chiefs and senior officials have been sounding the same alarm—namely, that Russia could test NATO even while the war in Ukraine continues.

It is against this backdrop of tension between Russia and the West that Hanna Notte’s book, We Shall Outlast Them, arrives. In the book, published this August, Notte argues that the war in Ukraine has become part of a much broader battle of wills, and that Russia has refocused its state machinery around sustaining and ultimately outlasting the West in this confrontation. Drawing on reporting from more than a dozen countries, the book looks at how Russia has adapted to the pressure of war and Western isolation: circumventing sanctions, forging and deepening partnerships, and finding new opportunities for influence across the Global South. Notte examines both the successes and the limits of this newly outward-facing Russian strategy.

To talk about her book and what it tells us also about this current moment, we’re very excited to have Hanna Notte with us back on Brussels Sprouts.

Hanna Notte is the director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. She is also a senior associate with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a fellow with the Kennan Institute.

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